Word: coverted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Veteran Washington correspondents report that officials in all recent Administrations have leaked classified information far more frequently than have the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, which under law must be informed of covert operations. Even Poindexter called it "pure nonsense" to suggest that all such leaks come from Congress; he cited the White House staff, the National Security Council staff and the Departments of State and Defense as other frequent leakers...
Durenberger, on the other hand, contends that he has counted "hundreds" of Administration leaks. Notice of some 50 or more covert actions has been sent to Capitol Hill by the Reagan Administration, which has not identified a single one that was exposed...
...extraordinary mea culpa: A CORRECTION: TIMES WAS IN ERROR ON NORTH'S SECRET-FUND TESTIMONY. Two days earlier the Times had reported that Lieut. Colonel Oliver North testified that the late CIA Director William Casey wanted to use the profits from arms sales to Iran to set up a covert-operations fund that would be kept secret from Ronald Reagan. In fact, North testified only that the President was unaware of the talks about the account and that North and Casey did not discuss whether it should be hidden from...
Moreover, Poindexter said, his extraordinary exercise of authority did not end with the contra diversion. As the scandal was breaking last November, Poindexter testified, he destroyed a piece of vital evidence: a covert-action finding, drafted by the CIA and signed by the President in December 1985, that retroactively approved Israel's shipments of U.S. arms to the Iranians. The document, said the admiral, depicted the weapons transactions as a straight arms-for-hostages swap with Iran rather than a diplomatic effort to establish contacts with Iranian moderates, as the President has maintained. "I thought it was politically embarrassing," said...
...Reagan's famous management style so lax that his newly appointed National Security Adviser could feel free to run a highly sensitive covert operation without ever informing the President or any of his other top advisers? White House aides rejected the idea. The President, they said, was angry when he learned that Poindexter had authorized the diversion. Asserted Chief of Staff Howard Baker: "The President has said, 'I did not know it, and had I known about it, I would have stopped it.' That's the totality of it." Confronted with the White House statement, Poindexter calmly stuck...