Word: covert
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...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 became less and less involved. Decision making was less systematically...
Whatever formal authority he was given, North was adept at expanding on it. One of his techniques: when a presidential finding was issued authorizing a covert operation, North would exploit a bureaucratic mechanism known as a "memorandum of notification" to spell out the meaning of the vaguely worded finding. By drafting these memos, North was able to tailor the ways and means of the operation according to his own designs. If he got a memo approved, as he often did, he would then put together an interagency working group to plan how to carry out the mission...
...rallying support apparently led the Administration to rely more and more on carrying out the Reagan Doctrine by secret means. Dave McCurdy, an Oklahoma Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who at times sympathizes with the President's foreign policy, states flatly that the "Reagan Doctrine was a covert doctrine -- at least it was covert in implementation." Covert operations are unavoidable in a world where the enemy resorts to them freely. Some of the actions the Reagan Administration undertook or expanded, notably American aid to the guerrillas battling the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan, are eminently defensible morally and practically...
...times too the Administration turned to secrecy for operations it could have conducted openly. Congressman McCurdy recalls asking Jonas Savimbi, the leader of anti-Marxist guerrillas in Angola, whether he desired open or covert aid. Savimbi replied that he wanted the clearest possible expression of American support, so in 1986 McCurdy and a bipartisan group of legislators voted to provide aid overtly -- only to be opposed by the Administration, which insisted on arming the guerrillas on the quiet, for diplomatic reasons...