William J. Casey: Liar & Traitor

Bending the truth in the service of intelligence gathering is as old as spycraft itself, and the history of the CIA right into the new millennium is littered with such instances. But it is worth noting on the 95th anniversary of William J. Casey’s birth that some of this deeply troubled agency’s most intractable problems can be traced to this man who was so addicted to lying that he rarely told the truth to anyone, especially the people who needed to know it like the president of the United States.

Casey was a piece of work, an old-time Wall Street operator who had gotten rich selling tax-shelter strategies by “by bending the rules to the breaking point,” as Tim Weiner put it in Legacy of Ashes, his definitive history of the CIA.

As it was, Casey was to break all the rules as CIA director after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.

He had a massive ego, but no experience in intelligence, and insiders from Gerald Ford to George H.W. Bush, who was CIA director under Ford, were appalled at the choice of a man whose only qualification was that he had raised heaps of cash for the president.

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