U.S. LEAKS AND THE AFGHAN RESISTANCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100020079-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 79
• Publication Date: August 9, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/17: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100020079-3
ARTICLE AT?^EAF)
Philip Geyelin
U.S. Leaks
And the
Afghan
Resistance
There is a hard-headed case to be
made against U.S. efforts to help Af-
ghanistan's freedom fighters. It is that
tht level of aid we can realistically
hupr to deliver discreetly cannot be
de.:tsnc.
So all we are doing is building false
hop, and prolonging the agony to no
effect other than to make Soviet
"pacification" more costly-and more
brutal.
An opposite view assumes that the
Soviets are hurting from the cost of
tr.; war and at the hands of world
opinion, particularly Moslem. If the
cost to the Soviets can be made suffi-
ciently severe, this argument goes,
there could be hope for some sort of
d!plomatic solution.
Now there's a purpose with a point.
providing that adequate amounts of
the right kinds of arms can be de-
livered through the principal conduit.
Palastan, without putting the Paki-
stani, at grave risk of Soviet retalia-
ton.
That's tht tricky part. The Soviet
F:t,ow perfectly well w?hat'b going or:.
Rut that doesn't mean they will accept
indefinitely Pakistan's ritual denials.
This is all the more so if the United
State:: not only increases its aid but
boast, about it.
We are talking. then, about the need
for a certain subtlety. And yet, there it
w?a~ in The Wail Street Journal the
other day: "House Panel Vote. to
Give Afghan Rebels .$50 Million in
Covert Htl , Sources Say.
The story under the headline said
that the House Appropriations Com-
mittee had "secretly attached $50 mil-
lion for covert aid to Afghan rebels,"
according to "intelligence sources."
WASHINGTON POST
9 August 1984
Comfirming the journal's account,
The Washington Post credited "con-
gressional sources." By nightfall . the
story was all over television's evening
news.
Not the least of the questions this
raises' is whether the United States,
having reached a certain maturity in
the early postwar years about the way
to handle this sort of thing, has not
been reduced to some sort of second
childhood by the torrid revelations of
congressional investigations of the
CIA in 1975.
Covert means, well, covert-if
you're going to do it at all. Yet we
read in the Democratic Party platform
a promise to support the efforts of the
Afghanistan freedom fighters with
"material assistance." Those trigger
words come straight from a heavily
cosponsored resolution now before
Congress. It was first introduced by
Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.) in 1982,
when its passage might have escaped
wide notice.
But the senator apparently is now
having second thoughts about how
hard to press it; the U.S. effort in Af-
ghanistan is considerably bigger today,
and the sensitivities of the Pakistanis
have become a good deal more acute.
But having signed on, a lot of cospon-
sors are uncomfortable with the idea
of signing off on their devotion to
Freedom Fighters.
You could argue that none of this
matters when you consider how much
of the American "covert" program has
found its way into the news. Perhaps
the most striking example is a Tune
magazine account a couple of months
ago of precisely what weapons the CIA
is providing the rebel Mujahedin, the
exact supply routes-even the way
land mines were disguised as "tele-
phone equipment for a religious organ-
ization."
It is hard to believe such meticulous
minutiae could have been assembled
without help from the agency in
charge-the CIA. And it is equally
hard to believe that these suspected
CIA leaks are unrelated to a general
tendency in the Reagan administration
to flaunt its anti-communist fervor-
to a recognizable need on the part of
its more pronounced ideologues for
the psychic income, so to speak, that
comes from the whole world's know-
ing.
Whatever the motive, the effect is
the same. The State Department in-
sists the administration fully supports
delicate United Nations efforts in con-
cert with Pakistan to negotiate a
Soviet withdrawal and a nonaligned
government in Kabul.
Assume the administration's sin-
cerity. That still leaves the Mujahedtn,
Pakistan and U.S. policy at the mercy
of a leaky U.S. intelligence, communi-
ty, of "congressional sources" with no
great care for classified information,
and of politicians who cannot afford
not to pledge their allegiance to Af-
ghan freedom fighters -once the
issue is out in the open.
A case can be made for sophisticat-
ed, genuinely clandestine, plausibly
deniable U.S. assistance to the Afghan
rebels by way of advancing the negoti-
ating process. But there is no case for
covert activities so loosely conducted
that Pakistani complicity becomes a
crippling liability.
U.S. policy begins to crumble when
Pakistan's good faith in negotiation is
compromised. It collapses if Pakistan,
in the interest of self-preservation,
feels compelled to clamp down on the
supply pipeline to the Mujahedin.
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/17: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100020079-3