BY AUGUST, PEZZULLO HAD DECIDED to quit his ambassador’s post in Nicaragua. For at least three months—March, April and May—he had stopped the arms flow to the Salvadoran rebels. But the Administration’s decision to cancel aid to Nicaragua had left him with no leverage, and the arms were now starting to run again. As a final effort, however, he convinced Assistant Secretary of State Enders to come to Nicaragua to meet with the Sandinistas. Pezzullo thought Enders was a stuffed shirt, but a smart, powerful stuffed shin who had control of Administration policy.
In Managua, Enders leveled with Pezzullo. Both knew that the new CIA reports of the arms flow were heightening concern in Washington. The NSA was intercepting 60 to 70 percent of the radio traffic from Managua into the rebel positions in El Salvador, showing that Managua was heavily involved. The Sandinistas’ arms buildup in their own country was worrying Nicaragua’s neighbors, particularly Honduras to the north. Policy from Washington, Enders said, was starting to run in directions that would bring about a collision.
Pezzullo presumed that meant covert action.
“I want to prevent that,” Enders said. Maybe diplomacy could still work.
So Enders and Pezzullo held a round of meetings with the Sandinista leadership. The Sandinistas were always willing to meet and confer, but they made it clear that they were not going to be pushed around, and that they would defend themselves to the last person.
Enders complained that they were harassing the church, the press and the labor unions. He complained that non-Marxists were being expelled from the government, and promised that the new Administration in Washington wanted democracy in Central America.
Internal matters, the Sandinistas replied.
Several times Enders blew his stack, telling them that their country was a goddamn flea that could be knocked off by the United States with its hands tied behind its back. Don’t get silly, Enders said. We’re talking about survival—your survival. Here I am offering you a deal with the United States. Think about it seriously.
Pezzullo could see that Enders did not mean it as a threat, but as an honest statement, a realistic warning. Yet he had gone a step further with diplomatic bombast. It was heavy-handed.
The Sandinistas wanted specifics.
You must commit yourselves to limiting your military buildup, Enders said, and pledge not to get involved in the external or internal matters of neighboring countries—in sum, agree not to export revolution. In return, the United States would promise not to support any of the various elements and former Somoza National Guards working against the Sandinistas. There had been reports that these so-called contras—from the Spanish contrarevolucionarios—were training on U.S. soil. In addition, Enders said, the U.S. would sign a mutual-defense and nonaggression treaty with Nicaragua. “We don’t like your regime,” Enders said, “but there is not much we can do about it. But you have to get out of El Salvador.”
Ortega said no. “The Salvadoran revolution is our shield—it makes our revolution safer.”
Back in Washington, Enders examined international law, which favors the existing regime in any country. The only way for the United States to do something was through covert action. Overall, Enders determined that the Administration had to shift public attention from El Salvador, off the question of how many human-rights violations took place there last week. Enders sent Haig a secret memo summarizing his trip, with his conclusion that despite the harsh exchanges the signs were hopeful that an accord of some kind might be reached with the Sandinistas.
Haig returned the memo with a scribbled note in the margin: “I’ll believe it when I see it, and meanwhile let’s not hold up on the other plans.”
Enders went through the exercise of proposing treaty language to the Sandinistas. It was pugnacious and insulting, almost asking the Sandinistas to renounce their revolution and its ideals. They rejected it out of hand.
Casey remained worried about Qaddafi. Because of the inaccurate Newsweek report that the CIA was planning to overthrow or assassinate him tensions were high. Casey wanted more intelligence assets directed at Libya. Libyan diplomatic and intelligence codes had been broken, and Qaddafi often spoke on unsecure telephone lines, providing the United States with an increasingly clear picture of his expanding subversion.
One of Qaddafi’s instruments was United African Airlines (UAA), ostensibly a nonscheduled passenger and cargo air carrier. In fact the CIA’s information showed it was the air transport service of the Libyan armed forces and, more important, the Libyan Intelligence Service (LIS). The airline’s management and flight personnel were riddled with Qaddafi intelligence operatives.*
A report in late August 1981 noted that Qaddafi had ordered the airline to open eighteen new offices in Africa, at a cost of $30 million. These offices provided a ready-made intelligence network of communications, shipping, courier and passenger transportation service. According to the CIA’s information, known Libyan intelligence agents were listed on manifests as “students”; the airline pursers offered lavish bribes; the airline was used to ship mines, artillery, ammunition, jeeps and weapons into Chad; Libyan-trained Zimbabwian troops had been flown to Salisbury; arms had been transported to the Libyan Embassy in Burundi; and UAA had been used to ship Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles to Syria.
Qaddafi was also stepping up his plans to get a nuclear weapon. In December 1980, the Soviets had delivered 11 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to the research center outside the Libyan capital of Tripoli, at Tajura. Though it was not enough to fabricate a bomb (they wouldn’t have enough until 1990 at the present rate, the CIA estimated), the 11 kilograms exceeded what the CIA expected the Soviets to deliver at one time.
Other reports showed that uranium yellowcake was coming in from Niger, the other Central African country to the south of Libya, on the UAA flights. A July 5, 1981, SECRET intelligence memo from the State Department had been titled “Niger: Libya’s next target,” and made that point convincingly about Qaddafi’s aspirations there.
A West German firm had tested a rocket in Libya, according to another report.
A major Administration policy review was under way, and Casey knew that intelligence-reporting fueled the policy fires. The more the CIA threw at the White House, the more natural impulses for action were stirred—particularly in Reagan and Haig. Casey concurred fully in a decision to challenge Qaddafi’s declared sovereignty over the Gulf of Sidra with a U.S. naval exercise. It was a limited, nonprovocative move, and the international community joined the United States in deriding Qaddafi’s claim that Sidra was a Libyan sea.
About 7 A.M. on Wednesday, August 19, two U.S. Navy F-14 fighters on dawn patrol more than thirty miles inside the territorial waters claimed by Qaddafi were attacked by Libyan Air Force jets. Under instructions to defend themselves, the American planes retaliated and shot down two of Qaddafi’s jets.
That morning the President greeted his top aides by acting out a Western-movie version of the incident, drawing two imaginary six-shooters and blasting away.
Rhetoric flew, but there was no more shooting. Three days later, August 22, Qaddafi was in Ethiopia’s ancient capital, Addis Ababa, meeting with the country’s leader Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, a young, fiery Marxist.
In the room at the time was a senior Ethiopian official, a secret CIA source of such sensitivity that his reports went only to the BIGOT list. The Directorate of Operations evaluated him as “generally reliable” to “excellent.” At that meeting, Qaddafi declared he was going to have President Reagan killed. When the report reached Washington, it carried this evaluation: “Mengistu was convinced Qaddafi is very serious in his intention and that the threat should be taken seriously.”
Shortly afterward, the NSA intercepted one of Qaddafi’s conversations in which he said essentially the same thing: Reagan was the target. Both reports received prominent mention in the President’s Daily Brief.
Casey realized that this was about as good as the intelligence ever got—an intercept and a human-source report that his own Operations Directorate said should be taken “seriously.” Other than a military attack, the warning was perhaps the most serious matter he might ever address, a threat to the life of the President. Casey discussed the matter with everyone, with anyone who would listen. Something had to be done. But what? They couldn’t go shoot Qaddafi. After a week passed without an attempt on the President’s life, everyone seemed to cool off. Not Casey. He ordered all the intelligence agencies to report any whisper to him directly. But the White House still wouldn’t take direct action.
By late summer 1981, Casey was certain that the CIA was going to have a large, perhaps even spectacular role in Central America. That meant having the right people. Casey didn’t care for the Directorate of Operations’ division chief for Latin America, Nestor Sanchez, a thirty-year veteran who had maybe spent too much time in the region and was too prone to see the Latin side and too uneasy about covert operations. Sanchez retired in August, and Casey helped him get an appointment as a deputy assistant secretary at Defense, where he would be involved in the military side of Latin American policy. Casey had an idea for his replacement.
Division chiefs, with their feudal regions, were the “barons.” They had hands-on control, ran the day-to-day operations of the CIA. The DCI himself, the DDCI, even the DDO had too much on their plate. A “baron,” given a free hand, and operating with the confidence of the top, could achieve things.
When Casey had gone to Paris for a meeting of the Western European station chiefs several months earlier, one man had stood out: Duane R. Clarridge, known as “Dewey,” the Rome station chief. He had arranged a lavish dinner for Casey in Paris, attending to each detail, even to the special sauces that Casey liked. “Can do” and “no problem” seemed to be Clarridge’s middle names. It was a style Casey appreciated. A flashy dresser (occasionally white shoes, a white suit with a colored handkerchief in his jacket pocket), Clarridge, forty-nine, had had undercover experience only in Asia and Europe. But Casey appointed him Latin America division chief. Clarridge was the right mixture of old agency and new blood.
Clarridge immediately had a “privacy channel” to the DCI. He didn’t have to report through DDO Stein or Inman. Casey was available for a meeting or a phone call anytime. If Casey was away from Langley, the operations center answered his phone, day and night, seven days a week. Messages were regularly relayed, including Dewey’s, and Casey would be on the phone shortly, asking, “What have you got?”
On October 6, Casey received a flash report that Egyptian President Sadat had been shot while reviewing a parade. Reports from the Cairo station parroted for three hours the official Egyptian government line that Sadat was not seriously injured, even though American television news reports were saying that the Egyptian leader was dead.
Helping to keep Sadat in power had been a monumental task for the Administration and the CIA, which had provided covert security assistance and intelligence to his government. Since the Camp David Accord of 1978 and the peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Sadat had been isolated in the Middle East. He had been, in some respects, a creation of the American people and his American press clippings. He had no comparable standing in his own country. And his wife Jehan Sadat’s Western dress, customs and ideas of female independence were anathema to many of the fundamentalist Muslims.
The CIA’s intelligence feed to Sadat had contained data about his vulnerability and the forces arrayed against him. The previous month, in a personal briefing, he had been given detailed information on the threats to him from Libya, Ethiopia, Syria and Iran.
About three hours after the initial report on October 6, the Cairo station confirmed that Sadat was dead. He had died instantly of multiple shots.
Casey was mortified. Reagan had spent the morning in the Oval Office being assured that the television report was wrong. Casey and Inman worried that the new Egyptian government of Sadat’s protégé Vice-President Hosni Mubarak would lodge a strenuous, perhaps emotional protest because the CIA, which had trained Sadat’s bodyguards, had failed to warn them. But there was nothing, not even a mild complaint.
It turned out that the assassins were part of a domestic fundamentalist group within Egypt. The CIA had paid so much attention to wiring and penetrating the Sadat government, and warning Sadat about external threats, that it had ignored the forces inside Egypt. It was dangerously close to a replay of the Iran debacle, and Casey had a fit. The CIA needed more and broader independent channels of information in Egypt. There just could not be any boundaries in the area of clandestine collection, especially in the volatile Middle East, especially now in Egypt. He wanted more—both human sources and electronic collection, even at the highest level of the new government. “And get some people out in the fucking street to see if someone’s going to shoot Mubarak,” Casey ordered.
Casey didn’t like large White House meetings. He said little at them. When he spoke up, he knew that he was not articulate and that someone at the table would attempt to translate him for the President, saying, “As Director Casey was saying…” or “As Bill said…” Several times, Casey noticed, Jim Baker had cracked up at this.
His direct channel to the President was more useful. When Casey had something really important, he called the Oval Office. One Friday he had an important Saudi Arabian prince who wanted to see the President, and he took him over to see Reagan. When Haig found out he was livid, but Casey believed that certain sensitive relations had to be kept away from State, where they could be leaked or sabotaged.
The CIA had some special relations elsewhere in the Arab world, among them King Hassan II of Morocco. After Libyan-backed guerrillas routed a Moroccan garrison on October 13, 1981, in the former Spanish Sahara, Casey carried the King’s request for U.S. support directly to the President. “We want to back him,” Casey told Reagan. Soon a team of twenty-three Pentagon, State and CIA officials was dispatched to Morocco. Again Haig and State were left out.
Meanwhile, Goldwater was still waiting, that fall of ’81, for an end to the probe into the labyrinth of Casey’s finances. The inquiry was sputtering to a conclusion with an exhaust velocity approaching zero. He had to find a graceful retreat or the committee staff had to find a smoking gun. Nearly 38,000 pages of documents had been reviewed, and 110 persons interviewed. The inquiry had turned up omissions galore in Casey’s sworn disclosure statements. He had failed to list nine investments valued at more than $250,000; personal debts and other potential liabilities of nearly $500,000; four additional civil suits in which he had been involved; and more than seventy law clients he had represented during the previous five years, including two foreign governments, the Republic of Korea and Indonesia.
A new special committee counsel, Irvin Nathan, a former senior Justice Department official, took a sinister view of Casey’s financial habits. Though Nathan could not subpoena documents, did not get Casey’s tax returns and was never allowed to interview him, he drafted a confidential report of some ninety pages outlining the unanswered questions and pointing out Casey’s pattern of cutting corners. Casey had chalk all over his feet from playing close to the foul line most of his life. But Nathan had no smoking gun.
Goldwater had selected a tall, wiry thirty-eight-year-old former CIA covert operator who had ten years in the DO, Rob Simmons, to be the new staff director for the Senate committee. Simmons had worked undercover in Taiwan for the CIA from 1975 to 1978 and had run an operation that had prevented the Taiwanese from obtaining material to build a nuclear weapon; the Taiwan government’s bomb plans and files had been stolen and its attempts to purchase sensitive parts choked off. His first assignment for the Senate committee was to wrap up the Casey investigation.
“I want nothing longer than one page,” Goldwater said, asking for a final report.
Simmons came up with a five-page report that reaffirmed the committee’s earlier judgment that “no basis has been found for concluding that Mr. Casey is unfit to hold office as Director of Central Intelligence.” Given the repeated failure to make full disclosure, Simmons applied terminology from his service in the Army: Casey was “at minimum inattentive to detail.”
Simmons went out to Langley in late November with a copy. In Casey’s seventh-floor office, now decorated with French Empire furniture, the committee staff director felt somewhat like a junior officer delivering headquarters’ reprimand to the general. But Simmons explained that the five-page report was an accomplishment. It would fly with all or nearly all the committee members and would bury the issue for good. “There are people who want to publish an eighty-to-one-hundred-page report.”
Casey protested that he was clean.
A fight over this compromise, Simmons told him, might lead to a protracted battle with the committee, where there were lots of unhappy members. Simmons hinted that the battle could be bloody, resulting in permanent unhappiness, perhaps the DCI’s departure.
“No one takes my job away,” Casey said briskly, his back stiffening. “I work for the President.”
This is the final compromise, Simmons said.
“Well,” Casey said at the end, “I’m going to fight it.”
The report, unchanged, was released in December, when it was old news. There was little comment, and no fight from Casey, who told friends and Sophia, “All that stuff that comes out in the press, it only hurts for a day.”
Simmons realized that Casey was not going to be pushed any further. For people who served in war, Simmons thought, that was the primary experience, real danger. Everything else paled by comparison. They had sent people to certain death. So to hustle some bucks was nothing. It was easy. To be criticized was nothing. So some judge or senator or reporter or cartoonist was beating on you. So what? You have served in war and survived.
Casey still wanted a comprehensive plan of action for Central America, but there was no consensus within the Administration. The President craved agreement among his top advisers, and when he didn’t get it he wouldn’t decide. Haig was obsessed with Cuba; Weinberger raised Vietnam with its twin specters of overcommitment and escalation; he wouldn’t have American boys trapped in another unpopular jungle war. Baker and others inside the White House wanted Reagan to stay on his domestic agenda and were determined that the Administration not be diverted by a foreign adventure, particularly one promoted by Haig, whom they viewed with increasing skepticism, even alarm. Haig had not adapted to the President’s informality. One moment he fawned over Reagan, the next he was overbearing, lecturing him that the Reagan foreign policy hinged on a particular course of action as urged by Haig. Often he wound up discrediting his own recommendations.
Casey was probably the only senior Administration official who got along with Haig. They had a regular Tuesday breakfast, often accompanied by their deputies, alternating one week at the CIA, the next at State. Haig understood foreign policy, Casey thought, and had some familiarity with the world, and he shared Casey’s hard-line views.
If Casey was going to get anything substantial going to save El Salvador, he would have to juggle the interests and demands of Haig, Weinberger and the White House political apparatus. The effort to promote democracy was well and good, but it was not enough.
Haig and Enders had agreed they had to expand covert action. Ideally, the United States should buy into someone else’s operation, much as it had piggybacked on the French operation in Chad.
Dewey Clarridge found a route through Buenos Aires, where the CIA station had extremely close relations with the Argentine generals who ruled the country. The Argentine military intelligence, G-2, had elevated anti-Communism to an ethos and ran a counter-Marxist indoctrination program. The generals were worried about the Montoneros, guerrillas opposed to their dictatorship, who operated out of Nicaragua. Argentina was supporting resistance efforts aimed at the Sandinistas and was training about a thousand men north of the Nicaraguan border in Honduras.
Clarridge presented this to Enders and the core group. The only alternative was to work through Chile, and that dictatorship was worse and even more visible.
Would the Israelis do it? Enders wondered.
Not viable, Clarridge answered. The Argentines were in place.
Enders outlined a possible covert action to Haig.
Not enough, Haig said. He wanted to locate a place of vulnerability. Since the White House wouldn’t back a strike directly at Cuba, how about a strike on a Cuban military camp in Ethiopia without warning? But Haig couldn’t even get support for his proposal from his own State Department. He feared that a Nicaragua operation would turn out to be a serious diversion; it would appear tough but not be much; and if it didn’t work the United States would walk away. But he saw that it was the only proposal that had support at the White House, Defense and the CIA.
On Monday, November 16, at 4 P.M., Reagan convened his National Security Council in the Cabinet Room. Enders, who had won agreement among the core group, made the presentation.
The political program for El Salvador must continue to be democracy, he said. Democratic institutions must be put in place there and in the rest of Central America. “It is the only way to gain legitimacy for them and for us.”
Economic and military assistance must be increased, perhaps more than $300 million for the region and the Caribbean, he said. “We must find a way to return to negotiations with Nicaragua or we will have to send troops.” Going to the source, Cuba, was “an empty box,” because we are not ready and it probably would be too large an undertaking. The war must be taken to Nicaragua through covert action. Enders said that the operation, supporting the resistance, would not overthrow the Sandinistas. “It will harass the government, waste it.”
Haig was the only one to voice objections, expressing doubts but not outright opposition. In principle, the President agreed and adopted a wide range of actions, but held off on approving a CIA covert plan to assist the Argentines.
Haig was to make a last stab at diplomacy, and six days later he flew secretly to Mexico City to meet with Cuban Vice-President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez. But he could find no grounds for agreement with the Cubans.
On Tuesday, December 1, Haig and Casey had their regular breakfast, and that afternoon they met with Reagan for forty minutes with the National Security Planning Group in the White House Situation Room. The NSPG was the informal high-level gathering for the important foreign-policy issues; included were the President, the Vice-President, Meese, Baker, Deaver, Haig, Weinberger and Casey. An occasional aide also attended. National-security adviser Richard Allen had just taken a leave of absence, pending the outcome of an investigation into charges that he had accepted $1,000 from Japanese journalists and kept it in a White House safe.
Casey outlined his covert plan. He wanted $19 million to help Argentina develop a five-hundred-man force that would be the nucleus of an anti-Sandinista resistance. It would operate from camps in Honduras. More money would probably be needed, he said, and the five-hundred-man force would certainly grow.
The White House troika was on board. Haig still felt it was a half-measure, but he went along. Weinberger was happy that the plan kept the Pentagon out. Bush was content to see a modest revival of the agency’s paramilitary capability. There was little further discussion.
That day Reagan signed a broad top-secret finding authorizing political and paramilitary operations designed to curtail the Sandinistas’ support to the various rebel movements in Central America, including El Salvador.
General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior military person and the only holdover from the Carter Administration on the National Security Council, looked on the approval of a Nicaragua operation with some dismay. From his reading of the intelligence, it was not clear that all the trouble in Central America was Cuban-or Soviet-inspired. Casey was seeing it in terms of the East-West conflict, as if the problems would go away if Communists would go away. To Jones, the social and economic problems loomed larger, making the countries fertile ground for the Marxist insurgencies. He saw senior Reagan Administration officials grabbing at pieces of intelligence to justify a course of action. Jones knew enough about intelligence to realize that it could be gathered and used to emphasize the Communist role.
But the worst of all this was the selection of the Argentines. Jones knew the Argentines—good anti-Communists, but they weren’t going to do much. Nicaragua was more than 2,500 miles from Argentina (Buenos Aires to Managua was 3,707 miles by air). Why were they so worried that a band of Montonero guerrillas could organize a revolution against the Argentine regime from a continent away? It didn’t make sense except that the Argentines could be influenced and would do anything the United States asked.
The assessment at the White House had been that the Administration wouldn’t be able to get public and congressional support if the U.S. role were out in the open to be debated.
And everyone at the table at those meetings seemed haunted by Vietnam analogies. Jones and the other chiefs wanted more than the fifty-five advisers in El Salvador—a ceiling placed by the White House. But Jones saw that everyone else was worried sick that any increase in the number of U.S. advisers would have to be done publicly and that the rhetoric would begin: “That’s how we got into Vietnam,” “It’s the foot in the door,” “That’s the first part of escalation.”
Inman too watched the development and approval of the Nicaragua covert action with skepticism. It was true that the undercover support to the Argentine paramilitary operation was a middle course, more moderate than some of Haig’s ideas. But it was painfully obvious that the Administration did not want to expend any of its goodwill or political capital in Congress to get approval for such a policy. An open request to Congress for funding would spark a public debate. As far as Inman was concerned it was domestic political concerns that were once again driving covert action. But there was little he could do. Casey had made it clear that he would handle these operations himself, that the line of authority would run directly from Casey to the DO, and in this case it was to his new Latin America division chief, Dewey Clarridge.
Inman found another part of the operation troubling. Covert operations seemed to get started when the White House and the State Department were frustrated with diplomacy. That was clearly the case here. The diplomatic route had not been successful, and the process of diplomacy—the painstaking steps of negotiation and endless meetings, proposals and counterproposals—was tiring. The secret covert action provided a shortcut. It provided an administration, particularly a new one, with the comfort of action, the feeling that there was a secret way to get things done, that there was an undercover foreign policy quietly moving U.S. interests forward.
Inman also wondered about these non-Americans we were going to support with millions of dollars. Who were they? What were their goals? Were they the same as those of the United States? Could they be controlled?
If the real goal was to halt the arms flow from Nicaragua to El Salvador that had already been substantially stopped, something was wrong. Interdiction of arms is not something that is normally done covertly. There were no joint borders between the two countries. The only overland route was through Honduras. And the United States would have every legitimate right to give overt assistance to Honduras and El Salvador to prevent an arms flow. That would be more effective as an overt, public undertaking, with open border surveillance. But obviously no one wanted to make the effort to sell that to Congress.
The easiest water route for an arms flow from Nicaragua to El Salvador was via the Gulf of Fonseca—a short twenty-mile run. The U.S. naval attaché in El Salvador and others were watching the gulf like hawks. Nothing was getting across.
Inman tried to find ways to share his skepticism gently around the agency. He asked Casey if DDO John Stein was backstopping him on the operation to make sure there was an experienced professional fully informed of each step, someone who could raise questions and objections.
But Casey was impatient and left Inman with the clear impression that his views were neither needed nor welcomed. The Director mumbled, “Yeah, yeah.”
As required, the new covert finding had to be reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. Senate committee chairman Goldwater was recovering from a hip operation, so Moynihan chaired the meeting. When the finding and the backup scope paper were outlined, Moynihan couldn’t believe it. If they wanted to put pressure on the Sandinistas, he thought, that was an understandable goal, but for God’s sake don’t use the Argentine generals. The Argentines were a symbol of right-wing dictatorial rule. To link up with them was to suggest that the United States was endorsing counterrevolution. In some respects, Somoza had been little more than an Argentine general in a Nicaraguan setting. It was idiocy, it showed no political deftness. Moynihan could ask questions, and he did. But there was not much more he could do.
The law required simply that the committee be informed of major anticipated intelligence activities. The conduct of foreign affairs, defense and intelligence policy was constitutionally reserved for the President. Any President, especially this one, would guard those powers jealously. Moynihan didn’t disagree, so the committee could do little else unless it wanted to attempt to deny funds for the operation. But the President had a $50 million contingency reserve fund for intelligence operations. It would be difficult to tackle.
There was another problem. The committee members were sworn to secrecy. It was an oath that Moynihan took seriously. So the committee’s hands were tied; it had been told the latest secret. Their silence outside the committee room amounted to implied acquiescence. A single member could take it upon himself to blow the whistle publicly or leak privately, but that member would have to be morally certain that that was the right thing. How could anyone pit what had been learned in a one-hour briefing against the hundreds of hours of calculation and debate that he hoped had gone into the issue by the National Security Council and the CIA? Moynihan had a sense the committee was being co-opted, but it was only a glimmer, an uneasiness, that he felt. At least it was better to know. Now he and the committee could ask follow-up questions as the operation got under way.
Over on the House side, Casey himself made the top-secret presentation to the Intelligence Committee. He said that the operation had already begun; the Argentines had started it and the United States was buying in. The camps were already set up in Honduras, and the Hondurans were allowing the Argentines to use their territory as a base.
To do what?
Hit targets inside “Nic-a-wha-wha,” Casey said. He could not pronounce “Nicaragua” properly. When he came to it, he would pause each time, trying to get it right, but out it came—“Nic-a-wha-wha.” Anyway, Casey said, the resistance group of contras were going to hit specific and identifiable targets in that country—the parts of the Cuban support structure involved in supporting insurgency.
How? When?
Crack commando teams in cross-border operations, hitting targets in the dead of night and getting back to their bases in Honduras.
Many of the House members seemed to jump. They had not expected a paramilitary operation, particularly one of this scale. There were a lot of questions. What happens if you get caught training in Honduras? What if the Sandinistas go into Honduras as a response? Could this trigger hostilities between the two countries? What if the Sandinistas’ response is to ask for more help from the Cubans?
Casey replied that those speculative questions could not be answered precisely.
Representative Lee H. Hamilton, a respected and careful Indiana Democrat, wondered whether the operation was legal under international law and various regional treaties. The United States was putting itself in the posture of joining aggression against a country with which it had diplomatic relations. How could this be done?
The Cubans and the Nicaraguans were the aggressors, Casey replied. They were supporting insurgency. But he was vague about dates and amounts. He spoke of it as a given.
His approach was not going down well, not even with the committee Republicans. Representative J. Kenneth Robinson, a conservative Virginian and Administration friend, glanced at Casey and said sternly, “You haven’t thought through the repercussions.”
Casey was watching the flow of intelligence from Polish Colonel Wladyslaw Kuklinski, the agency’s source in the Polish General Staff. This information came right from the inner circle, and a remarkable system of signals, dead drops and communications had been worked out to insure that the data was timely. The colonel had handed over an operational plan for a martial-law crackdown on the independent Solidarity trade union by the Polish government. Casey made sure it was forwarded directly to the President. It was a big accomplishment for the CIA; all that was missing from the plan was the date of implementation, and they all held their breath.
In early November, Langley received an urgent request from its Warsaw station. Colonel Kuklinski had given a prearranged emergency signal that meant he was sure he was about to be exposed. The Soviets had asserted at a meeting that day that their secret plans were leaking to the United States. To maintain his cover, Kuklinski had to join in voicing outrage. He wanted out.
Those were the terms: the CIA had promised him asylum whenever he found it necessary. Casey approved an “exfiltration” order, allowing the Warsaw station secretly and hurriedly to withdraw the colonel, his wife and one of their sons. It was an elaborate, expensive and risky undertaking creating an underground railroad for three people. By November 6, the three were safely out of Poland and on their way to new identities in the United States.
The colonel’s information was sorely missed. When special police units began mass arrests of 5,000 Solidarity activists in the early-morning hours of December 13, the CIA was caught by surprise. The first independent trade union movement in a Communist country was effectively ended.
Inman was growing increasingly uncomfortable. The covert actions were straying far afield from what he felt was the real mission of the intelligence agencies. Intelligence was collection, what Inman called “positive intelligence,” information about other countries that was useful to the U.S. policy-makers.
Inman focused on the “indications and warnings” about the activities of governments. That meant beefing up human intelligence, as well as making the investment in satellite and signals intelligence to insure multiple sources and a timely flow of information. It also called for a long-range plan, one that looked ahead five to seven years. But he knew that no administration would likely care much about that far in the future. Immediate problems received 99 percent of the available attention. Inman had launched a Casey-style campaign on the future, ordering a study, setting up meetings, focusing attention. In March 1981 he had convinced national-security adviser Richard Allen to ask each department and agency to study and list all world problems they expected to deal with in the period 1985 to 1990. Included were all Soviet activities, political uprisings, the world economy, terrorism, nuclear proliferation.
Using his Navy contacts, Inman had helped launch a similar request for a study to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The White House asked Casey to coordinate the effort, but, as Inman expected, Casey quickly passed the task to him. Inman asked for a statement of intelligence needs from each department and found little resistance, since it was bureaucratically nonthreatening. Within several months Inman had a catalogue, or wish list, that all could agree on, since no item was given priority. Next, the hard part, he asked each department and agency to state what they thought they could and should do in each area. He also asked each to say what they expected other departments or agencies to do.
When Inman had finished, the gaps were obvious. Communications for clandestine agents needed upgrading. For some time the CIA had employed the so-called “burst transmitter” which sent a long message at high speed in a burst of several seconds or less, reducing the chances of detection. Technological advances were astounding but expensive. Miniaturization was another problem. Electronic devices, including the ones for satellites, had to be small enough to fit on space platforms or be hidden in Iron Curtain countries. They had to work for years and be maintenance free.
Inman was certain that intelligence-gathering had to be geared to the hard cases—crisis or war. That required an ability to communicate and transfer large blocks of information securely to and from places that were not necessarily on the list of hot spots. U.S. intelligence also needed more backup systems, alternative sources, an increase in frequency of coverage for satellite photos and signals intelligence, and more timely processing of information. By the fall of 1981, Inman had a first draft of a plan, entitled “Intelligence Capabilities 1985-90.” Casey went through it, asked a lot of questions and requested changes, but he liked the overall scheme. It set a consensus on the requirements and specified how they might be achieved. The basic question was whether this multibillion-dollar increase in the budgets was going to be done as part of the Reagan defense buildup or separately. Inman was pretty sure he could sell the program in the Defense Department. Deputy Secretary of Defense Carlucci felt that intelligence-gathering was the first line of defense and that improvements would be cost effective, saving billions in the Defense budget in the long run.
Casey won agreement among all the departments and agencies, and only then did he call the inch-thick top-secret plan to the President’s attention. There were few documents more sensitive in the U.S. government. It was the map of the intelligence future.
President Reagan met with the National Security Planning Group on the five-year intelligence plan. The NSPG was becoming the basic foreign-policy forum that hashed out the issues. Inman’s plan envisioned an intelligence budget which had been $6 billion in 1980 but which would go beyond $20 billion during the plan’s first year, 1985. In the psychology of peace through strength, crack intelligence-gathering was a main pillar. The exploitation of the American edge in technology, space and electronics appealed to Reagan.
After the review and discussion, the President said, “I don’t see how we can afford not to do this.”