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The Guy with the Secrets
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 08/21/2011 14:28:45

Racing around this morning and I was going to post an open blog, then ran across this:
Clair George, Spy and Iran-Contra Figure, Dies at 81

Worth a read, especially with your tin foil hat on. This is the guy that would be the bad-good guy in every Bourne movie.

Some snips:
The Washington Post Magazine in 1992 quoted a colleague as calling Mr. George “a top-notch street man” who operated in what spies call the “night soil circuit” — the less desirable posts of the world. He worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He was the C.I.A.’s station chief in Beirut when civil war erupted there in 1975. He then volunteered to replace the Athens station chief, who had just been assassinated by terrorists.

Bob Woodward, in his 1987 book, “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987,” said veteran spies regarded Mr. George as “an old warhorse symbol of the C.I.A. at its best and proudest.”

In The Post, Richard Viets, a Foreign Service officer who was in India at the same time as Mr. George and who went on to become an ambassador, said Mr. George had the perfect personality for the agency. “He exudes trust and friendliness,” he said, “but in fact is duplicitous as hell.”

Mr. George’s loyalty to the C.I.A., however, was unshakable — and ultimately wrecked his career. He was convicted in 1992 of lying to Congressional committees and a grand jury to keep from disclosing what he knew about the agency’s participation in the Reagan administration’s illegal scheme to sell arms to Iran and divert profits from the sales to help the contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Mr. George said that his conscience was clear and that he felt like “a pawn in a continuous drama of political exploitation.” Earlier, he had explained that he had been “almost megalomaniacal” in striving to use his testimony to Congress to “protect the agency.”

Mr. Walsh wrote that the verdict refuted the view that the illegal operation had been confined to the White House and showed that it in fact extended to various agencies, like the Defense and State Departments, as well as the C.I.A. He said that if Mr. George had told the truth to Congress, the wrongdoing could have been stopped years sooner.

[Bold highlights mine]

Have a great day!
 

4 comments (Latest Comment: 08/22/2011 00:43:21 by Will in Chicago)
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