The New York Daily News - OpEd Page - Wednesday, Sept. 24, 1997
Scandal may be CIA's conduct
By Lars-Erik Nelson
Washington -- In their obsession with which telephone Vice President Gore
may have used to raise campaign money, Senate investigators have glided
past a far bigger scandal: CIA interference in U.S. politics.
The case is put most starkly by Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ): "What's
the CIA doing making an undercover call to the head of the Democratic
National Committee?"
If Torricelli is right -- and testimony appears to support him -- the
CIA's operations division lobbied to help one of its intelligence assets,
oilman Roger Tamraz, get into the White House to peddle an oil pipeline
scheme.
In the process of helping Tamraz, an operations officer identified only
as Bob used a cover identity when talking to DNC Chairman Don Fowler.
Whoops! That's called covert operations -- and the CIA is not
supposed to run operations on U.S. soil, let alone against a U.S. political
party.
"Tamraz played the system like an organ," says an intelligence official.
Seeking U.S. support for a planned pipeline out of the Caspian Sea oil
fields, he first used a retired CIA official, Ed Pechous, to secure an
appointment with National Security Council staffer Sheila Heslin.
Then, when Heslin had doubts about Tamraz' trustworthiness, current
CIA officials sanitized his shady biography. Then Bob repeatedly lobbied
the NSC on Tamraz' behalf, Heslin testified.
In addition, Bob called Gore's office to help Tamraz, officials said.
The DNC staff had warned Fowler against Tamraz. Then, last Oct. 18,
Bob telephoned Fowler about helping to get Tamraz into the White House.
Bob -- his full identity is classified -- admitted to Senate investigators
that he may not have told Fowler who he actually was.
Funny -- Fowler has been accused of trying to manipulate the CIA to
help Tamraz as a pay-off for Tamraz' $300,000 in Democratic campaign
contributions last year.
But the CIA went to bat for Tamraz well before he made his first
contribution, and the sequence of calls shows that the CIA initiated the
contact with Fowler, not vice versa.
"The amazing thing to me is that this Bob of the CIA was nothing short
of an agent for Tamraz and his pipeline scheme," Sen Richard Durbin (D-
Ill.) said in a telephone call yesterday. "Bob was working overtime to get
Tamraz into the White House to change U.S. policy."
Why should the CIA help Tamraz? (A) He was a long-time intelligence
asset in the Middle East. (B) Maybe his pipeline would further U.S.
interests in the Caspian region. Or (C) He had a practice of hiring CIA
officers after they retired. If CIA agents could help him score a $2 billion
pipeline project, they might be feathering their own nests.
The CIA likes to claim that it works only for the President. But in this
case, Durbin said, "Tamraz had the CIA in his back pocket." The White
House was the target.
Perhaps most amazing of all, Bob says he had no idea who Fowler was
when he called him.
Imagine: a CIA operations officer calling the chairman of the
Democratic National Committee to vouch for Tamraz -- without knowing
whom he was talking to.
Fowler, for his part, was much ridiculed for saying that he had no
recollection of talking to the CIA. Now that claim becomes a little more
understandable.
This may be a comedy of errors, a sinister plot, mere greed on the part
of government officials looking toward an easy retirement or more
evidence of a CIA that carries out its own policies for its own purposes.
In any case, says New Jersey's Torricelli, "This has crossed the line
from campaign finance abuses into an intelligence problem."
What an irony: The congressional investigation into campaign finance
abuses began with the suspicion that China and other mysterious foreigners
may have tried to buy their way into the American political system.
Now we find that the clearest example of someone's buying political
access for cash in an attempt to change U.S. policy -- Tamraz -- had the
active support of the CIA. As Walt Kelly said, We have met the enemy,
and it is us.
