Word: casey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There are some flaws in this record. What the CIA calls "human intelligence" has not yet recovered from the savage staff cuts carried out during the Carter Administration by Casey's predecessor, Stansfield Turner, who preferred to collect intelligence by electronic means. Casey did not have a single agent on Grenada until a few days before the American invasion last October, and could not provide an accurate estimate of the number of Cubans on the island. Casey takes special joy in having revived covert operations. He is said to have made several trips in unmarked planes to Honduras...
When it comes to dealing with Congress, however, he would prefer to be just a clam. Right at the start, the Senate Intelligence Committee censured Casey, a lawyer and venture capitalist in private life, for failing to disclose during his confirmation hearings more than $250,000 in investment assets and nearly $500,000 in personal liabilities. Questions about his finances persist to this day: the Internal Revenue Service is scrutinizing his involvement in a tax-shelter scheme...
...Senate investigation left a permanent legacy of bitterness. Some Senators felt that Casey had misled them about his finances, and looked with increased suspicion on his running of covert operations. Casey felt that some lawmakers were conducting a vendetta against him and was strengthened in his natural tendency to tell them no more than the law requires. Says one official who worked closely with Casey during that period: "Casey gets mad, and he also tries to get even. The attacks from the Hill just compounded an existing disdain for the legislative branch of Government...
...Casey's counterparts in other democracies have little need to deal with their legislatures at all. The heads of the British agencies, M15 and M16, report to an executive committee chaired by the Prime Minister, who does not officially tell Parliament so much as their names...
...alone, however, will not be enough to handle the far more serious underlying problem. No oversight arrangement will work, nor will any program to rebuild America's covert capabilities work, until a way can be found to dissipate the corrosive mistrust and suspicion that has built up between Casey's CIA and Congress...