Word: caseys
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Whatever details about Iran-contra emerge from this week's testimony, the outline of the larger problem has become increasingly clear. Ronald Reagan and some of his top aides, notably the late CIA Director William Casey, came to ! power committed to step up the murky struggle with the Soviet Union in the back alleys of the world. They were determined not just to contain but to roll back what they saw as a pattern of alarming Communist advances. They quickly grew impatient with congressional restrictions and the inbred caution of the State Department, the Pentagon and even the CIA. They...
Even so, the President and some of his top aides felt frustrated. The requirement to notify Congress of covert operations was constraining; Casey in particular believed in telling the legislators no more than the law required -- and sometimes less. Worse, when covert actions made necessary the participation of a skeptical, often skittish, federal bureaucracy, it seemed to place roadblocks in Reagan's way. Some congressional sources are pursuing the theory that in early 1983 the President and a few top members of his Cabinet decided to move some covert operations to the National Security Council staff, which, because...
Whether the change in the NSC's role was conscious or evolutionary, it is clear that in anticipation of a congressional ban on CIA contact with the contras, Casey and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane turned to North to run the secret war in Nicaragua. Says Neil Livingstone, a consultant on counterterrorism who worked with North: "Bill Casey was not prepared to fight the bureaucratic battles. He knew there were a lot of people who could raise great problems if they went public with their concerns. He turned the NSC into the Washington station...
...result, says Livingstone, North "came into the NSC as an easel carrier and ended up as the world's most powerful lieutenant colonel." Witnesses before the Iran-contra committee have testified that they got a strong impression North was working more for Casey than for his nominal bosses, McFarlane and his successor as National Security Adviser, John Poindexter. "Covert actions were pretty much left to Casey and ((CIA Deputy Director)) John McMahon, with little if any top-level discussion or review," says one former Administration policymaker. According to this official, even Reagan was cut out of the loop: "The President...
...discovered that the CIA had secretly supervised the mining of Nicaraguan harbors -- another operation that North had a hand in planning. Vessels of friendly countries were damaged, and Congress was furious at not being adequately informed of the operation. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater angrily wrote Casey, "The President has asked us to back his foreign policy. Bill, how can we back his foreign policy when we don't know what the hell he is doing...