CIA JOB LEAVES BUSH OPEN TO IRAN, NORIEGA QUESTIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580008-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: November 3, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580008-3
lie Supported Covert Actions
CIA Job Leaves Bush Open
to Iran, Noriega Questions
WASHINGTON -Eight years
ago, when George Bush made his
first run for the Republican presi-
dential nomination, Bush-for-
President bumper stickers sudden-
ly appeared on desks and doors at
the CIA's sprawling headquarters
in suburban Virginia.
A former agency official recalled
his surprise at seeing one of the
blue-and-white stickers on a sec-
retary's typewriter in the office of
CIA Director Stanfield t,Turner,
because it was an implicit gesture'
of disloyalty toward both Turner
and his President, Jimmy Carter.
"They liked George a lot," said
Ray'-Clihe, a former intelligence
officer. "Everybody out there still
speaks highly of him."
By DOYLE McMANUS, Times Staff Writer
Bush's popularity testifies to his
success, as CIA director more than
a decade ago, in restoring morale in
America's intelligence service-
and to his conviction that the
United States must be willing to
use covert action to defend its
national interests.
But Bush's support for covert
action, both as director of central
intelligence under President Ger-
ald R. Ford and as vice president
under President Reagan, has left
him open to the charge that he is
blind to the abuses that can result
when the government undertakes
secret operations.
Democratic presidential candi-
date Michael S. Dukakis has ac-
cused Bush, his Republican oppo-
nent, of closing his eyes to
improper actions in the Adminis-
tration's secret sales of weapons to
Iran and in the CIA's relationship
with Panamanian strongman Man-
uel A.1 Noriega; indicted by the
United States earlier this year on
drug-trafficking charges.
Bush's role in both of those
affairs remains unclear. He sup-
ported the secret arms sales to Iran
but insists that he never under-
stood that they had turned into a
swap of weapons for U.S. hostages.
And there is no evidence that he
knew about White House aide
Oliver L. North's diversion of Ira-
nian arms sales profits to Nicara-
gua's rebels.
In the case of Panama, Bush met
with Noriega both as director of
central intelligence and as vice
president. But he maintains that he
never knew about the mounting
evidence that the dictator was
protecting major drug traffickers,
and there is no evidence that he
played any direct part in maintain-
ing secret ties with Noriega.
Rarely Questioned Operations
By the same token, according to
current and former government
officials, Bush has rarely raised
questions about intelligence opera-
tions that have sometimes troubled
others.
"The reason they had a great
love for George Bush [at the CIA]
was that he let them do whatever
they wanted," Turner, who suc-
ceeded Bush as director of central
intelligence, has charged. "He
came in and said: 'What do you
want to do?' And then he said. 'OK,
go ahead and do it."'
A retired senior CIA official who
served under Bush dismissed
Turner's charge as exaggerated but
agreed that Bush was more inter-
ested in revitalizing the agency's
operations than in putting restric-
tions on them. -
(Covert action' 1 "is something
George Bush feels comfortable
with," said this former official, who
asked not to be identified. "He is a
supporter of having that instru-
ment of power available. . . . He
will use it as it should be used-as a
surgical instrument."
Bush served as director of cen-
tral intelligence for only 12 months,
from January, 1976, until Carter's
inauguration in January, 1977. He
inherited the CIA at its low point,
immediately after a series of con-
gressional investigations had ex-
posed dozens of secret operations,
including assassination plots
against foreign leaders.
"I wear my directorship of that
organization as a badge of honor,"
the vice president has said. "I think
anybody realizes that, in a world as
troubled as this, you need the best
possible intelligence."
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal _
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
.-A MES AM-1.(
Date ^/ d y q
Intelligence officials who served
under Bush said he concentrated on
rebuilding the agency's morale and
establishing a relationship of trust
with Congress. He initiated no
major operations. .
"You couldn't have much going
on," recalled Jack cBlake then
assistant CIA director for adminis-
tration., "We had to report (new
operations] to six different commit-
tees of Congress, and that was just
unworkable."
Sought to Aid Helms
Bush acted also to shield past
agency operations from further
exposure. He fought with Justice
Department officials who were in-
vestigating an-earlier CIA director,
Richard M. 'Helms,' on criminal
charges of lying to Congress about
covert actions in Chile.
Bush attempted to block Justice
Department requests for CIA docu-
ments and testimony from agency
officials related to Helms, accord-
ing to White House documents. But
President Ford ordered the inves-
tigation to proceed.
Helms, who had falsely denied
that the CIA was aiding opposition
groups in Chile, eventually pleaded
no contest to two charges of failing
to testify "fully, completely and
accurately" to Congress.
Six years later, as vice president,
Bush was the keynote speaker at a
testimonial dinner for Helms, de-
claring his "respect and admira-
tion" for his predecessor's work in
building an intelligence agency
"second to none." At the same time,
he praised the agency for being
"fastidious in respecting the law of
the land."
), I
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580008-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580008-3
Bush's year at the CIA included a
first encounter with Noriega, who
was then Panama's military intelli-
gence chief-and, according to
several former officials, a paid
intelligence "asset" to the United
States. Even then, , there were
charges that Noriega was involved
in drug trafficking and internal
corruption.
But, most troubling to some U.S.
officials, was a case in which
Noriega allegedly bribed American
military personnel in Panama to
provide him with highly secret
transcripts and tapes of communi-
cations intercepted by the National
Security Agency, the U.S. govern-
ment's electronic surveillance
agency.
According to several officials and
Army documents recently obtained
by the New York Times, National
Security Agency Director Lew Al-
len Jr. asked Bush to support
prosecution of the soldiers alleged -
Jy involved, which could have
exposed ?Noriega's role, but Bush
refused. Allen, now director of the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasa-
dena, confirmed that he had met
with Bush on the issue but refused
to comment any further.
Turner said that, when he suc-
ceeded Bush as director of central
intelligence, he acted to downgrade
the agency's relationship with the
Panamanian and stopped paying
him for information.
"Whenever Bush was in office,
Noriega was on the payroll," Turn-
er said. After Turner took over,
"we didn't pay him and we didn't
meet with him." But he acknowl-
edged that he had allowed the
agency to continue its intelligence
relationship with the Panamanian.
"You can't fault Bush for contin-
uing to deal with Noriega; he was
the chief of intelligence of a friend-
ly foreign country," Turner said.
"But my attitude was that he was a
scoundrel, so we dealt with him
from a distance. ... We would
give him the absolute minimum."
In 1983, Vice President Bush met
again with Noriega, who had risen
to chief of staff of Panama's armed
forces. By then, officials said, evi-
dence had begun to mount that the
Panamanian was protecting drug-
trafficking operations, assisting il-
legal transfers of U.S. technology
to the Soviet bloc and even deliver-
ing intelligence about U.S. opera-
tions to Cuba.
Noriega Called Liability
Norman A. Bailey, a senior staff
member of the White House Na-
tional Security Council, had writ-
ten several memos earlier in 1983
warning that Noriega had turned
into a liability.
"The Panama Defense Force was
up to its ears in gunrunning,"
Bailey said. "We also discovered
that Panama was a major channel
for money laundering . . . most of
which had to do with drugs."
Little was done about the prob-
lem, Bailey said. "There was not
only indifference; somebody in the
U.S. government was protecting
Noriega," he charged.
But he said he did not fault Bush.
"I never saw the vice president's
name connected to anything on
Panama," he noted. "It's entirely
possible that he didn't know."
Bush has said he knew of "no
hard evidence . . . that Mr. Norie-
ga was involved in drugs" until
shortly before two federal grand
juries indicted Noriega in February
of this year. "When the evidence
was there, we indicted him, and we
want to bring him to justice," he
said in his Sept. 25 debate with
Dukakis. "So call off all those
pickets out there."
As vice president, Bush has spo-
ken in favor of expanding U.S.
covert operations against both ter-
rorism and drug trafficking. And he
has supported Reagan's drive to
provide secret aid through the CIA
to anti-Soviet guerrilla groups in
Third World countries from Nica-
ragua to Afghanistan and Angola-
the "Reagan Doctrine."
According to former National
Security Council officials, Bush
took a personal interest in efforts to
aid the Nicaraguan Contras. North,
who ran a secret effort to find
foreign and private funding for the
rebels, told associates that he con-
sidered Bush one of his main
sponsors in the White House, "the
minister for democracy in Central
America."
And two members of Bush's
staff, former CIA officer Donald P.
Gregg and Army Col. Samuel J.
Watson III, had dozens of contacts
with North and others in the secret
Contra-support operation. But
Bush and his aides have consistent-
ly denied knowing what North was
doing.
As for the Iran arms sales. W'
House records show that Rush
attended more than a +osen meet-
ings at which the deals were
discussed.
At one of those, in .January; . 1986.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz
vigorously opposed the arms '-ales
not only because he objected to
doing business with Iran but be-
cause he did not want to bargain for
American hostages, Shultz has
said.
Bush has said that he does not
recall hearing Shultz's objections
and that he might have questioned
the deals if he had only understood
their purpose. It was 11 months
later, the vice president has insist-
ed. that he first realized that the
arms sales had been designed to
buy freedom for hostages.
After the sales turned into a
scandal, Bush distanced himself
from the policy, saving that "mis-
takes were made."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580008-3