CIA: SITUATION VACANT, DISCRETION NEEDED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660091-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2012
• Sequence Number: 91
• Publication Date: May 9, 1991
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sl Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660091-2
CIA: SITUATION VACANT, DISCRETION NEEDED
Fran The Economist magazine
c.1991 Economist Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved.
U.S. News & World Report
Newsweek
Time
WASHINGTON At the age of 67, Willian Webster is retiring as
head of the Central Intelligence Agency. He has been in senior jobs
in Washington since 1978, when Jimmy Carter appointed him to head
the FBI. He became director of central intelligence in 1987.
The agency has managed to keep out of trouble since then and,
say Webster's friends, he is keen to leave while it is still in
good odor.
This may not be the only reason. In Congress, the relevant
carmittees are looking at the way in which intelligence-gathering
is organized on the CIA's organizational charts, the
11 intelligence camunity '' is made up of no fewer than 12 separate
operations). Webster believes that it would be better for a
successor to deal with congressional recam endations.
His decision to go gives credibility to the view that George
Bush (DCI himself for a year in the 1970s) thinks that same
rationalization is in order.
The impulse for looking at the way intelligence is gathered is
the changing nature of the Soviet threat. Critics of the CIA have
always said that it is full of Sovietologists and not mach else.
The gulf war, they maintain, showed a weakness in the CIA's
non-Soviet operations.
Webster, say congressmen, changed his mind on the effectiveness
of sanctions against Iraq. (Webster responds that it was consistent
to believe both that sanctions would cripple the Iraqi economy and
that this crippling would not end Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.)
Speculation about Webster's replacement centers on Robert Gates.
Gates, who was William Casey's deputy, was Ronald Reagan's first
choice for DCI after Casey died in 1987. The Senate would not
confirm him, believing him implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.
But because Casey was up to his neck in the scandal, it does not
follow that Gates was; the director liked doing things off the
books, even when the books were kept in his own safe. As it
happened, the Senate's rejection did not hurt Gates (another
Sovietologist): George Bush made him deputy national security
adviser. Since 1989 he has been closer to the center of
decision-making than Webster.
But the Senate may not be ready to decide that Gates has done
enough penance for being Casey's deputy. Congressional sources
wondered if the White House really wanted to go through the long
confirmation process that Gates's nomination might involve. The
whole arms-to-Iran mess is back in the news now that the 11October
surprise'' the allegation that in 1980 the Reagan-Bush campaign
had dealings with Iranian hostage-takers is in play once more.
So three names other than that of Gates have been heard on
CONTINUED
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660091-2
Capitol Hill: James Lilley, now ambassador to China; Bobby Inman, a
retired admiral who was deputy director of the CIA in the early
1980s; and Warren Rudman, a Republican senator from New Hampshire.
Z
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660091-2