THE FLAMES WERE flickering in the Oval Office fireplace, suggesting intimacy, even home, for the meeting that fall afternoon just after the election victory. Casey strode in with his papers and a summary of talking points on a single sheet of paper. He was certain he had reduced the issue to its basics. Now, with the second term, it was time. He had in mind a presidential finding that would direct the CIA to train and support small units of foreign nationals in the Middle East which would conduct preemptive strikes against terrorists. When intelligence showed that someone was about to hit a U.S. facility, such as an embassy or a military base, the units would be able to move to disable or kill the terrorists. The President was aware that the fanatics and suicide bombers were a visible demonstration of his Administration’s impotence, and he had agreed to do something.
Weinberger had refused to involve the military; the shelling from the battleship New Jersey into Lebanon had not worked—it was too much, too indiscriminate, there was no pinpoint accuracy. Air strikes killed the innocent along with the terrorists. No, thanks, not us, was the message from the Pentagon. Cap had folded his arms and said no.
Casey’s own CIA had to be dragged in kicking and screaming; McMahon had also issued a no-thank-you; the CIA did intelligence, not killing. But Casey had been stubborn, and Shultz had backed him up.
Casey explained to the President that the finding was simply to train and put the units in place; another finding would be required to take action in a specific case. The Israelis were experienced at this kind of covert preemptive work, but it was essential that the Administration not get into bed with them on this. Any U.S. action had to be seen as antiterrorist, not anti-Arab.
With luck, no one would ever know even about the existence of these new units. At first, three five-man units would be trained and set up in Lebanon. Any preemptive hit would be carried out undercover; it would not be traceable to the CIA or the United States; all would have deniability.
The President told Casey to inform the congressional intelligence committees but to invoke the provision in the law that allowed him to inform only eight people—the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the Senate and House committees, and the Republican and Democratic leaders of both the Senate and the House.
Casey said he would see to it personally. That would emphasize the sensitivity. No loudmouth staffers would know. He saw a chance to show that the CIA could conduct truly secret operations.
Reagan signed the formal finding and an accompanying National Security Decision Directive. The immediate cost for the Lebanese units would be about $1 million. When the program was expanded to other countries, the cost would be $5.3 million.
Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter, McFarlane’s deputy, who was at the meeting, later described the afternoon session to a colleague: “Casey mumbled, and Ronald Reagan nodded off.”
Casey was determined to see this through. McMahon had fought him every step of the way, littering the bureaucratic landscape with doubts. Could they trust the foreign nationals, particularly the Lebanese? Could the CIA control them? As McMahon saw it, either answer to the second question spelled trouble. If the CIA had control, would it not involve the agency in assassinations? Wasn’t participation in preemptive strikes assassination-planning that was banned by the Reagan executive order, no matter how it might be dressed up? If the CIA did not have control, were they not launching unguided missiles? And, McMahon wondered further, would they ever have intelligence of the quality, certainty and timeliness to justify a preemptive attack? They had never had it so far.
Sporkin had helped develop Casey’s rationale. He had written a legal opinion asserting that preemptive action would be no more an assassination than would a case in which a policeman gets off the first shot at the man who is pointing a gun at him. “Preemptive self-defense,” he termed it.
Casey was focusing on Beirut. The past eight months had posed an emotional crisis for the agency. William Buckley, who had been kidnapped in Beirut on March 16, was described publicly as a political officer in the U.S. Embassy, but he was in fact Casey’s station chief. Casey was sure that the Muslim extremists who had kidnapped him knew whom they had. He had pushed the DO nearly every day to come up with a way to locate and rescue Buckley. He had directed that extraordinary measures be taken: he would authorize money to pay informants; he ordered communications interception stepped up; he had satellite photos enhanced to search for clues; he established a special hostage-rescue task force. He was aware that neither he nor the agency could bargain for Buckley without violating Administration policy, which prohibited negotiations to ransom hostages. The ordeal was humiliating. The station in Beirut had had to be cut back to a new station chief and security people. Many of its intelligence functions had been turned over to the Lebanese intelligence service, a tough, lethal group that was in effect the last vestige of governmental authority in the capital. Money, equipment and technical support were being provided them by the CIA.
A group calling itself Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) had claimed responsibility for kidnapping Buckley. Casey was sure the name was simply a slogan or a war cry for extremists. They had also been implicated in the bombings of U.S. facilities in Beirut.
For DDO Clair George, who had been the Beirut station chief from 1975 to 1976, the Buckley kidnapping revived bad dreams. During his time in Beirut, two U.S. government officials had been abducted and held hostage for four months before being released. He had lived that agony. George had turned the DO inside out trying to save Buckley. It was not only that he wanted Buckley back; the effort was a signal to thousands of DO officers abroad that the CIA would do just about anything to rescue one of its own. An expert FBI team trained in locating kidnap victims was sent to Beirut. It came up with nothing after a month.
It was time to hit back. But training the Lebanese was proving to be trouble. They couldn’t be controlled; they were willing to commit murder, very willing. Casey’s own CIA people began slowing down. No one inside the agency wanted to step out front. Casey saw the shellshocked faces, frightened of a real encounter with danger. He had brought them a long way in four years, but many of them, McMahon, the bean-counters in the budget office, the DO, didn’t understand his reading of their obligation.
All the bold planning was going to be a wasted effort. Casey decided to turn to the Saudi intelligence service and King Fahd. They promised help in the form of $3 million.
One day in early 1985, Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar received a courier directly from the King. A message contained secret instructions to cooperate with Casey. Bandar immediately made an appointment to visit Casey at Langley. Casey saw him, but proposed a second meeting elsewhere, saying, “Let’s have a bite.” It was as if he didn’t want to talk at the CIA’s own headquarters. They agreed to have lunch over the weekend at Bandar’s residence, a palatial estate just a mile down Chain Bridge Road. Casey said he would bring Sophia. She realized that she and Bill had once looked at the house and considered buying it. Bill liked the large library. Sophia found the ambassador’s wife very friendly and nice. The lunch, she felt, was just another one of the Washington social obligations. “For no purpose at all that I could see,” she said later.
After lunch, Casey and Bandar walked alone out to the garden. When they were about as far away as possible from the house and the security guards, Casey withdrew a small card from his pocket and handed it to the ambassador. It contained the handwritten number of a bank account in Geneva. The $3 million was to go there.
“As soon as I transfer this,” Bandar said, “I’ll close out the account and burn the paper.” He would make sure there were no tracks on the Saudi end.
“Don’t worry,” Casey said. His end would be clean, too. “We’ll close the account at once.”
Bandar had often found Americans naive about the world, but here was a man with no inhibitions. He considered Casey the J. Edgar Hoover of the CIA.
Bandar knew how to have a conversation that never took place. He was funneling millions to the contras; this was widely suspected and he just denied it routinely with a confident laugh and a long lecture about the implausibility. Their relationship was the kind that both Bandar and Casey valued—one in which men of authority could have frank, deniable talks and emerge with an agreement only they understood. Bandar and Casey agreed that a dramatic blow against the terrorists would serve the interests of both the United States and Saudi Arabia. They knew that the chief supporter and symbol of terrorism was the fundamentalist Muslim leader Sheikh Fadlallah, the leader of the Party of God, Hizbollah, in Beirut. Fadlallah had been connected to all three bombings of American facilities in Beirut. He had to go. The two men were in agreement.
Later it was decided to give effective operational control to the Saudis, particularly as the CIA bureaucracy grew more and more resistant to active antiterrorist measures. The Saudis came up with an Englishman who had served in the British Special Air Services, the elite commando special operations forces. This man traveled extensively around the Middle East, and went in and out of Lebanon from another Arab state. He would be an ideal leader of a sophisticated operation. The CIA, of course, could have nothing to do with “elimination.” The Saudis, if asked, would back a CIA denial concerning involvement or knowledge. Liaison with foreign intelligence services was one CIA activity out of the reach of congressional oversight; Casey had flatly refused to tell the committees about this sensitive work. And in this case, the CIA as an institution did not know. Nothing was written down, there were no records. The Saudi $3 million deposited in the Geneva account was “laundered” through transfers among other bank accounts, making certain it could not be traced.
The Englishman established operational compartments to carry out separate parts of the assassination plan; none had any communication with any other except through him. Several men were hired to procure a large quantity of explosives; another man was hired to find a car; money was paid to informants to make sure they knew where Fadlallah would be at a certain time; another group was hired to design an after-action deception so that the Saudis and the CIA would not be connected; the Lebanese intelligence service hired the men to carry out the operation.
On March 8, 1985, a car packed with explosives was driven into a Beirut suburb about fifty yards from Fadlallah’s high-rise residence. The car exploded, killing eighty people and wounding two hundred, leaving devastation, fires and collapsed buildings. Anyone who had happened to be in the immediate neighborhood was killed, hurt or terrorized, but Fadlallah escaped without injury. His followers strung a huge “MADE IN USA” banner in front of a building that had been blown out.
When Bandar saw the news account, he got stomach cramps. Tracks had to be meticulously covered. Information was planted that the Israelis were behind the car-bombing. But the Saudis needed more to prove their noninvolvement. There was only one way. They provided irrefutable intelligence that led Fadlallah to some of the hired operatives. As Bandar explained it, “I take a shot at you. You suspect me and then I turn in my chauffeur and say he did it. You would think I am no longer a suspect.”
Still Fadlallah was a problem, now more than ever. The Saudis approached him and asked whether, for money, he would act as their early-warning system for terrorist attacks on Saudi and American facilities. They would pay $2 million cash. Fadlallah accepted but said he wanted the payment in food, medicine and education expenses for some of his people. This would enhance his status among his followers. The Saudis agreed.
There were no more Fadlallah-supported terrorist attacks against Americans.
“It was easier to bribe him than to kill him,” Bandar remarked.
Casey was astounded that such a comparatively small amount of money could solve such a giant problem.
Bandar undertook two other secret covert operations at Casey’s request. One was to bolster anti-Qaddafi efforts in Chad. It cost the Saudis $8 million. The second was $2 million to assist in a secret operation to prevent the Communists from coming to power in Italy. The two operations were never traced to the Saudis or exposed.
Even though the mission to kill Fadlallah had failed, the Lebanese intelligence service privately began taking credit despite its comparatively small role. A demonstration of strength was necessary; it had to be shown that blood would be met with blood, terrorism with terrorism. Casey was despondent. The CIA relationship with the Lebanese service, to train units for preemptive actions, put the agency in jeopardy. It was too close to an assassination plot. McMahon, who was not aware of the Saudi role, wanted a disconnect; he said urgently that the agency had to get out of covert antiterrorist training. Casey had no choice, and the preemptive finding was rescinded.
Some continuing relationship with the Lebanese service, nonetheless, had to be maintained, since the CIA depended on it for intelligence, for manning listening posts and for security. Later in March, two colonels and three majors of the Lebanese service were brought to Washington for a three-week senior CIA management-training program. They were put up at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown and were shuttled daily to a safe house in McLean, where they received boilerplate lectures, conferred with senior CIA officials and were served lunch by an Asian cook.
Around the time of the March 8 bombing, Casey received one of the most important intelligence reports of his tenure. It was from an important, sensitive source inside the Soviet Union. The CIA had been monitoring the long illness of Soviet Union. The CIA had been monitoring the long illness of Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko, who had been in office only a little more than a year. The report said that he had died, but that the news was being kept from the Soviet people, and the rest of the world, while the Politburo selected a new leader. Casey sent the report to the White House. Several days passed. There was no confirmation, but Casey had faith in the source. On Sunday, March 10, a senior Soviet official visiting the United States was called home, and the next morning came the unmistakable signal: classical music began on Radio Moscow, including Rachmaninoff. At 6 A.M. the leader’s death was announced. Four hours later the Soviets said that the youngest member of the ruling ten-member Politburo, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, fifty-four, had been selected as the new General Secretary. The incredibly quick resolution of succession indicated that the CIA’s source had been correct: Chernenko’s death had clearly been covered up for several days, Casey suspected. In a certain respect this was an intelligence coup for the CIA; there was no more important intelligence task than the monitoring of the leadership in the Soviet Union. But the absence of confirmation or other details only made the real intelligence gaps that much clearer. How useless such top-secret intelligence could be. What was the White House to do with it? And the scrap from inside also revealed how little the CIA knew about the internal workings of the Soviet system. The agency knew virtually nothing about the succession debate.
Casey was amused by press reports hailing Gorbachev as the new Soviet man, pragmatic and open. He was a product of the system in every way, as far as Casey could tell. The Soviet system had most recently been run by three dying men—Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Chernenko. Gorbachev could be expected to appear different. But Casey was sure that was only superficial; he predicted that Gorbachev would only export subversion and trouble with more zest. Casey admired the way Gorbachev played his patronage card, placing some of his people in key posts and in the Politburo. Casey’s reports to the White House were warnings not to be taken in by appearances.
Still the contras needed money. Since October 1984, when Congress had cut U.S. funding entirely, Casey had had to operate under a law with little give. It said that no CIA money could be spent “for the purpose or which would have the effect of supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization, movement or individual.”
Casey had approved a cable that said, “Field stations are to cease and desist with actions which can be construed to be providing any type of support, either direct or indirect, to the various entities with whom we dealt under the program.” All contact with the contras was “to be solely, repeat solely, for the purpose of collecting positive intelligence and counterintelligence of interest to the United States.”
Even when Saudi Ambassador Bandar had offhandedly raised the issue of the contras with Casey, the DCI had responded (with a note-taker present), “By law, Your Highness, I am forbidden from talking to you about this subject.”
When retired Army Major General John K. Singlaub, a former OSSer who was raising private money for the contras, raised the subject with Casey, the DCI replied, “Jack, I’ll throw you out of my office.”
But in half a dozen meetings with contra leader Adolfo Calero, who referred privately to Casey as “Uncle Bill,” the DCI listened attentively to reports on contra progress and apologized because the agency couldn’t do anything directly.
Joseph Coors, a wealthy Colorado beer executive and an old friend, visited the Director at his office in the Old Executive Office Building and asked to contribute to the contras. Casey told him point-blank, “Ollie North’s the guy to see.” Coors, a big contributor to conservative causes, was told to step around the corner to North’s office. North convinced him to give $65,000 to purchase a light aircraft that could be used on short runways. Showing Coors a picture of the plane, North called it “your plane.” The aircraft, called a Maule, was incorporated into the assets of General Secord’s private enterprise that had been set up through the NSC by McFarlane and North.
Early in 1985, Casey ordered up four separate National Intelligence Estimates on Nicaragua: the Sandinista military buildup to 65,000 troops; their efforts to consolidate authority within Nicaragua; the outside support to them from the Soviets and the Cubans; and the Sandinista effort to export revolution into neighboring El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America. Reducing the four documents to a single sentence for the President, Casey said: “The Soviet Union and Cuba have established and consolidated a beachhead, put hundreds of millions of dollars behind…aggressive subversion.”
After the January 20, 1985, second inaugural, Casey watched with pleasure as Jim Baker and Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan swapped jobs, Baker moving to Treasury and Regan, a longtime Casey friend from Wall Street, to White House chief of staff. Baker had always had a private agenda and had put great pressure on the President. Under the trio of Baker, Meese and Deaver, the President had a system of competing presidents, all of whom tried to kill one another off. That way no one had been able to get away with much of anything. By contrast, Don Regan, a millionaire and former head of Merrill, Lynch, was more directly interested in implementing the President’s desires under a unified staff working directly for him. Casey had found the President more relaxed and liberated under this arrangement. He was more comfortable with himself, his opinions, his instincts. At meetings, Reagan was spared the need to navigate the maze of congressional, media and “inside Washington” interests that reflected Baker’s “Beltway” view. Don Regan drew out the President. Reagan talked more; his exact notions were given priority. What do you want? the new chief of staff frequently asked.
Casey saw a chance for a concerted effort to win contra funding. But whenever he went to the congressional committees, they wanted to know when the contras would achieve some results. “There’s no fucking crystal ball,” he told some of the Republicans privately. “I can’t tell you.”
One of the first state visits in the second term was from Saudi King Fahd, who arrived in Washington on February 11, 1985. McFarlane and Prince Bandar had met several days before to insure that the King would be afforded special attention. They had searched for a symbol that would emphasize the King’s authority and importance and had agreed on a private meeting with President Reagan.
As McFarlane and Bandar talked, the subject of the contras came up. Again McFarlane felt that Bandar was volunteering. To Bandar it was a clear solicitation. Whatever, the Prince indicated that the Saudis were willing to double their secret contributions to $2 million a month. Overall, they would give at least another $15 million.
On February 12, Reagan and Fahd talked briefly in private. The King made it clear to the President that the Saudi contra donations were going up, and Reagan thanked him. McFarlane also passed the good news to the President. But it was a temporary fix, and McFarlane was worried. He was certain that the contra support policy would be effective only if it was seen to have the visible support of the Congress. New and direct funding from the United States Treasury had to be found.
The President heeded Casey’s counsel and went public, saying, the contras are “our brothers,” and “We cannot turn from them in their moment of need.” He said the goal was to make the Sandinistas “cry uncle,” and he added in a later speech, “They are the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.”
But that spring Casey watched, horrified, as the White House became distracted by a single issue. A public flap erupted over a visit that the President planned to make to the Nazi cemetery at Bitburg, West Germany, where some SS troops were buried. Charges of anti-Semitism and insensitivity were heaped on Reagan, paralyzing the Administration as it alternated between hesitation and defensiveness.
Casey worried that there was no White House legislative strategy on a key upcoming contra vote. But there was little he could do personally. He was a negative symbol and had to keep his profile low. The week of the vote, he went to Pittsburgh to give a speech and visit the newspapers, and at the White House it was as if no one were home. On April 24 the anti-contra Democrats in the House brought the issue to a vote. A watered-down proposal for $14 million in nonmilitary contra aid was defeated 215 to 213. Casey was thunderstruck. It had been so close, the switch of a single vote would have resulted in a tie, two votes a victory. “If Tip O’Neill didn’t have Maryknoll nuns who wrote letters,” Casey remarked, “we would have a contra program.”
Casey regularly gave speeches around the country. The first I attended was April 17, 1985, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at a conference run by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The subject was terrorism. For forty-five minutes he stood at the podium slurring, hunching, hardly audible or comprehensible, reading a twenty-one-page speech. I underlined two sentences in a copy he had handed to me before he spoke: “We cannot and will not abstain from forcible action to prevent, preempt or respond to terrorist acts where conditions merit the use of force. Many countries, including the United States, have specific forces and capabilities we need to carry out operations against terrorist groups.”
Casey had no sense of building his speech to a conclusion or finale. When he was finished, he just stopped abruptly and no one in the audience recognized that he was finally done until he said, “Thank you very much.” There was mild applause. He stood and answered questions for twenty minutes, making it clear he was bored.
One person, clearly out of step with an audience made up mostly of conservative academics, asked, “What is the difference between the contras and the PLO?” Casey asked angrily, “What?” After the question was repeated, Casey stumbled around and finally said, “The contras have a country and are trying to get it back, the PLO doesn’t have one.”
The DCI was aware that I planned to write a book about the CIA, and he came over and asked whether I wanted to fly back to Washington with him on the CIA plane. It was about 10 P.M. and I had checked into the hotel where the conference was being held, but I quickly checked myself out. He came out of the hotel with an expensive new heavy overcoat buttoned up haphazardly, like a kid who does not understand clothes and has been dressed by his mother.
His plane was a propeller-driven Gulfstream that would provide a slow trip. Casey took a seat, loosened his tie and had his security man bring us scotches and a fresh can of mixed peanuts, which he stuffed, handful after handful, into his mouth. The security man drew the heavy curtain, leaving us to a two-hour uninterrupted talk. The Director said he was a little uneasy about not having someone from the agency there to monitor him, and he reminded me that he required others in the CIA to avoid interviews with journalists alone. But he proceeded to answer most questions as we ranged over subjects including General Donovan, the new all-weather satellite Lacrosse, the Nicaragua operation, his kidnapped Beirut station chief Buckley, the Republican conventions he had attended dating back to 1940, Reagan, the Reagan Cabinet, McMahon and the CIA. On his father, Casey would offer only one sentence, “He was a civil servant in the New York City pension system his whole life.”
Two weeks later I flew to New York to attend his luncheon speech at the Metropolitan Club.
“When I’m asked to speak I usually say I’ll talk about the state of intelligence,” he said in his opening, “a subject about which I cannot speak very freely. So I’m going to talk about the state of the world, a subject about which I know less but on which I can speak more freely.” He received a good long laugh. He was clearly more comfortable than in Cambridge. The refusal of Congress to provide more contra money during those weeks had obviously angered him and opened him up. He virtually said the United States was at war with the Soviets. “This is not an undeclared war,” he said, and he compared the times with the years when Hitler was not taken seriously. Marxism and Leninism, he said, had unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—famine, pestilence, war and death.
He let loose with a public rhetorical volley as never before. “In the occupied countries—Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola, Nicaragua—in which Marxist regimes have been either imposed or maintained by external force…has occurred a holocaust comparable to that which Nazi Germany inflicted in Europe some forty years ago.”
He again offered me a ride back in his plane. We covered Reagan, the contras, Lebanon, terrorism, his friends, his money, his goals. He talked about his childhood in Queens, a universe of simple, permanent affiliations. Walking to and from Public Schools 13 and 89, there were fistfights, he recalled. It was the 1920s, after World War I, when boys just circled up and fought. “Win some, lose some,” he said. Did he remember any of the kids who beat him? “Of course, do you think I forget anyone?” He stared hard, his dentures full of peanuts. “Particularly anyone who beat me?”
Soon he was back on the contras and the loss in the congressional vote. “Abysmal handling,” he said. “The White House can’t do two things at once…. The President is uninterested. He still has his instincts, but he will not even focus on the objectives, let alone the way to get there.” He shook his head in dismay. “The President is not paying attention to Soviet creeping expansionism.”
Casey continued to be struck by the overall passivity of the President—passivity about his job and about his approach to life. He never called the meetings or set the daily agenda. He never once had told Casey, “Let’s do this” or “Get me that,” unless in response to the actions of others or to events. There was an emotional wall within the man. Perhaps it was a response to his father, who had been an alcoholic and unemployed during the Depression. Casey noted in amazement that this President of the United States worked from nine to five on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and from nine to one on Wednesdays, when he’d take the afternoon off for horseback riding or exercise; and on Fridays he left sometime between one and three for Camp David. During the working hours in the Oval Office, the President often had blocks of free time—two, even three hours. He would call for his fan mail and sit and answer it. Many evenings he spent alone with Nancy in the residence, where they had dinner on TV trays. On Saturday nights at Camp David, where they could have any guests in the world, the two had a double feature of old or new movies, and the staff joined them to watch. Casey seemed to be saying there was unexercised authority and unmet responsibility.
Casey found Reagan strange. Reagan had said he would have stayed in the movies if he had been more successful at it. Always jovial, he probably had no real friend other than Nancy. Lazy and distracted, he nonetheless had a semiphotographic memory and was able to study a page of script or a speech for several minutes and then do it perfectly. Casey was a serious student of Reagan, but he said he had not yet figured him out.
The plane was landing at Andrews Air Force Base, from which Casey was immediately departing for a ten-day swing through the Far East and the Philippines, where there was trouble and where he planned to meet with President Marcos.
“Don’t say a word to anybody,” he directed. He then asked that I stay behind in the plane to hide until he had embarked on the large jet waiting for him. I could see a group of CIA people waiting for him at the foot of the ramp. A van would take me to a taxi, he said. “They might think I’m indiscreet, bringing you out here.”
To this day, I do not know why he agreed to those and other conversations.
Just days after the House rejected contra aid, Nicaraguan President Ortega flew to Moscow to ask for $200 million. It stung many of those who had voted against the aid, and a number of legislators said it was so embarrassing that if they had known in advance they would have voted for it. Casey didn’t know whose sense of timing was worse—the Administration’s or Ortega’s.
Rejection by Congress was not necessarily the end, Casey realized. In the White House, NSC staffer Oliver North had moved into the void with a fall-back plan. He proposed in a memo to McFarlane that the President make a public request for private donations to the contras. McFarlane told him to wait on that but approved the establishment of “The Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, Inc.” It could exist as a tax-exempt corporation so that the donors would be able to deduct their contributions. North calculated that with another $15-$20 million they would be able to expand the contra force to perhaps 35,000.
North also made arrangements for South Korea and Taiwan to make contributions to the contras. And he increased his operational role, once proposing a plan to sink a merchant ship, the Monimbo, which was carrying arms to the Sandinistas.
For more than a month I had known that President Reagan had signed the finding to create three secret Lebanese units for preemptive attacks on terrorists. Lauder, Casey’s press man, had tried to dissuade the Post from running the story. We had discovered that the top-secret finding had been rescinded after the Beirut car-bombing had killed eighty people. We knew only about the role of the Lebanese intelligence service at that point, and nothing about the secret role of the Saudis or their $3 million contribution to the operation. We saw no reason to withhold a story, since the operation had failed and the finding was history.
“It’s like hitting an old wound with a hammer,” Lauder said in exasperation. The story ran on May 12: “Antiterrorist Plan Rescinded After Unauthorized Bombing.”
Three days later George Lauder wrote to Casey: “It seemed clear that Woodward was planning to go ahead with this story irrespective of what I told him. I strongly stated that his story was grossly irresponsible and an ‘invitation to murder.’ I said that if he were Fadlallah and had seen a great number of supporters, including women and children, blown up and then read the Washington Post story, he couldn’t help but want to take revenge against Americans in Lebanon, official or otherwise…. I told Woodward that John McMahon had told me to tell him that if he printed this story he would never again be received in this building.
“I further added that this type of irresponsible story would indicate to us that The Washington Post not only had no respect for lives of Americans in Beirut, but was continuing its traditional antiestablishment crusade, this time with Hill oversight members and staffers who had their own agenda to ‘do in’ covert action and create problems for the Intelligence community.
“…I added that I found his and the Post’s actions contemptible. In the future we would handle his contacts with the Agency in the same manner that we do Jack Anderson, Tass and other journalists of that ilk.”*
Casey called me at the paper. “Lives are in danger,” he said. “I’m not sure it was a story that had to be written, but I can’t control that. Maybe I should, though. It’s the way it got picked up—as if we had our own hit team out there.” He said that it would make life more difficult for him and his agency. The matter has lethal consequences, he said, and care has to be exercised in not just the facts but the impression that is created. “You shouldn’t have run it.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but it turned to ice: “You’ll probably have blood on your hands before it’s over.”