Stolz Was Insulated From Contra Scandal by 6-Year Hiatus : CIA Undercover Network Chief Named

The Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday named Richard F. Stolz, a veteran undercover agent who had retired in 1981, to take over next month as deputy director for operations, the senior CIA official in charge of clandestine intelligence activities abroad.

Stolz, long a friend of CIA Director William H. Webster, will succeed Clair E. George, who announced Nov. 25 that he would retire at the end of the year. George had come under criticism after congressional hearings indicated that some CIA undercover employees were more deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair than previously had been revealed.

Stolz’s selection to head the intelligence community’s most secret and politically sensitive division surprised some outside analysts, who had predicted that Webster would look within the agency for George’s successor.

Insulated From Scandal

However, some outsiders noted, Stolz’s six-year hiatus insulates him from the taint of the Iran-Contra scandal, making his selection more acceptable to the CIA’s overseers on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Some former agency officials also said that Stolz was well-liked during his 31 years with the intelligence agency and predicted that his return would be welcomed by most in the CIA’s clandestine service. He has received the agency’s distinguished intelligence service medal, its highest award.

His new job will place him in charge of all CIA undercover activities, from the routine assignments of agents to normal intelligence-gathering to so-called covert missions, in which clandestine officers actively work to influence overseas events.

Covert operations, the most controversial CIA activity, can range from paramilitary actions--such as U.S. military support for resistance fighters inside Afghanistan--to more mundane efforts, such as moves to counter Soviet propaganda.

Task of Reforms

Stolz also will face the task of carrying out reforms in the agency’s operation that Webster may order as the result of a recently completed internal review of the CIA’s role in the Iran-Contra affair. The review, conducted by Webster’s special counsel, Russell Bruemmer, was completed early this month.

Webster said in a prepared statement Tuesday that Stolz’s experience in the agency’s clandestine service “eminently qualifies him to fill this most important position.”

Stolz, 62, was chief of the CIA’s European division at the agency’s McLean, Va., headquarters during the Carter Administration. He retired in 1981 after apparently being passed over for promotion by the Reagan Administration’s first director of central intelligence, William J. Casey, outside analysts said.

Previously, Stolz served a series of assignments in Washington and in European capitals under cover of the State Department.

Baker said that Stolz is currently a private consultant with clients in the national security community.

“Dick Stolz is great,” former CIA Director Stansfield Turner, a close friend of Webster’s, told the Associated Press in an interview. “He has a broad grasp of the agency and its role. And he has the morals and ethics to obey the law and yet get the job done.

“The fact that he didn’t last long under Casey stands him in good stead,” Turner added. “He’s not tarred by the improprieties of Casey’s era.

“In 1981, Stolz left because he did not agree with Casey and the way he was running things,” Turner said.

Stolz is a 1949 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College, the alma mater of Webster, who was graduated in 1947. He served as an Army infantryman in Europe during World War II.