CIA Official Retiring From Key Spy Operations Post

Richard F. Stolz, who guided the Central Intelligence Agency’s key operations directorate as the agency recovered from the trauma of the Iran-Contra scandal, plans to retire at the end of the year and is expected to be replaced by his deputy, Thomas A. Twetten, CIA Director William H. Webster announced Thursday.

The post of deputy director for operations probably most closely resembles the public image of what being a senior CIA official is all about. Its holder is in charge of the agency’s secret operations, from the recruiting of individual spies to the running of vast covert operations.

A second high-level official, the deputy director for intelligence, handles the agency’s huge staff of analysts.

Twetten, 55, has served as Stolz’s deputy for two years. He is expected to take over his new post Jan. 1. Chief of operations for the Near East during the Iran-Contra period, Twetten participated in a few meetings with former National Security Council aide Oliver L. North and Iranian middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar as the two discussed possible arms sales to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s government.

Twetten’s conduct was not called into question in the investigations of the scandal.

Stolz, who had retired in 1981, was asked to return in 1988 to take over the operations job at a time when the agency was being rocked by internal investigations of its role in the scandal. The investigations led to the firing of two senior officers, Joe Fernandez and Jim Adkins, for their roles in aiding the anti-government Contra rebels in Nicaragua and formal reprimands to four others.

Stolz, who will turn 65 in November, is a career CIA employee who spent 34 years with the agency. “Fifteen years of his career were spent overseas, including service in Europe,” the agency said, in typically cryptic fashion, in announcing his retirement.

Webster, praising Stolz in a prepared statement, commented particularly on his role in developing “human intelligence”--the agency’s term for spies--a matter that has been a high priority for both Webster and President Bush. Many critics had charged that during the 1970s and 1980s the CIA had neglected human intelligence in favor of too much reliance on satellites and other advanced technology.