[.ca] Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987

What Casey was thinking:
This book presents the history of the CIA during William Casey's tenure, from 1981 to 1987. Woodward focused the book primarily on William Casey himself. The book details not only the various operations that the CIA was involved in during the 1980s, but also Casey's motivations for his leadership decisions. The CIA operations described in the book include everything from the mundane details of placing bugs in the offices of foreign leaders to the Iran-Contra affair. Woodward gathered material from a variety of sources when writing this book. One of his primary sources was Casey himself. Woodward interviewed Casey on numerous occasions, and Casey was aware that Woodward was compiling material for a book about his leadership of the CIA. Casey was surprisingly forthcoming about his involvement in many covert operations. He must have felt confident that Woodward would not betray his trust and expose any material prematurely. What is odd is that Woodward discusses not only Casey's professional life, but also his personal life, and includes comments about such things as peanuts getting caught in Casey's dentures that seem mean-spirited rather than relevant for the story. Nevertheless, the historical documentation of Casey's leadership and CIA activities in the 1980s makes the book well worth reading.

Confessions of a CIA wordpusher?:
Woodward's story of Casey's years at the helm of U.S. state terrorism centers around Casey and his British-bred, WWII-honed perspective used to justify government covert actions that include torture, disappearance, and death. We learn that America did not begin her slide down the slope to Nazi Germany with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the Twenty-First Century. It began when Hitler's faults began to take revenge on the Allies through the creation of the OSS in London, predecessor to CIA. Under Reagan's two terms as President with Casey at the helm of CIA, U.S. state terrorism ran rampant in its aim to establish a system of Anglo/U.S.-sponsored authoritarian states. Woodward is interesting to read because he provides information along with disinformation, twisted around more information and more disinformation, so that unraveling it becomes a challenge. Beginning on page 6, Woodward lets us know that he intends to take the uninitiated for an Orwellian ride. Stansfield Turner was Director of the CIA when Jimmy Carter was President, but either the CIA did not keep him completely informed of its covert activities; or Turner did know - but Woodward portrayed him as not knowing in the interest of disinformation. According to Woodward, Turner wanted "to funnel covert money or assistance to some groups or individuals inside" Cuba, Libya, and Iran "to oust three leaders who were troublesome to U.S. interests - Cuba's leader Fidel Castro, Iran's leader Ayatollah Khomeini, and Libya's Muammar (sic) Qaddafi. The response from the DDO was: No, . . . Turner had been surprised at the depth of their reluctance" (p6). The fact is that all three leaders were put into office by CIA and received subsequent CIA covert support to maintain their regimes. The Le Monde reported in 1979 that Khomeini had been stashed in France as part of a CIA Number Two back-up plan that, in the event that Shah Pahlevi and his SAVAK lost control in Iran, envisioned the CIA's Ayatollah Khomeini telling the Iranian people what they wanted to hear and duping them with Islamic rhetoric. And that is precisely what happened after the Shah fled Iran in October of 1979. Two weeks later the CIA personnel in Teheran were predictably taken hostage after CIA intentionally leaked the false rumor that they were going to reinstall the Shah. The hostage-takers wanted a swap - to exchange the CIA personnel for the Shah so he could be executed for his heinous crimes and Iranian fears could be put to rest that the Shah would wreak terror again. CIA subsequently sent Khomeini to do a Ross Perot on the Iranian people - to drug them with words they longed to hear, words of peace through submission to God. The CIA's Ayatollah duped many with his Islamic rhetoric, but the socialists could not be fooled - he later killed tens of thousands of them and caused a resulting diaspora of Iranian socialists around the globe. Once secure in his new position as Caesar in the new Iranian Roman-style republic engineered by CIA, the Ayatollah's Iranian F4 fighters were subsequently provided covert U.S. AWAC support against Iraqis MIGs during the Iran-Iraq War, Iranian surveillance stations were maintained along the Soviet border, and oil flowed from Iran to Europe and Japan. Despite the camouflaging anti-U.S. rhetoric from Khomeini ("The U.S. is an evil `Shaytaan'"), nothing changed in terms of U.S. strategic interests. The average man would do well to remember Tom Paine's truism - "war is the gambling table of governments, citizens the dupes of the game". Since CIA hijacked the Iranian coup and installed Khomeini, how could a Director of CIA not know what was really happening in Iran? Either Turner did know and Woodward did not want his readers to know what Turner knew; or Turner didn't know. The idea of Turner not knowing is absurd considering the extent that CIA was complicit, but this is the disinformation that Woodward wants his readers to believe. Woodward writes: "When the Shah of Iran came to the United States for medical treatment in October 1979, two weeks before the American hostages were taken in Iran, . . . Turner realized . . . that he was isolated both from his own agency and from the President he served" (p8). The fact is, according to the Le Monde in 1979, that Iranians reacted predictably to intentionally leaked CIA reports that CIA was going to reinstall the Shah, and predictably the Iranians grabbed the CIA personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran in order to later do a swap for the Shah - that way they could lock the Shah away and not worry about him reviving his CIA-maintained Hitlerite SAVAK regime. Woodward would have us believe that Turner is oblivious to what his CIA is doing or what Le Monde is saying about his CIA. Woodward's disinformation quickly mounds up: "He and his CIA had studiously misread Khomeini as a benign, senile cleric, and now he held the United States hostage"(p11). The reality was that CIA had orchestrated the realization of the hostage crisis so that their number two man - Ayatollah Khomeini, could take over where the Shah left off by singing a different tune. Having established himself as a disinformationist and probably a wordpusher on the CIA payroll in addition to his job at the Washington Post, Woodward's story progresses toward its main character William J. Casey. Casey came from the OSS - "the old-hand, old-boy network" that began in London, England during World War II. "These men were the operators, the inner agency, the band of brothers . . . the dedicated secretive operatives who did the dirty work . . . a club that didn't meet"(p4). Woodward explains "They had been trained by the British, and CIA traditions were British traditions". Woodward says Casey "sat in London headquarters creating a spy network" (p37). American-powered British empire was the result, although the British have remained discreetly behind the scenes (See Nicolas John Cull's "Selling War"). After WWII, Casey made one unsuccessful stab at running for election to public office when he sought the Republican Party nomination to be their Long Island candidate for Congress in 1966 and they chose someone else. Afterward, "Casey returned to behind the scenes, where . . . many . . . thought he belonged" (p19). By early 1980, he became Ronald Reagan's campaign manager when Casey was "writing a book on the OSS" (p17). Ronald Reagan won the election and Carter lost his bid for reelection. Stansfield Turner was hoping Reagan would keep him on as CIA chief, but that was not to be. Woodward relates an interesting aside about a warning from French intelligence chief Colonel Alexandre de Marenches that was given to President-Elect Ronald Reagan after he and Vice President-Elect George Bush won the election and waited for Carter to leave the White House - "`Don't trust the CIA'"(p22). Woodward further relates "Reagan repeated Marenches' warning - `Don't trust the CIA' - to George Bush, who had been CIA chief in 1976-77. Bush thought it was hogwash, but all the same it obviously left a deep impression on Reagan" (p22). Reagan then asked Casey to head the CIA and he later agreed, but Reagan was shot anyway weeks later by the son of Bush's close friend in a deadly assassination attempt that was thwarted by the surgical prowess of Dr Rodman from Alliance, Ohio. Subsequently, Vice-President George Bush sat in the driver's seat at the White House while Reagan and his "voodoo economic" was on the mend. Bush, as former director of CIA, and Casey, as the current director of CIA, remained true to their OSS roots and British traditions. On page 55, Woodward says that CIA chief Turner, prior to Casey, believed the Soviet economy was in trouble and that any alleged military superiority was false. If what Woodward says about Turner is accurate, then I can say that Turner was correct in thinking that the Soviets were in trouble because in 1980 the Soviets were certainly in trouble from my viewpoint on Shemya Island. That year I learned that Reagan's Red Scare was largely balderdash. He was scaring U.S. taxpayers into giving up large amounts of cash to his bomb-making corporatist friends to defend ourselves from a largely imagined threat. On page 56, Woodward says "That meant that the Soviet advantage was not real". Woodward's story carries on for over 500 more pages and is chock full of information and more disinformation. My review can't possibly due justice to it all. Read the book and discern for yourself whether Bob Woodward is a CIA wordpusher or not.

The Veil...dive into the secret world of William Casey's CIA:
This is an excellent read where Bob Woodward with his astonishing access to sources deep inside the White House and CIA reveals the secret wars conducted by the CIA led by William Casey (1981-1987) during the Regan years. From Nicaragua to Afghanistan to the Iran-contra scandal Casey was involved in and controlled it all. The repercussions of his feverishly misguided policies and the secrets he kept from the U.S. Congress would have drastic effects on future generations of Americans and the world. One of Woodward's best!

CIA Internal Wars:
This book is primarily about the war of words inside the government concerning how things should be done. Because of this, it was different than I had expected.

The Clique That Couldn't Spy Straight:
When Woodward wrote this book in 1987, it was his first truly up-to-the-minute muckraking exercise since "All the President's Men" and "The Final Days" with Carl Bernstein back during the Watergate years. "Veil" covers the activities of the U.S. intelligence apparatus in the 1980s, leading up to the Iran-Contra scandal that was just breaking as Woodward finished up the book. At the time, Woodward was probably trying to unleash an in-depth investigation on a breaking story for the benefit of concerned and skeptical Americans, like he did most recently with his three books on Bush and the Iraq war. This may have been a crucial investigation at the time, but now it largely reflects esoteric historical details. The book mostly follows William Casey, Reagan's intelligence chief from 1981 to 1987, in the form of a 500-page investigative report of Casey's decision-making processes, the unqualified cronyism of the intelligence establishment, and all the political causes and effects. The historical details are fairly interesting for intelligence buffs but are now a rather unexciting read, especially since Woodward's strictly chronological investigative style creates very little suspense. You get the feeling that the historical coverage is always leading up to something that never quite comes as the book slogs along, except maybe the Iran-Contra hearings, but those started just as Woodward's chronology comes to a close (he concluded with Casey's untimely death). But on the good side, if one takes a longer historical view there are some interesting lessons to be learned here. Woodward finds that the American intelligence apparatus (especially the CIA) has always been devoted not to the security of the American homeland, but to pushing ideology into other nations and building short-term alliances for quick political gain, no matter which political party is in charge back home. During the Casey/Reagan years, the agency was stacked with political cronies whose black-and-white ideological obsessions resulted in a parade of questionable actions leading to the shameful (and possibly treasonous) Iran-Contra scandal. At a higher level, through this example Woodward really brought some crucial focus to what American intelligence really stands for. But in terms of the specific events of this book, Woodward would have created a more lasting historical study if he had waited until after the Iran-Contra hearings had run their course. (~doomsdayer520~)