Study Calls for Ending a Third of Covert Acts

An internal White House review of secret intelligence operations has concluded that nearly one-third of the covert missions authorized by President Reagan should be terminated, informed Administration sources said Saturday.

The review, ordered after the Iran- contra affair, focused on secret intelligence “findings,” such as the one that Reagan signed to allow the sale of arms to Iran. The Tower Commission criticized the White House for failing to monitor the covert operation properly and failing to notify Congress, and Reagan later ordered a review of all other active findings.

Sources said that a decision to cancel nearly one-third of them could indicate a significant scaling back from the emphasis on covert operations as a foreign policy tool under former CIA Director William J. Casey. The sources said that the review targeted covert operations, as distinct from secret intelligence-gathering efforts.

The sources said that National Security Adviser Frank C. Carlucci is more reluctant to use covert operations because of the potential for political backlash, and his views are shared by acting CIA Director Robert M. Gates, who has been more closely associated with the intelligence collection and analysis functions of the agency.

(Saturday night, a White House official denied to the Associated Press that any review had recommended that one-third of all intelligence operations should be terminated. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, refused to indicate whether the review process had resulted in the revocation of any presidential findings.)

Reagan is expected to receive results of the intelligence review shortly, the Post sources said. The review was conducted by a special group under Colin L. Powell, deputy national security adviser, and included representatives from other agencies and the White House.

Although the precise nature of the operations targeted for termination could not be learned, one informed source said many are counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Some were apparently an outgrowth of efforts to free Americans held hostage in Lebanon, the sources said.

Some Called Outdated

The review has found that some operations were outdated and that others had run astray, the sources said. In addition, the review showed that some “findings” were unnecessarily kept active as an umbrella for future operations, although no current missions were under way, the sources said.

More Study Seen

Some of the covert action findings are to be studied longer, officials said. The White House has also decided to keep Powell’s review group for periodic checking of all covert operations. The President’s covert action findings will “come back up on the scope again on a regular basis,” one official said.

Such a regular review was urged by members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during confirmation hearings for FBI Director William H. Webster to head the CIA, and Webster agreed to do so. Webster drew a parallel with an FBI program to review the use of informers.

In the Iran affair, the Tower Commission found that White House officials drew up a covert action finding only after they had started the arms sales to Iran. The report said that the finding was not shown to key policy-makers and that it was wrongly kept from Congress as well.

The Tower Commission said it “found no evidence that an evaluation was ever done during the life of the operation to determine whether it continued to comply with the terms” of the Jan. 17, 1986, finding Reagan had signed approving it.