Agency officer William Daugherty, who held a position in Langley’s machinery for covert operations planning and approval after Iran and counterterror operations, writes that CIA officers and U.S. diplomats were all antagonistic to the Cambodia project. Cancellation followed. Robert Gates comments that Casey never warmed to the operation, that it remained a child of Shultz’s State Department. Shultz says nothing of Cambodia at all. Small wonder.

  Projects planned for Suriname and Mauritius were canceled because of administration or congressional opposition or blown cover, but there were plenty of others. Shultz shot down Suriname, where in 1983 Casey wanted to insert a couple of hundred Korean commandos to overthrow the dictator. That Langley could not find local recruits said everything. More than fifty covert operations were reportedly in progress by 1984, half in Central or South America, including both paramilitary action and espionage. This represented a 500 percent increase over the final year of the Carter administration. John McMahon’s decision to retire in February 1986 came when the Crisis Pre-Planning Group approved the simultaneous escalation of four covert operations, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, and Cambodia.

  Europe would not be ignored on Casey’s watch either. Among the more lurid tales is that the CIA took advantage of the Soviet appetite for American technology by doctoring computers destined to control flows on a Russian natural gas pipeline, causing immense fires. Little evidence has emerged to back this story. More prosaic—and more effective—was the agency’s effort to flood the Soviet Union with prohibited literature, especially miniature copies of the Bible and the dissident writings known as samizdat. French spy chieftain Alexandre de Marenches has taken credit for convincing Director Casey to move on this project, and the French certainly helped circulate the material. But Casey needed no encouragement, and Reagan backed him enthusiastically.

  The CIA waged a similar campaign in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, the impetus following from the Soviet quasi-intervention there, the Polish imposition of martial law in December 1981, and the subsequent crackdown on the labor movement Solidarity. The AFL-CIO carried on a parallel effort directly with the union. The Catholic church also retained great influence in Catholic Poland, its efforts enhanced after Reagan’s June 1982 meeting with Pope John Paul II, previously a Polish cardinal. That summer national security adviser William Clark called for options. Zbigniew Brzezinski, of Polish descent and expert in this matter, consulted with Casey on Poland and Eastern Europe more generally. The initiatives amounted to classic CIA political action. Langley’s expenditures went for funding Solidarity, publishing texts, and printing presses and paper smuggled to assorted dissident groups, plus instructions and training where necessary.

  Stimulated by the Reaganites, Radio Free Europe also had an important part to play. The old CIA radio had responded to the era of détente with visions of cutting back, changing its name, ending links to dissident networks, perhaps relocating its offices to the United States. Then the KGB masterminded a bombing of RFE headquarters in Munich. Its board wanted to use operating funds to make repairs. The Reagan White House saw an opportunity to energize the entire operation. John Lenczowski, Soviet specialist on the NSC staff, spearheaded the effort, proposing a $2.6 billion program to revamp RFE and scale up its activities. Everyone opposed him—the CIA, State, even the RFE board of directors. Finally he got the State Department to break with the pack—State’s staffer for RFE recalls that senior officers, concerned with NSC’s blocking of their negotiation efforts, decided to let Lenczowski have this victory so they could get on with their real work. The RFE program became part of the public diplomacy initiative President Reagan approved in 1982. Radio Free Europe broadcast freedom right through the decade, contributing its piece to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

  By the time Casey’s watch ended, the CIA’s propaganda and political action staff had become quite active indeed. Besides its own projects, the CIA lent specialists out to the NSC and State Department units engaged in public diplomacy, especially for Latin America, and CIA money financed many of their efforts. But the staff had to depend on officers brought back from retirement. The unit’s own senior staff numbered only a few dozen, among them just a handful of DO professionals, the rest being translators or analysts drafted from their normal work. As with the military’s view of “combat arms” billets versus support roles, propaganda at the CIA carried less prestige than covert operations or intelligence gathering.

  There can be no doubt of the popularity of covert action in Ronald Reagan’s administration. By some lights Reagan exceeded even Dwight Eisenhower in his use of the technique. And Bill Casey was the instigator, constantly demanding fresh initiatives, taking odd suggestions and turning them into projects, encouraging the DO to be all it could be. All of this aimed at the Russians or Cubans, supposedly, except that so many Reagan secret wars targeted leftist governments more generally. No democracies resulted from any of the Third World operations. Projects in Europe can be judged successful except that the impact of CIA political action remains indeterminate. In Russia, where democracy has yet to become fully established, the CIA helped sharpen Soviet problems, but its contribution seems small. The structural weaknesses of communism and the cultural penetration of Western music and thought loom much larger in the end of the Soviet bloc. Broadly notable, however, is that political action seems to have been more effective than paramilitary interventions.

  21

  Bill Casey’s War

  WHAT IS STRIKING about the Nicaraguan secret war is Bill Casey’s great fervor. Here the secret warriors had their chance to wage an all-out paramilitary campaign. Here the CIA, special warfare forces, the regular military, and the instruments of American economic power were combined to pressure a small Third World country. Langley recruited the fighters, pummeled them into political alliance, bought the weapons, and provided leadership. Green Berets and SEALs bestowed their practical expertise. The regular military built or improved bases, furnished some key support, and threatened the adversary by posturing in exercises on land and sea. The United States manipulated the levers of international financial assistance, as it had in Chile. The campaign exploited the presence and assistance of other nations and wed the classic elements of paramilitary and political action. Washington had every advantage.

  Casey’s fervor is all the more remarkable because the secret warriors divided over whether the covert actions were either feasible or necessary. Analysts like Robert Pastor and Anthony Lake, both former NSC staffers and one a future national security adviser, conclude that the CIA failed to appreciate the weakness of Anastasio Somoza’s rule and the limited Marxist purity the revolutionaries would exhibit, but predictive failure does not justify covert action. Managua’s new rulers did nothing inimical to U.S. interests. And the secret warriors, particularly after Chile, better knew the danger of actions taken on shaky policy grounds. Leftists headed the Nicaraguan government, specifically the frente sandinista de liberación nacional (FSLN), which came to power in 1979 at the head of the popular revolution that deposed Somoza. The dictator did not relinquish power without a struggle, naturally; Somoza’s hillside bunker overlooking Managua had been the nerve center of a counterinsurgency war waged by the country’s National Guard under his personal direction.

  In the vernacular, the revolutionaries became known as Sandinistas; the National Guard and its allies, Somocistas. The Sandinistas were a coalition of five resistance groups, not a monolithic Communist or even a Marxist party. The ideology obscured traditional wellsprings of Nicaraguan politics that contributed to the Sandinista revolution. Officials talked of a “mixed economy,” but government control of prices and of much of the supply, plus graft (yet to be eradicated by the revolution), progressively eroded middle-class support for the FSLN.

  President Carter approved a finding for a project against the Sandinistas in July 1979, in tandem with another aimed at Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador. The matter of Cuba must be central to any explanation for the Nicaragua covert action. Prodded by the State Department, a few months later Carter approved a broader finding to oppose Cuban activities throughout Latin America. Nestor Sanchez, then Latin America Division chief at CIA, proceeded without haste, trying to expose Sandinista connections to Cuba. Stansfield Turner worried that any hint the CIA backed opposition to the Sandinistas would backfire, enabling Havana to increase its involvement. But the Carter administration had not written off the Sandinistas and slated $120 million in foreign aid for Managua to provide a carrot to go with the stick. El Salvador seemed a thornier matter. To handle both these projects, in late 1980 Langley set up a Central America Task Force under Jerry Svat, an experienced DO officer.

  Enter the Reaganites. Casey and Reagan were at one in their thinking about Nicaragua. Not only did President Reagan make the required decisions, he lent his personal influence to the secret warriors. In fact the covert aspect of “special activity” would be abandoned altogether in the attempt to coerce Nicaragua. White House determination to pursue the campaign ultimately led to international embarrassment of the United States, a showdown with Congress over intelligence oversight, and initiatives that took covert action outside whatever legal framework supports it, calling into question the role of the president himself. How all this came to pass illustrates many of the dangers of covert tactics.

  The operation began soon after Reagan’s inauguration. Just a month later Director Casey proposed a more extensive action—still focused on political and psychological warfare—to stop weapons shipments from Nicaragua to Salvadoran guerrillas. On March 9, 1981, Reagan approved this presidential finding. The finding went to the National Security Planning Group, which ordered detailed preparations. Bill Casey became the spear-carrier. During a visit to U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Panama that summer, briefings convinced Casey that the Sandinistas were sponsoring revolution elsewhere. The director determined to mount a vigorous secret war against them. When CIA’s analysts estimated the Managua government could not be overthrown, Casey paid no attention. When leading secret warrior John Stein opposed the project and its expansion, Casey went around him. Senior analyst Robert M. Gates watched from the sidelines. Gates writes: “In virtually every covert action other than Central America, Casey was reasonably prudent—often even cautious—grumpily content to work through channels.” Not here. In a notable breach of the tribal boundaries, Casey brought in Duane R. Clarridge, a Middle Eastern specialist, to head the DO’s Latin America Division. This marked the beginning of a fateful alliance.

  Those who got to know Bill Casey well, for example reporter Bob Woodward, credited him with considerable style. The agency’s station chief in Rome shared that sense, if not Casey’s taste: Duane Clarridge favored European-cut suits, showing a handkerchief from his pocket. A Panama hat often crowned his head. Cigars and brandy were his style too—here, at least, he matched Casey. Clarridge, familiarly called “Dewey,” also liked red wine and, before Langley went dry, favored tastings with friends after the work of the day was done. The director encountered Dewey on one of his first jaunts, when Casey made a flash tour of CIA stations and Clarridge received him. The director traveled in company with Alan Wolfe, another of the Middle East clan and Dewey’s old friend. The Rome spy chief lobbied Casey for Wolfe to be appointed DDO. Instead the director decided to shift Clarridge. Slated for a third year in Rome, the personnel drones first listed Clarridge to return to Langley as chief of the International Activities Division, then the European Division. John Stein happened to be another old friend of Clarridge’s—they had gone through Army Reserve training together in their first days at the agency. When Stein stepped up to the DDO position, the new operations boss supported Clarridge. The European Division went to someone with more area experience. Then the Latin America Division opened up when Nestor Sanchez moved to the Pentagon.

  Casey found Clarridge a real powerhouse. Gen. Robert Schweitzer, a true believer on the early Reagan NSC staff, thought no one who met Clarridge once could ever forget him. Arturo Cruz, Jr., a disillusioned Sandinista who went over to the rebels, felt Dewey’s charm and witnessed his great appetite. Colleague Bert Dunn admired Clarridge from afar, though the two never actually served together. Dunn saw Clarridge as the first real case officer he ever met, and indeed that had been Dewey’s forte. In Nepal, India, Turkey, Clarridge became an intrepid enlister of spies, not afraid to make a cold approach, the most difficult of recruitments. He believed in calculated risks. At headquarters Dewey had been a capable deputy to the barons he served. Until Nicaragua, he had also been lucky—he left Nepal before CIA’s controversial basing of Tibetans there, left India before it turned to the Russians and went sour. Indeed Clarridge, who departed Rome on August 1, 1981, got out just before Italian leftist terrorists kidnapped a U.S. general, which would have scored a black mark for any station chief. Where those in the clandestine service aspired to fade into the crowd, the forty-nine-year-old Clarridge flaunted himself. As baron of the Nicaraguan war he drove a big sport-utility vehicle emblazoned with bumper stickers supporting the rebels.

  Back at Langley, Dewey Clarridge had barely met the top people in his division when DDO Stein phoned. They were to meet the CIA director the next afternoon. Casey supplied a brief overview of the situation and told Clarridge to take a month or so and produce ideas on how to make it better. With absolutely no Latin experience and no command of Spanish, Clarridge offered enthusiasm. He took just a week to come back to the DCI. “My plan was simple,” Clarridge writes, “1. Take the war to Nicaragua. 2. Start killing Cubans.”

  Bill Casey loved it.

  Clarridge left with a mandate to draft a finding to cover the operation. Much of that work fell to Central America Task Force chief Jerry Svat. Intelligence showed that remnants of the Somoza forces were gathering in Honduras, talking of a march on Managua. They wanted to do the same thing to the Sandinistas that the FSLN had done to them. Other exiles, who opposed the “Somocista” National Guard, joined them in the summer of 1981 to form the Fuerza democrática nicaraguense (FDN). The CIA’s project was to use the FDN. When the Latin baron told his station chiefs of the project, two, both Latin Americanists, objected. One was Jack Devine, who had watched as the agency got in trouble in Chile.

  Casey’s field marshal for the Nicaragua secret war takes pains to distance himself from his own dramatic description of CIA aims. Clarridge writes that the notion of killing Cubans amounted to part bravado, part pandering to Secretary of State Alexander Haig, whose policy was anti-Cuban to a fault. Indeed the CIA sought authority for this operation on the basis of interdicting arms supplies to guerrillas in El Salvador. But diplomacy could have accomplished that: the Sandinistas actually did halt shipments in the summer of 1981, when U.S. Ambassador Lawrence Pezzullo told Managua that aid money left from the Carter administration would be conditional on Sandinista behavior. Rather than building on that, the Reaganites noisily terminated all aid. Their offer on negotiations centered on Managua’s surrender and Cuba’s retreat.

  The negotiation track became real only when Central American countries themselves created a framework for talks several years later. Declassified State Department cable traffic with the U.S. embassy in Honduras reveals that Washington, quite serious about preventing negotiations, pressured Honduras (and presumably the other isthmian nations) to agree only to regional groupings that rejected talking to the Sandinistas. The larger enterprise revealed in these U.S. maneuvers had to do with fighting Managua. Halting arms would be a by-product. This is important for several reasons. Most crucial, by cloaking its real aims behind the goal of arms interdiction, the Reagan administration introduced a confusion into its own activities that it never overcame. The limited goal precluded massive covert action. When such actions were attempted, they discredited Reagan’s own assertions of intent. The goals also invited overseers of the secret war to hold the administration to its word, forcing the CIA into illegality as its action progressed, setting the stage for congressionally imposed termination. Not squarely facing these issues at the outset became a major error.

  The Reagan White House was as vehemently anti-Castro as John Kennedy’s. President Reagan believed that Cuban intervention fueled the Salvadoran civil war and that Nicaragua was the conduit for that support. Secretary of State Al Haig encouraged these views. Unable to strike directly at Cuba, the White House sought to “interdict” aid through Nicaragua. The Nicaragua campaign became a renewed manifestation of hostility toward Castro’s Cuba. The extreme rhetoric employed to criticize Nicaragua showed U.S. determination to “get” Managua, in the Reagan administration view a surrogate for Havana. Killing Cubans was shorthand for overthrowing the Sandinistas. Ironically, there is no evidence that many Cubans were ever killed in the secret war on Nicaragua.

  Most of the pieces were in place when Dewey Clarridge took his covert action project to the Restricted Interagency Group (RIG), the NSC unit responsible for Central America. Clarridge explained that the CIA would rely on the FDN and act through intermediaries, in this case Argentinians. Somocistas among the FDN would be ousted. Clarridge estimated a month and a half to implant a CIA base and logistics network, with activation two months after that. The CIA baron put the cost at about the same as a single top-of-the-line F-16 fighter jet. Diplomat Thomas Enders, who chaired the RIG, had seen the CIA in action in Cambodia in 1970. Confident of the agency, he nevertheless superimposed a diplomatic track to make it seem the Reagan administration was proceeding responsibly.