CAPTIVE CIA AGENT'S DEATH GALVANIZED HOSTAGE SEARCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270010-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: November 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270010-4
WASHINGTON POST
25 November 1986
V
Captive CIA Agent's Death
Galvanized Hostage Search
Buckley': Plight Became Agency Cru3ade
By Bob Woodward
and Charles R. Babcock
Washington Po,,t Stall Wnten
For the Reagan administration
and especially the Central Intelli-
gence Agency, Iran and the Moslem
extremists it supports in the Middle
East took on urgent new signifi-
cance on March 16, 1984, when a
man named William Buckley-de-
scribed at the time as a political of-
ficer in the U.S. Embassy in Leb-
anon-was snatched off the streets
of Beirut by a group calling itself Is-
lamic Jihad.
As his captors have since
charged, Buckley was the chief of
the CIA's Beirut station, U.S.
sources have confirmed. He was
one of the CIA's leading experts on
terrorism, and his kidnaping initi-
ated what one CIA official called the
agency's "private hostage crisis." At
agency headquarters in Langley,
Buckley's colleagues watched help-
lessly as their expert on terrorism
became a victim of terrorism, which
the CIA believed led from Beirut to
the revolutionary, government in
Tehran.
For at least a year, the CIA un-
dertook extraordinary measures,
spending what one source called a
"small fortune" on informants, in-
tercepting communications and en-
hancing satellite photographs in
hopes of determining where Buck-
ley and other U.S. hostages might
be held.
The effort failed. After torture
and a long period of medical ne-
glect, Buckley died in Beirut, appar-
ently in June 1985. His captors first
declared him dead later in 1985. In
a statement released in Beirut ear-
lier this month, they reiterated that
Buckley had been "executed" after
having "confessed" to working for
the CIA.
The Islamic Jihad statement said
the group had "volumes written
with [Buckley's] own hand and
recorded on videotapes." President
Reagan indirectly confirmed that
Buckley is dead in his news confer-
ence last week, when he spoke of
five American hostages in Lebanon:
Buckley would be the sixth.
According to knowledgeable
sources, Buckley's death redouhled
administration interest in his ft.i:ow
hostages. A personal order from
Reagan led to intensified effort.; to
tTnd and free them, the ,uurces
said.
None of the remaining American
lmstages has any connections-di-
rect or indirect-to the CIA or any
(Aber intelligence agency, accord-
ipg to authoritative U.S. govern-
ment sources and colleagues of the
fostages. Also, well-placed sources
*y those hostages have received
lletter treatment from their cap-
tprs, including competent medical
(tire, since Buckley's death.
Before Buckley died, the search
for him became a crusade for the
CIA and a preoccupation of William
J; Casey, its director. Agency offi-
(0als never felt confident that a res-
ytue attempt would succeed. The
agency did obtain "irrefutable" ev-
idence that Buckley had been tor-
t{rred and, atter initially resisting,
finally broke down and disclosed
ibformation about CIA operations,
tine source ,aid. Some ,enior CIA
tffficials wept when they heard de-
tails of the torture, winch was pro-
longed and painful, the source said.
For Depury CIA Direcrnr Clair F.
' (fieorge. woo oversees .;I CL1 r- -
vert operations abroad, the kidnap-
ing was personally anguishing.
George had been station chief in
Beirut in 1975-76, when two U.S.
government officials were abducted
and held hostage for four months
before being released. Then
George went to Athens to take the
place of assassinated station chief
Richard S. Welch.
"This [the Buckley kidnaping]
was like all of Clair's bad dreams
revisited," said one source. "He just
about turned the building [CIA
headquarters], and our capabilities,
and the limits of our imagination on
end to get [Buckley] back."
Buckley was assigned to Lebanon
in nmid-1983 to help the Lebanese
develop methods for thwarting ter-
rorism and to rebuild the U.S. in-
telligence presence after the bomb-
ing of the U.S. Embassy a few
months earlier, the sources said.
WILLIAM BUCKLEY
... was CIA station chief in Beirut
Seventeen Americans died in the
attack, including Robert C. Ames,
the CIA's chief Middle East analyst,
and several other CIA officers.
On March 16, 1984, Buckley was
seized on a Beirut street and spir-
ited away-the first of what would
become a string of kidnapings of
Americans.
Buckley has been the least known
among the group of Americans held
by Moslem extremists in Lebanon.
lie had no wife or close family to
speak for him. One source said
Buckley was picked for the danger-
ous assignment because he did not
have a family. Previously, one
source said, Buckley was in Cairo,
where he had helped train body-
guard, for Egyptian President
Aw,t,,.r Sadat, later assassinated.
Terrorists might have suspected
I' i, kiey's true identity and targeted
hnn tor kidnaping, the sources said.
Buckley often carried a walkie-talk-
ie in Beirut and went nearly every
day to the headquarters building of
the Lebanese intelligence service-
and could have been followed, the
sources said.
For more than a year, CIA offi-
cials, including Casey, held out hope
that Buckley was alive, deciduig
that reports on his whereabouts and
condition were contradictory and
did not support a definitive conclu-
sion that Buckley had been killed.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270010-4
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270010-4
At one point, the CIA received
help from an FBI team trained in lo-
cating kidnap victims. The team
went to Beirut but failed to locate
Buckley after a month of careful
and sophisticated detective work,
according to a senior Reagan ad-
ministration official. Officials now
think that Buckley was in Lebanon
during the entire period of his cap-
tivity, most of the time in Beirut.
At the time of Buckley's capture,
the State Department released a
brief biography, which said he was
from Medford, Mass., and was a
graduate of Boston University. It
said he had worked as a librarian
and as a civilian employe of the
Army until joining the State Depart.
ment shortly before he was as-
signed to Beirut.
Candace Hammond of Farmer,
N.C., who said she had been a close
friend of Buckley for 10 years, said in
an interview that he told her before
he left for Beirut that "he wasn't real
thrilled with the assignment."
She said Buckley had called her
from Beirut shortly before he was
kidnaped. "He said there was a lot
of bombing, that it was a madhouse.
There was shattered glass in his
apartment. And he hoped he would
be coming home sooner than ex-
pected because it was such a stress-
ful situation."
She said she received a letter
from Buckley the day after he was
kidnaped, thanking her for a box of
valentine gifts she had sent him.
"That just about broke my heart,"
she said.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270010-4