Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/092192/09219911.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 116 lines

                                                                                INTELLIGENCE, Page 29

A Legacy of Contempt


As a former CIA officer awaits retrial, his case tells a cautionary
tale about the agency's responsibilities to Congress

By BRUCE VAN VOORST/WASHINGTON


    Clair George was back in Washington last week, after a
Maine vacation where he satisfied his voracious reading habit
and worked on his tennis serve. Next month he will be playing
for higher stakes as federal prosecutors try to nail him for
lying to Congress about the Iran-contra affair. Though the
former CIA chief of clandestine operations received a respite
three weeks ago when a jury could not reach a verdict on nine
counts of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of
justice, he now faces a retrial at the hands of special
prosecutor Craig Gillen. Just as he did last time, Gillen can
be expected to put the entire CIA on trial by charging that
George was merely the pawn in an agency that had consistently
shown contempt for Congress, for due process and ultimately for
the American people.

     It will be up to a new jury to decide whether George was
guilty of criminal perjury. Steven Kirk, the original foreman,
said his fellow jurors had found George evasive, duplicitous
and dissembling; they could not agree on conviction because
they chose to wrestle with the narrow issue of George's
"technical" responsibility to Congress. But Gillen used expert
testimony and thousands of newly declassified documents to prove
his point: that key officials of the CIA had blindly served the
White House in circumventing Congress by providing aid to the
Nicaraguan contras in defiance of the Boland amendment. Concedes
a CIA veteran: "In the crunch, as an institution, it failed the
people."

     The agency has always felt a special allegiance to the
President. Although it was created by Congress, and is funded
annually by congressional appropriations, generations of CIA
topsiders have enjoyed a privileged entree at the Oval Office.
The agency historically stood ready to perform special tasks for
the White House and developed what one insider calls "an
absolute loyalty to the President."

     But the Iran-contra episode put officials in the
unenviable position of testifying against a President who denied
any knowledge of the illegal operation, although onetime
National Security Council staff member Oliver North later wrote
that "President Reagan knew everything." On the eve of George's
indictment, friends pleaded with him not to take a fall for
Ronald Reagan. But turning on his Commander in Chief was not
George's style. He gruffly rejected a plea bargain in return for
implicating those above him.

     All of George's training and experience made such a deal
unthinkable. After three decades in the agency's clandestine
service, he was imbued with the shadow-world ethos of the cold
war. His generation of CIA officers perceived themselves in an
intensely personal crusade against the Evil Empire. George
valiantly fought these looking-glass battles in extraordinarily
dangerous assignments in Beirut and Athens, where his
predecessor had been assassinated. It was a covert existence in
which professional spies like George routinely broke other
nations' laws. It was part of their job to lie about their
identities, their missions, their actions -- but not to their
own superiors. And especially not to Congress. "That," says
former CIA staffer Vincent Cannistraro, "was the no-no."

     Yet few beliefs were as widely shared by agency types as
their low regard for Capitol Hill. In the 1970s, following
embarrassing revelations about failed assassinations and bungled
covert operations, Congress set up an oversight system and tried
to put the agency on a shorter leash. Some CIA officials,
including former Director William Colby, applauded the move. "I
thought things had changed for good," says Colby.

     They had not. George's mentor, former Director William
Casey, was legendary for his utter contempt of Congress. The
same attitude was expressed by former senior CIA officer Ray
Cline, who complained after George's indictment last fall that
"the only thing Clair has ever been accused of is lying to
Congress." In the eyes of some agency veterans, Alan Fiers,
chief of CIA's Central American Task Force, who admitted his own
guilt in lying to Congress, was a "turncoat" for testifying
against George; current spy chief Thomas Twetten was deemed a
hero for stonewalling.

     At one point during the trial, George banged his fist on
the railing and denounced "those goddamned hypocrites" in
Congress. "Congress wanted to set somebody up," he shouted, "and
I walked right into it." Nonsense. As former Senator Thomas
Eagleton testified, Congress just wanted the truth. "[We]
didn't put a noose around Clair George's neck," said Eagleton.
"Clair George put a noose around his neck."

     Former CIA Director William Webster believes that most
agency staff members have learned the lessons of the Iran-contra
debacle, and is against retrying George on practical grounds.
If punishment is required, he argues, Clair George has already
suffered profoundly. If it's a warning to other CIA officials
that is needed, the message is abundantly clear. When he became
director in 1987, Webster says, he introduced what he calls four
C's on dealing with Congress: be candid, correct, complete and
consistent. His successor, Robert Gates, would do well to pin
this motto up on the agency's bulletin boards.