2—The Daily Collegian Friday, May 1,1987
CIA
Continued from Page 1.
“Casey put in this job, which is supposed to inform
Congress of what the CIA is doing, someone who spent
their whole career in secret operations, who developed a
sense of a sense of caution about disclosing
anything,” said Simmons. j
George delayed for six weeks a request from the Senate
intelligence committee for a briefing on the ClA’s covert
activity, violating the Intelligency Oversight Act of 1980
which states Congress will be kept “fuljy and currently
informed of all intelligency activities,” Simmons said.
“(George) failed in that responsiblity,” he said. “He
violated the law and it was a disaster. It resulted irt a
cutting off of funding for the Contras for years. And that
certainly was not the intent of what the CIA thought was
in the best interest of the country.
“He may have have good intentions but I’m reminded
that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t
think he served the agency by violating the law.
“If you look at officials like (Lt. Col. Oliver North) and
(former national security adviser Robert McFarlane),
they were well intended, they had the best interests of the
country at heart, but by violating the law and the process
they undernmined their adminstration and embarrassed
their country. George is no different.”
After Congress cut off the Contras, said David Mac M
ichael, a CIA analyst with the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, the Reagan administration found a “creative
solution” to get around the Congressional ban, it priva
tized the supply of weapons, advisors, and aid to the
Nicaraguan rebels and brought to centerstage North.
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Said Simmons: “I still believe it was disaster to put
George in that role. He had little familiarity with Con
gress after spending a career coming up through the
ranks.”
Geroge's University years
George’s career attracted enough attention at the
Univeristy to cause him to be nominated for the Universi
ty’s Distinguished Alumni Award several years ago, said
Harold J. O’Brien, George’s former debate coach. But a
committee of the University Board of Trustees turned
him down because they said they didn’t have enough
biographical information. “They wanted to know things
about him that can’t be told,” O’Brien said.
George was born on Aug. 3, 1930 in Beaver Falls, Pa.,
and came to the University in 1949 when he was as.just “a
small time guy from Beaver Falls,” O’Brien said.
He was vice president of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity
and president of Skull and Bones, an open honor society
that later turned secret.
He was also a member of Lion’s Paw, the University’s
elite student secret society, which in the late 50’s was said
to have controlled much of the student government.
He majored in arts and letters and he excelled at
debating. He was manager of the debate team and
president of the forensic council., He won the state
championship in his senior year.
“He was a spectacular debater,” Obrien said. “He was
just a very bright person. Of course you had to be a bright
School Address
421 F-. Heaver Avc.
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person to be a debater back in those days when debates
were very competitive.”
His best friend from college, Milton Bernstein, a Har
risburg attorney, also remembers George as a “marvel
ous, first-class debater. He was really involved in a lot of
college activities and he was very politically aware. He
was ambitious and ho excelled at college.”
In a rare telephone interview from his home, George
reflected on his time at Penn State and what it meant to
his career in “the company.”
George declined to answer questions concerning his
covert career or the current Iran-Contra' controversy.
“I usually hang up on reporters. I have line that goes to
all our good friends at The New York Times, Washington
Post, Newsweek and Time that I don’t talk to anybody.
But to The Daily Collegian, I’ll say hello.”
“I had a wonderful, wonderful time. I wouldn’t be
where I am if I hadn’t gone to Penn State. They gave me a
great education and best friends I ever had,” Geqrge
said.
“The most important thing there was a great motiva
tion for me and that was when I went to Penn State
everybody was a vet in the Second World War. The guys I
lived with were very old men, like 26 or 27. In fact I had a
roommate and very dear friend of mine who had been a
Air Force pilot and had flown missions over Europe.
“I think that in that era patriotism played a very great
role in motivating people to do something. I’m not sure
that’s gone away totally now a days, but I think the
intensity in the late 40s was just for sheer patriotism.
“We really felt we could do something for our country
JULIE C. EVANS
Major GPA
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and I was very lucky to be able to do so,” George said.
“I think that I would tell the young people at Penn State
that if you are genuinly interested in helping your country
and are concerned about the kind of world you live in and
want some challenging work, then there is more reward
ing work ”
“Not everyone feels that way and they march against
us. But I feel the same way about what I do now as I did
then,” he said.
After the University
George said that when he graduated from Penn State in
1952 he enrolled in Columbia Law School but then changed
his mind and went into the army where he served in
Korea during the Korean Conflict.
“In the army, I had done some intelligence work. When
I came out I didn’t want to go back to grad school. I got
out and ended up in the government and I’ve sort of been
there ever since.”
William Corson, an author and ex-Army intelligence
agent who said he knew George, said that the 1950 s were a
growth era for the CIA because of the Cold War.-
He said many of the CIA recruits then came from the
army
“The CIA didn’t just recruit someone from Penn State.
They wanted someone who has been out playing the game
for. awhile and many of them came from active army
intelligence.”
According to O’Brien, who stayed in contact with him
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CIA
Continued from page 2
for many years, George was sent to California to study
Chinese. His first assignment with the CIA was “to
interview the horde of refugees coming into Hong Kong.”
Asked if there was something that attracted George to
covert work he said, “no, they just sort of stuck me
there.”
“He never really talked about it,” said Bernstein. “It
was definately out of character if you knew him. He was
anything but the spy type. He was thoughtful and intelli
gent but not really the covert type.”
According the State Department Biographic Register,
which listed the cover positions of CIA agents until 1976,
George served in Hong Kong for four years, Paris for
three years, Mali for two years and India for four years.
In 1975, he became the CIA chief of station in Beirut,
meaning he was in charge of all spying and covert
operations in Lebanon at critical time in the civil war
there.
O’Brien said he rembers George writing a letter to him
while “bullets were flying over his head.”
In 1976, he took a dangerous assignment when he
became chief of station in Athens after the assassination
of Richard S. Welch, the previous top CIA man there.
Welch was shot and killed by three unknown masked
gunmen outside his home in a suburb of Athens in
December 1975. President Gerald Ford attributed the
assasination to the publication of Welch’s identity as a
CIA operative in American and Greek anti-CIA publica
tions.
Because of the assasination, the State Department
classified the Biographic Register and Congresss passed
stricter laws on publishing names of agents.
George resurfaced in 1981 as the assistant to the deputy
director for operations and then moved to the legislative
liason job in the summer of 1983.
George's current career
On June 28, 1984, as the storm over the CIA'S role in
Nicaragua raged in Congress, Casey appointed George
Deputy Director for Operations
Speculation arose that George was being moved be
cause of his role in not informing Congress. A congressio
nal aid noted in the Post that a “normal CIA tour of duty
even in hot spots overseas is 18 months.
The Post quoted a senior CIA offical, saying that
George was not being replaced because of displeasure in
Congress. As head of covert operations, he has to testify
about covert activities on a regular basis. So its hardly an
effort to get Clair out of the way of Congress.
“As chief of the clandestine branch he’s in charge of
everything covert. That really makes him one of the most
powerful men in the country and the world,” said Victor
Marchetti, an ex-CIA agent and author of The CIA and the
.Cult of Intelligence. •;
“They do everything from old-fashioned spying to
manipulating foreign governments and infiltrating for
eign labor movements,” said Marchetti, who is 1953
University alumnus
George heads 15 espionage and intelligence divisions
consisting of about 10,000 people, and supervises both
covert paramilitary operations as well as the traditional
“clandestine-collection” activities of CIA officers and
agents with a budget exceeding $5OO million.
Covert operations enjoyed a tremendous growth under
Casey, who made the reconstruction of cladestine serv
ices after they were largely dismantled in the 70s his
highest priority. Casey boosted its budget and manpower
as a way to enforce the “Reagan Doctrine” of rolling back
Soviet gains in the Third World.
Marchetti said although he never worked with him,
“George comes across as a pretty smart, tough operator.
A real professional.” He added that it isn’t unusual for a
career covert agent to move up to head covert operations.
The record on George, however, is scanty. At the
National Securities Archives, in Washington, D.C. a
watchdog and storehouse for intellegience information, a
spokesman said their file on George “is very slim.”
In March 1986, the Post disclosed that George sits on a
secret interagency committee to oversee the increasingly
complex patchwork of covert operations. Nameless, the
group meets in Room 208 of the Old Executive Office
Building and refers to itself as the “208 Committee.”
Its five members are the micromanagers of America’s
new secret diplomacy, supervisors of a widening array of
local conflicts around the globe, the Post said.
Reminiscent of the “40 Committee” which managed
idirty wars in the Johnson and Nixon years, the 208
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Clair E. George
Committee conceptualizes operations, setting goals and
timetables.
It also manages budgets and paramilitary logistics,
including such details as “which weapons will be shipped,
which secret warehouse goods uses and which middlemen
will deliver them to clandestine airstrips.” The decisions
are ratifified by the National Security Planning Group,
which includes the president and key national security
advisers.
George became obsessed with the 1984 kidnapping and
execution of CIA agent William Buckley in Beirut by the
Islamic Jihad, according to the Post.
The kidnapping was personally anguishing since he had
served in Beirut when two U.S. government officials were
abducted and held hostage for four months.
“This was like all of Clair’s bad dreams revisited,” the
Post quoted a source. “He just about turned the building
(CIA headquarters) and our capabilities, and the limits of
our imagination to get Buckley back.
But North, who took over the task of setting up a private
network for the Nicaraguan Contras, soon required the
help of the CIA in his operations and George took part in
planning the arms for hostage deal, according to the
Tower report.
The day after Reagan signed the Jan. 17, 1986 finding
authorizing direct U.S. sale of arms to Iran, George met
with North, former National Security Adviser John Poin
dexter and CIA General Counsel Stanley Sporkin (Unive
risty alumni from the class of ’53) to plan “Operation
Recovery,” the code name for the arms for hostage deal.
George and the CIA provided assistance to North for the
transfer of the arms, but the continuing investigation into
the ClA’s role in the affair may show that the CIA was
more involved than has been previously admitted, some
CIA watchers say.
“I would find it hard to believe that he was not
knowledgeble about funding the Contras. It’s coming out
that Casey himself was working closely with North,” said
Ma'rchetti. “George would have had to have known what
was going on ”
Said Lou Wolf, a writer with Covert Action a CIA
watchdog magazine, “There’s no question (George’s) got
to be one of the most central people in Iran-Contra
scandal. I’m sure investigators will be very interested in
Mr. George.”
Former CIA agent John Stockwell an outspoken critic
of the agency believes the CIA has been running amok
during the last five years “breaking laws, running destab
liziation programs all over the world.”
“Clair George has been presiding over these brutal CIA
operations for two and a half years. They couldn’t have
been done without his knowledge,” Stockwell said.
With Casey gone, and FBI Director William Webster
expected to replace him, it is unclear what George’s
future will be as Congress and the nation watch covert
operations much more closely.
David Holiday, a staff member of the Senate Intelligen
cy committee said George’s future at the agency is “a
personnel matter solely up to Judge Webster if he is
confirmed.”
Said George: “My future is now. I’m getting older and I
suppose the next step around is leaving government. But I
don’t perceive that happening for a few years.”
The Daily Collegian Friday, May 1, 1987—3
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