Veil, by Bob Woodward
Jolis, Albert
You cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God! the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do Unbribed, there's no occasion to. —Humbert Wolfe D ob Woodward's book, already extensively...
...and Britain agreed to a Soviet demand that all Soviet displaced persons and ex-prisoners-of-war in our occupation zones be forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union, on the Soviet pretext that they were all putative war criminals...
...Turner wants to keep his job at the agency...
...How do we explain the intense public controversy that swirled around his head during his tenure at the CIA...
...The masterful use of this weapon has indirectly enabled the Soviets to achieve victories that would have seemed dazzling forty years ago: the capture of Cuba and the scuttling of the Monroe Doctrine...
...Nowhere is this more apparent than in his ultimate fiction, when Woodward puts those final words into Casey's mouth: "I believed...
...But it's also evident that most of his information came from Stansfield Turner, John McMahon, Bobby Inman, and John Horton, all of whom heartily disliked Casey...
...Now, inasmuch as Inman was hardly regarded as a Casey supporter, one might suppose his testimony would lead Woodward to discuss the importance, or lack thereof, of Active Measures...
...What Woodward does not report is that Casey sent a copy of the letter to Shultz...
...Thus, when discussing the murder of Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, he writes: "Welch's CIA position had been published by disaffected former agents caught up in the anti-CIA fervor of the times...
...Casey knew that with the rise in the twentieth century of Marxism-Leninism, refined through seventy years of Soviet Communist rule, the nature of warfare radically changed...
...for his part, Bob Woodward seems remarkably untroubled by it all...
...pays all shipping...
...While purporting to be a history of the CIA during William J. Casey's tenure, a serious history it is not...
...Woodward possibly does not know the full extent of those beliefs...
...W oodward of course hated Casey, despite his statement that "Casey had been an attractive figure to me because he was useful and because he never avoided the confrontation...
...Amos Perlmutter, editor of the Journal of Strategic Studies and professor of political science at American University, writing in the Washington Times, challenges these assertions, calling them "total fiction...
...Edward Epstein, reviewing the book in the Washington Times, makes a telling point in this connection...
...He is reading a weekly journal, Christian Science, before breakfast...
...Meyer also denies ever speaking to McDonald about the Grenada report...
...Woodward no longer sees the Soviets as a potential enemy...
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...Inman felt that it served no purpose for the President of the United States to spread misinformation, but Casey wasn't particularly bothered...
...Casey in the spring of 1982...
...Woodward alleges that Ariel Sharon met with Casey in the spring of 1982, prior to the start of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and asked Casey for money and military help for the Lebanese Christians...
...The author's practice of placing quotes around part of a conversation, and then carrying it on without quotes, disarms the reader of any means of measuring the accuracy of his account...
...In fact the only mention of Agee is buried in a footnote on page 384, where he is referred to as a "renegade agent who had published lists of CIA agents...
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...Later he adds: "But Inman judged most of the elements of the CIA study essentially accurate, based on good human sources...
...The focus, of course, is William Casey himself...
...the Soviet colonization of Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia...
...Woodward writes: "These active measures, which seemed to include everything the Soviets did, were, according to the report, 'one of the major instruments of Soviet foreign policy.' " Deputy Director Bobby Inman, according to Woodward, concluded that Casey was "in overdrive, using the active measures study for some ideological grinding...
...Not only that...
...Horrified at our government's craven complicity with Stalin's murderous actions, we assisted those who had succeeded in escaping forced repatriation to the Soviet Union...
...Herb Meyer, a Casey assistant, said 'I think it stinks.' " Meyer, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, has told me that this reference to him is pure invention...
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...Sneer as you will, Bob Woodward, Bill Casey really did believe...
...Any letter postmarked after 30 days will be returned...
...Or for fastest service from any part of the country call 1-800-255-3298 for Boat Dept...
...Humbert Wolfe D ob Woodward's book, already extensively reviewed, has generated considerable skepticism as to its accuracy...
...No other Director of Intelligence —Dulles, McCone, Helms, Colby, Schlesinger, Bush, Turner—excited such passions...
...The thirty-page study covered Soviet actions in various parts of the world, including manipulation of United Nations organizations and the mobilization of opposition to the U.S plan to build a neutron bomb...
...will send any of the above size boats to anyone who reads and responds to this test before the next 30 days...
...Once out of uniform, William Casey,along with this reviewer and a few friends including Frank Barnett (president of the National Strategy Information Center), formed a non-profit organization called Friends of Fighters for Russian Freedom...
...Sharon never met with Mr...
...It reads like a gossip column, as if Miss Rona Barrett suddenly became fascinated with issues of our national security...
...As a consequence, it is Casey who invariably emerges as the relentless ideologue, never his bureaucratic adversaries...
...The Soviets have wisely chosen to advance their interests by deploying a revolutionary weapon: a vast global edifice of political subversion, manipulation of public opinion, disinformation, agents of influence, and front organizations—in a word, Active Measures...
...He does not know, for instance, that before the end of World War II, the U.S...
...W oodward's leftward tilt, though deftly handled, is ever present...
...Sometimes it is done with the faint sneer, sometimes through the words of his characters...
...He writes: "A number of Administration conservatives were furious over the assessment...
...This absence suggests that the CIA that spoke so freely to Mr...
...Casey wanted a wide hearing for the report, Woodward tells us, and so downgraded it from "Top Secret" to "Secret," and had about three thousand copies circulated...
...Woodward discusses a report on Grenada prepared at the Pentagon which disputed earlier assessments thatthe island was being readied as a major Soviet bastion...
...It was not just the Iran-contra affair, for it started from the moment he was appointed by the President...
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...The CIA study said merely: "The scale of the Soviet effort can be gauged by analogy...
...Early in the Iran-contra affair, Woodward reports, Casey wrote a classified letter to the President suggesting that Secretary of State George Shultz be fired...
...Subsequently President Reagan told reporters, "We have information that the Soviet Union spent about $100 million in Western Europe alone a fewyears ago when the announcement was first made of the invention of the neutron warhead, and I don't know how much they're spending now, but they're starting the same kind of propaganda drive...
...In March 1987, several months before Veil was published, the Washington Monthly ran an article by Marci McDonald containing the same Meyer quote...
...A slick work of titillating journalism it is...
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...the loss of America's preeminent position in Southeast Asia...
...So there we have it...
...We complied: American G.I.s in Germany were made to place thousands of unwilling victims onto east-bound cattle cars to perish in the Gulag...
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...By ignoring this detail, Woodward is better able to portray Casey as devious, scheming, and underhanded...
...Woodward writes: "It was, Turner conceded, an odd point, perhaps, for the head of the largest and most sophisticated intelligence service in the world [italics mine...
...government were to undertake a campaign of the magnitude of the Soviet `neutron bomb campaign,' it would cost over $100 million...
...sometimes through omission, sometimes through the unalloyed barb...
...Or does Woodward himself believe it...
...We helped them to re-settle and remake their lives...
...In this respect, Wood-ward's treatment of one of Casey's early actions—ordering a study from the agency appraising Soviet Active Measures—is illuminating...
...Woodward limits his comment to an irrelevancy: The study's wide circulation was designed to raise consciousness and to suggest CIA action to counter the Soviets...
...Does Woodward seriously suggest that Turner believes the CIA to be larger and more sophisticated than the KGB...
...Only someone on the inside, with first-hand knowledge and personal contact with the players, could make adequate comment on Woodward's mass of assertions, quotations, incidents, and "revelations...
...VEIL: THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA 1981-1987 Bob Woodward/Simon and Schuster/$21.95 Albert Jolis THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1988 43 with the impression that the doves were the serious professionals and the hawks the amateur ideologues...
...and most recently, the establishment of a Soviet beachhead on the American mainland...
...Casey called such numbers "flaky...
...And Woodward has other artful means of twisting his tale...
...The reader is left with the impression that the entire subject of Soviet Active Measures was blown out of proportion by a Casey in "ideological overdrive," allowing the President to spread misinformation...
...The KGB is hardly mentioned, except to exonerate it from any involvement in terrorism or the shooting of the Pope...
...But to Casey's disappointment, the CIA had been unable to calculate what these measures cost the Soviets...
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...In reporting the book, Woodward tells us, he interviewed more than 250 people, and there's no reason to doubt it...
...The lesson for next Sunday urges Turner to "look inward...
...Albert Jolis is the executive director of the American Foundation for Resistance International...
...It is against this backdrop that Casey's tenure at the CIA, and Veil itself, must be viewed...
...the invasion of Afghanistan...
...We calculate that, if the U.S...
...What this book omits, revealingly enough," he writes, "is any discussion of Soviet intentions and strategy...
...No mention of Philip Agee, whose traitorous disclosure was directly responsible for Welch's murder...
...I believed...
...Nevertheless, here are a few observations that occurred to me as I moved through this page-turner: •Woodward describes Stansfield Turner's state of mind on the morning after Reagan's 1980 election victory...
...If this has any point at all, it is to cast scorn and derision upon the deepest sentiments of a dying man...
...It is my contention that Casey was controversial not only because he understood the true nature of the Soviet global threat—after all, others understand this too—but more significantly, because he showed every indication of succeeding in turning that knowledge to our advantage...
...And there's this gratuitous anti-Casey slap: "Casey showed joy and relish only when someone brought him intelligence that supported his preconceptions of Administration policy...
...Woodward buries the issue thus: "The record was never corrected...
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...Nonetheless, Woodward reports McDonald's story in almost identical terms...
...Of course Casey believed...
...The Soviets lied all the time, and the CIA estimate was probably about right...
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Vol. 21 • March 1988 • No. 3
