CARLUCCI LAUNCHED CIA OPERATION IN YEMEN THAT COLLAPSED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560011-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: December 4, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560011-7
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WASHINGTON POST
4 December 1986
Carlucci Launched CIA Operation in lerrnen That Collapsed
As pieced together by numerous time with negotiations over the
By Bob Woodward sources, both in and out of the gov- SALT II strategic arms limitation
W-111110^" I'o,t,tur venter ernment, the Yemenis became a treaty, "Brzezinski wanted Carlu ? ?'
Frank C. Carlucci, who was appointed Tues-
day as President Reagan's new national secu-
rity adviser in the midst of controversy over
White House covert operations gone awry,
once supervised one of the Central Intelligence
Agency's unpublicized failures in the Third
World, according to informed sources.
In 1979, as deputy CIA director, Carlucci
was urged by President Jimmy Carter's na-
tional security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
to set up a top secret CIA paramilitary effort
against South Yemen, a Marxist nation on the
Arabian peninsula that was threatening to
topple neighboring, pro-Western North
Yemen, the sources said.
Working with British and Saudi Arabian in-
telligence agents, Carlucci set the operation in
motion to harass South Yemen and thwart any
expansionist ambitions. But the plan ended in
disaster about a year into the Reagan admin-
istration, after Carlucci had become deputy
secretary of defense, when a CIA-trained team
of about a dozen Yemenis was captured trying
to blow up a bridge in South Yemen. Under
torture, team members betrayed their CIA
sponsors before they were executed, which
ended the operation in 1982, sources said.
The episode provided Carlucci with a first-
hand understanding of the hazards of secret
undertakings, according to sources who
worked with Carlucci at the time. Conse-
quently, the sources said, the new national
security adviser supports covert operations
but is aware of the potential for disastrous
consequences.
Carlucci had no comment vesterdav.
The South Yemen operation, according to a
number of sources familiar with it, is a case
study of CIA covert action and its relation to
the political agenda of senior White House
officials, in this instance, national security
adviser Brzezinski.
In the wake of the furor over National Se-
curity Council officials secretly selling arms
to [ran and diverting the profits to aid the
contra rebels fighting the government of Nic-
aragua, five senior sources directly involved
in the South Yemen affair said the case has a
special meaning in retrospect. As
one of the sources put it, "There
were unrealistic grand strategic
goals that the White House thought
could be accomplished through a
covert action. And they were trying
to fix a lot of things; many, too
many, that had nothing to do with
South Yemen."
U.S. national security
Feb. 23, 1979, when outpriority on to run h Yemen it so het could get Carlucci tto do it,"
made an unsuccessful three- one source said.
pronged attack against North And so Carlucci traveled over-
Yemen in an effort to seize airstrips seas to begin setting up the oper-
and roads in a bid to overthrow the ation. In an effort to maintain se-
government. Almost immediately, curity, Carlucci and his assistants
Carter notified Congress that he from the CIA directorate of oper-
would ship $390 million in planes, ations attempted to decree that the
tanks and other arms to North 30 Yemenis trained for the oper-
Yemen. ation were not to know that the
About the same time, Carter agency was behind the effort.
signed an intelligence order, known But once the training began,
as a "finding," secretly calling for a sources said the Yemenis apparent-
study of possible operations against ly were told in an effort to give the
South Yemen. Brzezinski pushed for operation credibility by reassuring
a covert mission in part because he the operatives that the United
felt the United States had been too States was supporting it.
passive in responding to Cuban ac- After the preparations, one team
tivities in 1977 and 1978 in Zaire of Yemenis was secretly sent into
and Somalia. South Yemen. But the or
Although then-CIA Director
ended tragically with ur a and
Stansfield Turner approved the op- capture and
eration, he pronounced it "hare- confession. A second team that had
brained." But others in the agency been "inserted" into South Yemen
were more enthusiastic, and wanted for a similar paramilitary operation
to bind the CIA closer to Saudi in. was withdrawn and the operation
telligence with a joint operation. was ended.
Furthermore, as one source put it, In late March 1982, prosecutors
some senior officials in the Carter in the South Yemen capital of Aden
White House held "almost a 'comity demanded the death penalty for 13
of nations' view that our allies, par- Yemenis on trial for alleged involve-
ticularly the conservative ones that ment in a sabotage conspiracy.
distrusted and were suspicious of Eleven members of the group, the
Carter, needed a joint operation to prosecution alleged, had been
prove we would be tough." trained by the CIA in neighboring
Because Vice President Walter Saudi Arabia with the intent of pav-
F. Mondale, while a U.S. senator, ing the way for "reactionary and
had been a member of the Church imperialist military intervention" in
committee that investigated CIA South Yemen.
excesses in the 1970s, Mondale Three weeks later, the govern-
was widely viewed as anti-CIA and ment in Aden announced that all 13
Brzezinski believed "it's im
t
por
ant members of the "gang of subver.
for the CIA to see Fritz Mondale sion" had pleaded guilty to smug-
take a stand for some sort of para-
military action," according to gling explosives to blow up oil in-
sources. stallations and other targets.
Mondale evidently agreed, be. Three had been sentenced to 15-
cause he not only supported the year prison terms, the government
covert operation and military ship- added, and 10 had been executed.
ments to North Yemen, but also at
one point during a White House Staff researcher Barbara Feinman.
meeting pounded the table and de- contributed to this report
clared, "We've got to get aid into
North Yemen."
Carter signed a second secret
finding, authorizing the operation.
Partly because of Turner's skepti-
cism and partly because the CIA
director was preoccupied at the
V
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560011-7