The thin, slightly stooped figure shuffled inside a cordon of burly bodyguards to take the witness chair in Room 2118 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Staring down at him from their two rows of seats, the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee itched to ask their questions. If anyone should know the dark secrets behind the Iran-contra connection, this was the man. He heads all of the nation's intelligence agencies. He has a special fondness for clandestine operations. He holds Cabinet rank and sits on the National Security Council, and his advice and friendship are deeply valued by the President. The huge oaken doors of the hearing room swung shut.
William Casey, Director of Central Intelligence and boss of the CIA, emerged through the same doors 5 1/2 hours later. He had testified about the growing scandal during all that time without a recess. When it was over, the 73-year-old former New York City lawyer and self-made millionaire seemed drained -- and his inquisitors disturbed. They were appalled mostly by how little the CIA chief professed to know. The head of an intelligence network that has snoops planted in hostile governments around the globe and has eavesdropped on Kremlin officials as they talked on their limousine telephones claimed to be largely uninformed about the most audacious foreign policy venture of his own Government.
"It is shocking that the chief intelligence officer of the U.S. Government seems to know less about this affair than the average American who reads the daily press," declared Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz of New York. Contended Connecticut Democrat Samuel Gejdenson: "If Casey really knows as little as he tried to portray, he ought to be fired for incompetence. And if he knew more, he ought to be fired because the President instructed his people to be forthcoming." Casey had replied "I don't know" to so many questions that the answer began drawing laughter from some committee members. Said Pennsylvania Democrat Peter Kostmayer: "He seemed quite befuddled and confused."
Casey confused? His manner may be bumbling and his mumble legendary, but associates contend that Casey, a speed-reader with an ability to assimilate complex information quickly, has one of the sharpest minds in the Government. "Bill Casey's the brightest guy I've met in my life," declares Stanley Sporkin, a former CIA counsel and now a federal judge. Casey's speech grows softer and less articulate, intimates say, when he does not like the questions being put to him. "His mumble becomes decidedly worse when he has to talk to Congress," notes one old friend. Anne Armstrong, chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, explains that Casey "doesn't spill his guts to anybody without a reason. If we don't ask the right question, we won't get the correct answer." One Congressman who grilled the CIA chief observed, "Casey talked like he was on trial."
In a sense, he was. The CIA's fingerprints have been found all over Iranscam. U.S. arms reached Iran in CIA-chartered cargo planes. Part of the payments for the weapons went into a CIA account in Switzerland. The CIA first directed the covert arming of the contras in Nicaragua; when this was outlawed by Congress in June 1984, the agency monitored the secret resupply of munitions to Ronald Reagan's favorite "freedom fighters."