LETTER TO WILLIAM J. CASEY (SANITIZED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B01390R000600750015-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: December 13, 1986
• Content Type: LETTER

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OFFICE OF CONGRESSIONAL AFFAIRS
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Mr. William J. Casey
Director oP Central Intelligence
7-E-60 HQ
Washington, D.C. 20505
Pacific Palisades, CA
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Recent public criticisms of you by members of the intelli-
gence oversight committees of the Congress prompt the suggestion
that follows on a possible means of developing a better future
relationship with those committees. My views are based on a
review of the legislative oversight process during work of the
Murphy Commission's Intelligence Panel (on which you served), and
on my experience as a consultant to the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence until Senator Durenberger became its chairman.
My thesis is that there is a gap between executive branch
perceptions and legislative branch realities regarding leakage of
information that would tend to risk the lives of persons involved
in covert operations or otherwise jeopardize ongoing covert oper-
ations. And that this gap in perceptions/reality both induced
White House orders not to provide anticipatory or after-action
notice to the Congress, and mounting Congressional hostility to
covert operations and to your serving as DC1.
What I am proposing is that you initiate an expedited review
of the Agency-held records relating to the security record of the
Congress in protecting information relating to ongoing or planned
covert operations, and compare the record and the perceptions of
the record of legislative security concerning covert operations.
Your predecessor, Admiral Turner, recently stated on tele-
vision that none of the many covert operations conducted during
the Carter administration is known to have been compromised by
leaks from the intelligence oversight committees.
More recently, the Congress has adopted a procedure whereby
there has been public notice (in the Congressional Record) of
debates on the authorization of funds for formerly covert acti-
vities. John Bruce Lockhart, a retired British SIS officer,
often distinguished between a "suit of armor" and what he
called "fig leaf cover." The Congress transformed covert opera-
tions with respect to Central America from the former to the
latter category, in the period 1984-1986. The results have been
highly adverse. But it appears to me that various executive
branch officials have inappropriately confused press leak pC~
regarding quasi-overt operations funded through the DDO an p(EC;
covert operations that are not the subject of public debate. REGf,/~
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Even the loss of life of a station chief (Welch) that has
loosely been characterized as the consequence of Congressional
inquiries appears to have been more directly associated with
disclosures by a renegade Agency alumnus and the work of hostile
foreign services. And the Congress enacted the Intelligence
Agent Identities Act of 1982 to criminalize such conduct.
If a thorough .review of the record indicates that the
Frequency or infrequency of leaks associated with the Congress
relate to different categories of activity, and that the Congress
has a better record in protecting ongoing covert operations than
many in the executive branch have perceived, then it may be
possible to provide both a better explanation of why you have
been instructed not to inform the Congress of certain activities,
and why it may nonetheless be prudent to keep the oversight
committees better informed in the future.
Best regards,
STAT
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