As a pro in the business of espionage, William Casey operated in a world of manipulated fact and disinformation, a place where candor is rarely considered a virtue and anyone asking questions should be treated with suspicion. No, he insisted from the first, he knew nothing about money from Iranian arms sales being funneled to the contras. Even Richard Secord, who helped oversee the diversion of funds and testified on Capitol Hill last week about his meetings with Casey, could not say with certainty whether the CIA director knew.
Now, despite indications that other witnesses may tell the House-Senate Iran-contra hearings that Casey knew more, much more, than he admitted, a great deal is likely to remain forever uncertain. Said Republican Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont after the CIA director died of pneumonia last week, following several months of illness: "There are some things about this scandal that he takes to the grave. Knowing Bill Casey, I think he'd prefer it that way."
His public manner, and sometimes his personal demeanor, seemed designed to keep secrets. He mumbled and seemed to bumble, and wherever he worked in his dozen years as a top federal official, his desk and even his clothes suggested a mindless disarray. When the Tower commission tried to find out why a memo Casey had written about the Iran-contra affair never reached the White House, his aide's explanation seemed almost plausible: Casey had put it in the wrong Out box.
Yet behind the befuddled pose lurked one of Washington's shrewdest and most agile minds -- an avid reader with a remarkable memory. Casey's skills at deception, in fact, helped him launch his career with the secretive Office of Strategic Services in World War II (he planted spies in Nazi-occupied Europe) and finally brought him his last and highest post, as a CIA director who particularly favored covert operations.
Toward the end of his distinguished if always faintly controversial career, however, Casey's reputation for keen intellect seemed at odds with his testimony before members of Congress last Dec. 10. To pointed inquiries on Iranscam, he repeatedly answered, "I don't know." The Senate Intelligence Committee had planned to quiz him on Dec. 16, but he suffered a seizure the day before and then underwent surgery for a cancerous tumor in his brain. He never recovered, and spent his last months in and out of hospitals.
Throughout his private and public career, Casey had been supremely self- confident and aggressive. Born in New York City, he was a postwar success as an attorney, a university lecturer on law and the author of humdrum books like How Federal Tax Angles Multiply Real Estate Profits. Not a humble man, he once boasted, "I was never in a law firm where I wasn't bringing in 75% of the business."