One Nation Under Blackmail--Volume 1 by Whitney Alyse Webb

Author:Whitney Alyse Webb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trine Day

ORIGINS OF THE IRAN DEAL

Bill Casey’s appointment as director of Central Intelligence was hardly popular with many on the Hill and the broader political establishment. One particularly vehement opponent was Barry Goldwater, whom Casey had sparred with back in the 1960s. Casey had designated Goldwater as a candidate of an increasingly incoherent right-wing fringe, and Goldwater clearly held a grudge against the veteran spook. He proposed his own candidate: Bobby Ray Inman, the naval intelligence and NSA chief who had done much to disrupt the Shackley clique by shuttering Task Force 157. Goldwater even went so far as to personally lobby Reagan to appoint Inman rather than Casey. But he was only successful in getting Inman the number-two position at the Agency.

The split at the top of the intelligence hierarchy was part of a cascade of factional struggles that swept across Reagan’s first term as president. Joseph Persico has described how quickly the CIA bureaucracy was polarized between the two men, eventually reaching a point where “Casey’s staff and Inman’s staff barely communicated.”242 Inman was blocked from participating in major operations, such as the early Contra-support operations, and Casey even went so far as to plant stories about Inman in the press. He devised a new division of labor in the Agency so that it gave Casey unfettered access to President Reagan – a privilege that Inman did not enjoy.

Joseph Trento argues, drawing on sources from within the intelligence community, that the rivalry between the two men was capitalized on by Casey’s other rival, then vice president George H.W.Bush. Inman, already close to Bush, acted as his eyes and ears within the CIA. “Bush was walking a tightrope,” Trento writes. “Inman considered himself a friend of Bush’s and was reporting to Bush on Casey’s activities within the CIA. At the same time, Inman’s great rival, Shackley, was [also] reporting to Bush.”243 To make matters more complicated, Shackley and his core group of associates – Richard Secord and Thomas Clines, among others – were increasingly active in Casey’s off-the-books operations, apparently walking a tightrope of their own between other rival factions.

Details scattered throughout Persico’s biography of Casey add credence to Trento’s claims. When Inman accepted the CIA job, for example, he wanted Bush present for the welcoming ceremony. “George Bush isn’t welcome out here,” Casey told him, alluding to the CIA. “Inman waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming.”244 At another point, Casey flew into a rage on discovering that Inman had been frequently meeting with Bush and briefing him on intelligence matters.

Inman stepped down from his CIA post in 1981 and turned toward a career in the private sector. The presence of Bush’s influence can be seen in some of his subsequent business affairs. Inman, in the mid-1980s, worked as the head of an electronics-industry holding company called Westmark, which in turned owned Tracor – a major defense contractor that produced electronics for weapons systems. The main group behind Tracor was a web of in-laws and business associates of

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