Casey Accuses Durenberger of Harming CIA Sources

In a remarkable public row over the state of the nation’s spying apparatus, CIA Director William J. Casey blasted the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday for “the repeated compromise of sensitive intelligence sources” through “tragically wrong” comments in the news media.

Casey released a bitter letter accusing Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.), the intelligence panel’s chairman, of making “damaging and inadvisable” comments during a lunch with reporters Wednesday in which he suggested that the CIA stick to “professional intelligence” and diminish its role in White House policy-making.

“When congressional oversight of the intelligence community is conducted off-the-cuff through the news media and involves the repeated compromise of sensitive intelligence sources and methods, not to mention unsubstantiated appraisals of performance, it is time to acknowledge that the process has gone seriously awry,” Casey wrote.

‘Disheartening Impact’

He called Durenberger’s statements “unfounded” and warned that they will have a “disheartening impact on our officers overseas and at home.”

Durenberger, generally a strong public backer of Casey’s policies, stated Thursday that some of his remarks had been taken out of context and specifically criticized a Washington Post account of the luncheon, which was attended by about 20 reporters.

“An issue has been created where none exists,” the senator said in a prepared statement Thursday evening. “I continue to fully support Director Casey and the intelligence community, both privately and publicly, and I’m confident that we can continue working toward our long-range goals.”

Casey’s unprecedented letter did not detail the spying sources or methods Durenberger is supposed to have compromised but said only that “public discussion of sensitive information and views revealed in a closed session of an oversight committee is always damaging and inadvisable.”

Called for Closed Meeting

He called for a closed meeting of the intelligence panel to discuss recommendations for the committee’s oversight of spying matters.

Durenberger had offered some praise of Casey during the lunch Wednesday, citing his “professionalism” and “a basic respect” within the intelligence agency for his ability.

But he apparently angered the CIA director by pointing to alleged weaknesses in some CIA programs. Durenberger suggested at one point that the CIA director should be confined to “professional intelligence work” and that the job of advising the White House on new policies--such as covert actions against an enemy--should be left to the President’s national security adviser. That would imply a substantial weakening of Casey’s influence.

In his letter, Casey was rankled by Durenberger’s indications of problems in the quality of information on South Africa and analysts’ forecasts of important political and economic trends such as the rise of Shia fundamentalism.

No ‘Sense of Direction’

“They aren’t getting any sense of direction,” Durenberger said of the analysts. “They aren’t being told what it is, long-range, we need to know about the Soviet Union. They go on elaborating in this year’s (information-gathering) plan on what they were told to do last year.”

Casey called the criticisms “tragically wrong” and stated that “this is the first time you have expressed such concern” about the CIA’s expertise on Soviet matters. Casey said Durenberger’s comments “betray a lack of familiarity” with lengthy intelligence forecasts previously given his committee in which the agency “was far out in front” of world trends.

“Your views on the quality of our work in all of these areas are directly contradicted by statements you and a number of other members of the committee have made privately about the high quality of our work,” Casey wrote. “. . . If the oversight process is to work at all, it cannot do so on the front pages of American newspapers.”

Dispute Over Information

One Senate aide, seeking Wednesday to downplay Durenberger’s remarks even before they were published, sought to depict any differences between the Senate panel and Casey as a dispute over how to gather information, not over its quality.