(5 of 5)
The special operations division, meanwhile, was getting into even deeper trouble. The source was Yellow Fruit, which had been assigned to keep watch over the other special operations units to make sure they preserved secrecy. In 1983 two of the unit's officers complained that their commander, Lieut. Colonel Dale Duncan, was trying to cover nearly $90,000 in missing funds with phony receipts. Colonel Robert Kvederas, the new commander of special operations, asked Longhofer, who had become military liaison with the CIA, to investigate. Longhofer initially concluded that Duncan's accusers could not prove their charges. But Jerry King of ISA sent the accusers to higher-ups. He later boasted to associates that he had "blown the whistle" on his old rivals.
A spate of investigations and prosecutions ensued; some are still not finished. Last year an Army court convicted Duncan of financial improprieties and security violations; he is now serving a seven-year sentence in the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Longhofer was court-martialed on charges of disobeying an order not to involve himself with his old special operations group and of not conducting a thorough investigation of Duncan. A dozen other officers were investigated for alleged irregularities. Several resigned; although the Army found no basis for prosecuting them, they feared that their careers were effectively ended.
The secret Army still exists, but it seems quiescent for the moment. Most of Seaspray's aircraft have been parceled out to other units. The ISA is also still around; last year it had an agent under deep cover in Beirut, according to an Oliver North computer message inadvertently printed in the February Tower commission report.
Yet the troubles these units have experienced raise questions about whether the Pentagon ever can -- or should -- develop a covert operations and intelligence capacity to handle paramilitary missions that are beyond the scope of the civilians in the CIA. In some form there may be a legitimate need for secret, specially trained units to operate in behalf of approved U.S. foreign policy goals. Looking back on the secret operations he helped to begin, General Meyer, who retired as Army Chief of Staff in 1983, muses, "I think the lesson is that whatever kind of operation we conduct needs to have oversight. And somehow there has to be an accommodation between the oversight side and the operations side. Because these are the wars of today and tomorrow." No military mistake, of course, is as classically disastrous as planning to refight the last war.