Casey May Keep Job While Deputy Performs His Duties

William J. Casey, weakened and experiencing speech difficulties, may retain his position as CIA director while the tasks of his office are assigned to a deputy or deputies, senior Administration officials said Wednesday.

This arrangement would avoid replacing Casey, unless he resigns, while he is struggling to recover from surgery in which a malignant tumor was removed from his brain last month.

White House aides are reluctant to discuss even privately the possibility of replacing Casey out of concern that such talk might discourage him. But officials acknowledge that a long-term reassignment of his responsibilities is one option under consideration.

Such an arrangement was used when White House Press Secretary James S. Brady was critically wounded in the assassination attempt on President Reagan on March 30, 1981. Brady retains the title, but his office and duties were given to his deputy, Larry Speakes.

Deputy Stepped In

Deputy CIA Director Robert Gates has been overseeing the agency since a cerebral seizure sent the 73-year-old Casey to the hospital on Dec. 15. He has been reported as among the possible candidates for the director’s job should the Administration decide to find a replacement.

The question of Casey’s return to work has been magnified, according to one source, because he had expressed an intention to resign even before he was stricken. Officials have also been skeptical about his ability to recuperate quickly enough to direct the agency at a time when the intelligence community is caught up in the Iran arms scandal.

Spokesmen at Georgetown University Hospital, where Casey is being treated, said Tuesday that he has “begun radiation therapy, which will continue for a number of weeks.”

The hospital statement said he was in stable condition and slowly improving, but was experiencing speech difficulties and weakness of the right side of his body.

Changes Not Discussed

White House aides have been instructed to avoid discussing possible changes at the agency, in light of the director’s sensitive condition, a source said.

“The White House staff has been fairly strongly admonished not to speculate at all on when or whether Bill Casey will be coming back to the job. Bill Casey will have a say in that,” the source said.

Speakes said that no search for a new director is under way and no list of possible replacements has been assembled.

“There are no plans to replace the director,” he said.

“We are monitoring through the doctors Director Casey’s condition and his recovery,” the White House spokesman said.

However, at least two reports--on ABC News and in the New York Times--have said that Reagan will eventually name a new CIA director.

Wallop Tells of Offer

Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee for eight years, has said he was contacted by a White House aide, whom he would not identify, about the possibility of taking the job.

However, an aide, Janis Budge, said the approach was made shortly after Casey’s surgery and there has been no contact since then.

Casey was hospitalized one day before he was to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the Iran arms sale and diversion of profits to the anti-Sandinista rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

“He’s very much injured in the line of duty,” Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, a long-time friend of Casey, said in an interview Tuesday with the Los Angeles Times.

“The President has been very strong, and correctly so, in not doing anything that would indicate a lack of confidence in the director” and in the chances that he would not recover fully, Weinberger said.

Although Gates has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Casey, he has already encountered some opposition, a senior Administration official said, because there has been talk that he would disband an interagency group handling covert government aid to the rebels trying to overthrow the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan.

But a White House official remarked: “Gates is a strong deputy. I don’t know how things will pan out for Casey, but there is no need to do anything.”