PROJECT '85

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100600008-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 18, 2011
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: November 20, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/18: CIA-RDP91-0
~y'^' APPEARED
WASHINGTON POST
20 November 1985
Project 85
THE SAGA OF Max Hugel goes on. It will be
one of. the things 21st century historians will
have a hard time explaining: how a New
businessman, with a prose style much
Oven to CAPITALS and italics, has become by his
aht account a Pivotal player each quadrennium in
the portentous game of presidential politics. In
1980 W. Hugel was Ronald Reagan's national di-
t6ctor of voter groups, putting together such let-
'erhead,Old fund-raising organizations as the Rea-
J'Buai Food and Farm Division. In 1981 he be-
caamry director of the CIA. He left that posi-.
tion charges were made against him by for-
mier?. associates-charges, it should be
noted, that were never formally brought.
Pit i he has made himself head of something
celled" Project '88," an organization dedicated to
keepi g "the new focus on Reagan and not his
would-be successors"-i.e., to keeping our eyes
ow'85, '86, and '87, not '88. An admirable pur-
pose, we think. America has a few problems it
could stand solving now, and one thing it could
stand to-put off until a better time is the choice of
Mr. Reagan's successor. But Mr. Hugel is going
about his work in an odd fashion. Project '88's '85
project is a Dec. 11 dinner in Manchester, N.H.,
to honor the late William Loeb, publisher of the"
Manchester Union-Leader. The guest of honor
will be Nackey Loeb, Mr. Loeb's widow and the
paper's current publisher. The keynote speaker
will be George Bush. Cochairpersons (do Republi-
cans use this term, too?) include Jack Kemp, Ro-
bert Dole, Elizabeth Dole, Howard Baker and
Jeane Kirkpatrick.
You get the idea. Mr. Hugel, in his attempt to
keep our "focus" on '85, has given us the second
cattle show of '88. (The first was at the Midwest-
ern Republican gathering at Mackinac Island,
Mich., last summer.) To get everyone to focus on
the Reagan program, he is filling up the Sheraton-
Wayfarer in what we had thought would be its off-
season. In order to get the nation to focus on the
tax, trade and budget policies of the Reagan admin-
istration (or to ascertain just what they are), he is
giving us the spectacle of major Republican hope-
fuls for '88 doing in public what candidates in other
years have had the decency to do in private: strive
to impress the publisher of the Union-Leader. The
thought may be occurring to some of you: don't
they need Mr. Hugel back in Langley?
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/18: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100600008-9