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But one difficulty with Casey's claim of ignorance is that Meese had vaguely cited U.S. intelligence "intercepts" as tipping him off to the fund diversion. Such intercepts normally come from the monitoring of radio and telephone transmissions overseas by the National Security Agency. Technically, Casey has top authority over the NSA. All such intercepts normally go to the CIA, and almost certainly any matter of this importance would reach his desk. It seems incredible that Meese would somehow pick up this information before Casey did. Furthermore, the notion that the Administration had to eavesdrop on foreign communications to find out what its own operatives were up to strikes many in Washington as astonishing.
The Casey style of operating offers one conceivable explanation of how he could have been unaware of the money diversion. "If he likes a project, he will learn every single detail of it," contends a former CIA colleague. "If he doesn't, he won't even bother to look at the file. You might as well throw the file into the trash can." Yet any project that might lead to the release of the American hostages in Lebanon and at the same time fund the contras had to be one that Casey would love dearly. The CIA chief, explains this former associate, "is very loyal to Reagan and likes to please him as much as possible. He knew Congress had handed Reagan a humiliating defeat on the contra aid. He knew Reagan had publicly pledged to explore other avenues of assistance to the contras. No amount of plausible deniability is going to convince me that he did not know and did not tell Reagan."
Certainly Casey was especially eager to free William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut who was seized there on March 16, 1984. The Director wanted Buckley back for strong emotional and personal reasons, but also security considerations: Buckley carried secret information on CIA operatives in much of the Middle East. He knew "his own officers, agents, double agents and contacts in Lebanon," says one CIA insider. "I thought it was vital to get him out," Casey says. The fear that Buckley might be tortured for information by his Shi'ite captors was a real one. In September 1985, after the first delivery of U.S. arms through Israel, the CIA expected Buckley to be freed in return. Instead, the Rev. Benjamin Weir was released. And in the very next month Islamic Jihad announced that Buckley had been executed. Casey says he is "99% sure" that Buckley is indeed dead.
As evidence that the CIA was not violating any laws, agency officials last week cited Casey's action after Congress in 1984 ended military funding of the contras, even through other countries. At that time, the Director sent a worldwide, all-posts message warning that any violation of this ban would be "political dynamite." But a middle-level CIA operative disputed this version from the agency higher-ups. "We all knew any help that got to the contras was good news," this source insisted. "Everybody would inform their superior of a success in the supply effort as soon as possible. I heard my superiors say several times that 'old Bill is going to love this' when news of weapons or fund deliveries arrived. It's not conceivable that Casey would not run to Reagan with the good news as well."