Executive Secrets
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NSDD-32, the Reagan administration’s commitment to undermine Soviet power in Eastern Europe, was also directly relevant to the Polish program. NSDD-32 initially allocated a modest $2 million going to the Polish underground, but Reagan and Casey—who both believed that Poland was “the weakest link in the Soviet bloc” (an assessment shared by the KGB)—soon thereafter sought an increase in funds and materials for the underground.27 By 1985 infiltration mechanisms were established and functioning, allowing, for example: “the printing and smuggling into Poland [of] forty thousand postcards” bearing the image and pro-Solidarity sermons of a popular Polish priest, Father Popielusko, who was viciously murdered by Polish security policemen; and the smuggling into Poland of copies of a map and supporting documents used by Nazi and Soviet officials in 1939 in planning for the dismemberment of Poland.28
But of course the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe weren’t the only concern for Reagan and Casey. Early in the administration Casey proposed a sizeable expansion of the covert action programs initiated by the Carter administration to counter Cuban-sponsored subversive activities in Central America; the president signed two Findings to this effect on March 9, 1981, barely two weeks after Casey’s proposal. Included in the Findings were programs to deter Sandinista activities in the region in general, and to cripple, if not stop completely, the flow of Cuban arms from the Nicaraguan Sandinistas to the rebels in El Salvador. Of course, the Cubans weren’t the only ones aiding the Salvadoran rebels—the Soviets were also intensively involved. In July 1980, Shafik Jandal, the head of the Communist party of El Salvador, wrote the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) asking to send to the USSR thirty Salvadoran party members for training in various military skills. The CPSU was concurrently sending non-Communist manufactured weaponry, captured at the end of the Vietnam War, to the rebels. And there were similar Soviet ties to the Sandinistas in Managua. On December 1, 1981, in an NSPG meeting with the foreign policy principals plus political advisors Edwin Meese, Michael Deaver, and James Baker present, Reagan signed a Finding which authorized covert funding and assistance for the anti-Sandinista rebels who came to be called the “Contras.”29
At first, the assistance was via provision of funds to Argentina sufficient to organize and train a five-hundred-man anti-Sandinista unit for deployment in the Central American region. In the first year, funding to the Contras was about $20 million, with a like amount the next year but with the proviso that the funds could not be utilized to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. By the mid-1980s the Central American program and the separate Nicaraguan program were each costing close to $100 million per year, and the five-hundred-member Argentine unit was transformed into a multi-thousand Nicaraguan rebel force.30
The mining of the harbors in Nicaragua was one of the most controversial operations of the Reagan years, with questions arising over how much Congress knew of the program in advance. It appears certain that oversight committee staff was briefed, and there is good reason to think that at least some of the representatives and senators had also been informed, although probably not in great detail. (Of course it must be noted that the presence of a representative or senator in a briefing does not guarantee that he or she knows or retains what was being said; these officials may have been thinking about some other matter more important to them at the time, they may have been nodding off, or they may have been otherwise distracted. California representative “B-1 Bob” Dornan, self-proclaimed patriot and staunch supporter of national defense, was not a faithful attendee of HPSCI while on the committee, but when he did show he was more apt to read the Los Angeles Times than to listen to the briefers.)31 Besides the harbor operations, CIA’s recruited paramilitary assets also blew up power lines, although this never seemed to bother Congress. An example of the president’s personal involvement in these activities was a May 31, 1983, meeting of the NSPG, which Reagan himself chaired to review the CIA’s plan.32
The operations were highly controversial, especially the Nicaraguan program, and in part contained the seeds of the Iran-Contra scandal. There are many who believe that any covert action program should be such that, if it ever becomes public knowledge (which is more and more likely in the Information/Internet Age), the majority of the public will support it. This was not the case with Nicaragua, leaving one expert to opine that it “may have been a mistake for the Reagan administration to depend so heavily on covert action when its [overt] policies failed to generate sufficient public and congressional support. And too, the program had grown so large that it was not covert by anyone’s definition.” And, one hastens to add, still did not garner the public’s support.33
Obviating any chance of objective appraisals within the White House and the CIA over the effectiveness and political wisdom of these Central American programs were the intense personal feelings on the part of the most senior officials, especially including DCI Casey. One insider, Robert M. Gates, described them as “zealots” who sustained a sense of self-righteousness and absolute moral certitude over the program, thus foreclosing any opportunity to overcome congressional antagonism through serious negotiation. Worse, those in and out of government who questioned the programs were criticized by the true believers as being lacking in American patriotism, insufficiently anti-Communist, and disloyal to the president. Dedication to the Contras would inexorably lead to the scandal known as Iran-Contra, nurtured by contempt for Congress, for federal law, and even for the Constitution.34
Regardless, the administration pursued its Central American policy with determination. One element of the Central American program was a Finding signed by Reagan toward the end of his first term authorizing the interdiction of Soviet and Cuban-supplied arms crossing that country’s border into Nicaragua for the Sandinistas. A memo written by William J. Casey (as cited by his DDCI, Bob Gates, in his authoritative history of the times) told the president that the “Soviets care about perpetuating instability in the region south of the United States border and distracting the United States from its threats in Europe, Africa, and Asia . . . [i]f Central America is lost, our credibility in Asia, Europe and in NATO will go with it.” The Finding was signed in September 1983.35
The largest, and arguably most important, covert action program in the Reagan administration was the one mounted to force the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan. In light of the criticisms that befell the Afghan program years after it ended, particularly by those who blame the CIA for any failures, shortcomings, or problems, it is important to emphasize that the program was, as recorded by former DDCI Ray Cline, in complete accord with U.S. policy and had strong backing in Congress.36 Support to the Mujahedin initiated under Carter rapidly grew under Reagan and Casey who saw it as a way to deeply, if not fatally, wound the Soviet Union. Indeed, Robert Gates comments that it was in NSDD-166, U.S. Policy, Programs, and Strategy in Afghanistan, of March 27, 1985, that the Carter administration’s limited objective of merely harassing the Soviets was greatly expanded to that of defeating and expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan—a much broader, more difficult, and far more expensive proposition. Gates references the program under NSDD-166 in citing “large increases in weapons,” and an “improved logistics base,” that allowed “weapons, ammunition, clothing, and food” to flow to the Mujahedin, paid for by an increase of $125 million over the previous year’s funding.
Milt Bearden, the CIA’s chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, at the time, recalls that Reagan’s escalation of covert operations in Afghanistan was due both to congressional pressures and Soviet escalations; by “upping the ante,” Reagan was signaling that he believed it possible to inflict a major defeat on the Soviets. On the most basic level, the goal was to “hurt” the Soviets as badly as possible (read: kill as many as possible) to exact a heavy political and personal price for the invasion.37 NSDD-166 was the “turning point” of the war, as it enabled the administration to greatly increase the amount and types of aid going to the Mujahedin. Funding rapidly increased, from under $100 million in 1981 to
$120 million in 1983, then jumped to about $250 million in 1984 to a staggering sum of almost $700 million in 1988, the final year of the program. In contrast, the majority of the individual propaganda and political action programs aimed at the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe cost considerably less.38
During this period, supply lines were improved; high-tech weapons were given to the Mujahedin, including the Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that proved to be a silver bullet; more attention was paid to the Soviet high command and to Soviet political and military plans; pressure was placed on other countries either to support the United States or at least not to aid the Soviets; and the status of normal U.S.–USSR relations was linked to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In the end, the Soviets packed their bags and went home. The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was also a defeat for the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” which had declared that “no socialist country would ever be ‘lost’ to the West.”39 While the total funds spent in Afghanistan for the better part of a decade (well over $1 billion) seems to be—and indeed is—an enormous amount of money, what it essentially purchased was the demise of the Soviet Union. Perhaps that billion dollars was not an unreasonable price at all to pay for an end to the cold war.40
Terrorism was also, but belatedly, a target of covert action in the Reagan years. On January 27, 1981, at the ceremony for the returning fifty-two Americans who had been held hostage in Iran, the president’s welcoming remarks also included a warning to future perpetrators of terrorism against Americans. Terrorists, the president vowed, would suffer “swift and effective retribution” for their heinous activities. Despite this warning, the administration failed to retaliate when, two years later, sixty-three people—seventeen of them American officials—were slaughtered at the hands of the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group Hezbollah, which blew up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983. The White House knew of Hezbollah’s culpability and knew the location of Hezbollah’s headquarters and training camps in Lebanon’s Biq’a Valley. Calls for strikes at the terrorist facilities were rejected by the president, however, because Reagan’s secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, argued successfully that attacking the terrorist facilities would lead to “innocent” casualties in terms of the women and children among them. There was no retribution, “swift and effective” or otherwise. The terrorists won.
Emboldened by their escape from retaliation, the same group then truck-bombed the barracks of the U.S. Marine forces ashore near Beirut’s airport six months later, on October 23. The toll was staggering, with 241 of America’s best dead and hundreds more injured.41 Again, there was no serious retaliation or retribution, only a token, limited, and highly ineffective show of force that of course did nothing to deter terrorism. The terrorists won big this time, as Reagan soon reversed his initial post-attack pledge not to be driven out of Lebanon and ordered the remaining forces to leave. Then, in 1984, a newly constructed U.S. Embassy “Annex” in Beirut, which had replaced the original embassy destroyed a year earlier, was damaged in a car bombing. Only quick action by an alert bodyguard of the visiting British ambassador saved the United States from having its second embassy in Beirut totally destroyed in less than two years.42
Hezbollah then began kidnapping American civilians and diplomats in Beirut, certain that the United States would do little more than “condemn” these acts as “despicable” in State Department briefings. The absence of any meaningful United States response only encouraged the terrorists. As this is being written in 2003, Hezbollah is still one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world, and every bombing it conducts in Israel holds the possibility of killing more Americans who might be visiting or living in that county.
By 1984 the Reagan administration was considering a counterterrorism Finding in response to numerous terrorist actions against U.S. and Western interests in the Middle East (especially Lebanon) and in Western Europe. On April 3, 1984, almost a year after the Beirut Embassy bombing, Reagan signed NSDD-138, Combating Terrorism, intended to establish an effective counterterrorism policy. Initially intended to authorize the “pre-emptive neutralization” of terrorists, it was eventually watered down in response to opponents who thought it sounded too much like sanctioning assassinations, which of course had been prohibited since the Ford administration.43
In 1986 William J. Casey authorized the establishment of the Counterterrorism Center under Duane “Dewey” Clarridge. The Center was a merger of specialists from across the four Agency directorates, along with representatives from the FBI, FAA, Secret Service, Customs, and other government agencies with a role in or responsibility for countering terrorism directed at the United States and its allies. Shortly after starting up the Center, Clarridge related that the president—finally—signed a Finding that allowed the Agency to “undertake covert action to counteract terrorism—with or without the help of foreign governments.” The actions permitted by the Finding were then bolstered by the Omnibus Crime Act of 1986, “establishing the legal right to capture abroad terrorists who had committed acts against American citizens and to return them to the United States for prosecution.” A separate Finding also permitted Clarridge to establish “counterterrorist action teams” composed both of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to locate, track, and assist in the capture of terrorists. The Reagan administration was finally getting serious about terrorism.44
Reagan also looked to Africa as a region where covert action might be useful. Reagan entered office intent on restoring to the United States the respect he believed the country had lost under the Carter administration. An early target was the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, who was spending his country’s oil wealth supporting terrorist groups as well as using his own intelligence service to commit acts of terrorism. One locale on which the administration could confront Qaddafi was the desolate Saharan country of Chad, where Libyan proxies were in a civil war with forces led by Hissène Habré, who was supported by the French. Although Habré initially took the capital of N’djamena, the Libyan forces regrouped and eventually recaptured the city and, in effect, the country. But as the purpose of the U.S. covert action program was merely to “bleed” Qaddafi and not to place Habré in power, the ultimate winner of the civil war made little difference to the administration. Nonetheless, the program carried with it an element of success for the administration, in that Qaddafi now had to be concerned with a “hostile” (i.e., French and U.S.–supported) force on his southern frontier.45
Covert action plans for Angola were the subject of another presidentially chaired NSPG on November 12, 1985. Congress repealed the legislation from 1975 prohibiting aid to Savimbi’s UNITA movement in Angola and ultimately authorized $50 million a year through the end of the administration.46 This was arguably a program that should not have been covert, as the president and others in his administration made repeated public references to supporting Savimbi and even “received UNITA leadership in the White House.” It remains debatable how much good the program actually did, however, as the citizens of oil-rich Angola still lived in poverty and civil war through the end of the century.47
Nor was Asia missing from Reagan and Casey’s covert action constellation. In a questionable program, justified by its anticommunist orientation, the Reagan administration agreed to provide financial support to two non-Communist factions in Cambodia who were opposing the Soviet-supported Communist regime in power. The problem was that one of the most odious and evil political movements in world history, the Khmer Rouge (KR), was also in league with the non-Communist elements. The KR was, conservatively, responsible for the slaughter of more than two million Cambodians during the interval when it was seeking and then exercising power in that small kingdom. The atrocities the KR committed against all Cambodians were almost beyond description and almost beyond belief. The concern over this program was that funds sent to the two non-Communist factions would find their way to the KR. There was significant antagonism toward the program from the Department of State and from CIA careerists
, but Casey prevailed. The administration provided only $5 million, although Casey envisioned perhaps another $12 million in the future. Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, the program became mired in controversy over both purpose and financial mismanagement, and was eventually terminated, leaving nothing positive and productive in its wake.48
A number of other covert action programs from the Reagan years have yet to be officially declassified or acknowledged by the U.S. government. Some were successful, some find the jury still out, and a few were disastrous—at least in terms of evading success and in their consequences to the foreign national agents in the program. The last not withstanding, the Reagan years relied on covert action as much as any previous administration had, and more than most. The covert action successes, at least based on what has been reported so far, measurably outweigh any failures. Covert action significantly contributed to the end of the cold war and aided in bringing democracy and freedom to the former Eastern European nations. The program in Poland in particular must be regarded, even by the CIA’s most ardent critics, as one of the greatest intelligence successes ever.
THIRTEEN
George H.W. Bush
and William J. Clinton
Rule one is that in planning and carrying out a covert operation the law has to be followed to the letter. . . . Don’t look for shortcuts and don’t try to circumvent the process.1
President George H.W. Bush
GEORGE H.W. BUSH
George H.W. Bush is the only president to have also served as intelligence chief (save, perhaps, George Washington). As such, he understood the value and processes of not only intelligence but, particularly, covert action. This was of enormous help to President Reagan when Bush was his vice president, with the thirty-five-plus covert action Findings extant during that administration. Although the first year of Bush’s administration saw him managing a full plate of covert action programs, the fall of the Berlin Wall along with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist threat changed that. By early January 1990, the type of assistance governments and citizens needed in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria—specifically, the creation of commercial and labor laws so free enterprise and capitalism could flourish, instruction in the workings of democratic institutions, demonstration of the need and value of subordinating a nation’s military to civilian authority, and development of police forces sensitive to human and civil rights—were precisely the types of missions that should be and were being done openly by government officials, corporate executives, labor unions, and law enforcement groups. In Eastern European cities, reading materials that were banned just months before were now being openly sold in street corner kiosks and shops. Simply put, after 1990 there was no mission for CIA covert action in any of the former Eastern European nations. As for circumstances in the Soviet Union (which would continue to exist for another year), one story sums it up: diplomatic officers at the American Embassy were now openly able to take books and journals to Soviet citizens that previously had to be smuggled in—and Soviet government officials were the most eager of all recipients!