William Barr’s ‘Deep State’ resume: Cover-ups, covert ops, and pardons
“I started off in Washington at the Central Intelligence Agency and went to law school at night while I was working at CIA,” recalled William Barr in a 2001 oral…
“I started off in Washington at the
Central Intelligence Agency and went to law school at night while I was
working at CIA,” recalled William Barr in a 2001 oral history for the University of Virginia.
Trump’s nominee to be attorney general
has what Trump might call “deep state” credentials. Barr came to Langley
in 1973. He was a 23-year-old graduate of Columbia with a master’s in
political science and Chinese studies. His resume
shows he toiled at the CIA by day and attended George Washington
University law school at night. The Watergate scandal was ravaging the
agency’s reputation and destroying the presidency of Richard Nixon.
A close examination of Barr’s legal career indicates a high tolerance for presidentially sanctioned law-breaking.
Barr spent four formative years in the
Intelligence Directorate and the Office of Legislative Counsel. He even
made the acquaintance of CIA director George H.W. Bush. In 1977 Barr
moved on to a prestigious clerkship for a federal judge and then a
series of jobs in private practice and the Justice Department. In 1991,
Bush, now president, appointed Barr to be attorney general.
At age 41, Barr was one of the youngest
men ever to hold that office. He left after one year and went on to a
long career in corporate law and public service. Barr now returns to his
old job at the behest of besieged President Trump.
Barr’s confirmation hearings open this
week amid questions about the legality of the president’s conduct toward
Russian state agents and FBI investigators.
Will Barr protect the investigation of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller? Or will he act on a tightly argued memo in which he claimed Mueller has already exceeded his authority?
In his first turn as attorney general in
1991, Barr handled three legal issues of deep concern to the CIA. He
helped resolve all three issues favorably for the agency’s leaders and
the president. Barr’s decisions were unfavorable to law enforcement,
Congress, and the voters.
Bank of Fear
The first deep state fiasco handled by
Attorney General Barr was the mother of all scandals, known by the
sibilant initials, BCCI.
The Bank of Credit and Commerce
International was a global institution, which deputy CIA director Robert
Gates described, slightly more accurately, as “the Bank of Crooks and
Criminals.” David Ignatius dubbed it “The Bank of Fear.”
BCCI was a shadowy but very real
institution with connections to governments and intelligence services
all over the world. BCCI’s owners specialized in evading regulators so
that they could speculate and bribe with the depositors’ money. As the
fraud mounted and spread, law enforcement officials and bank regulators
the world over discovered what the CIA had been trying to hide.
Senate investigators, led by John Kerry, found the agency had numerous BCCI accounts. Kamal Adham, the former chief of Saudi intelligence and a CIA collaborator, played a leading role in the bank’s dealings.
The final report of the Kerry Committee
captures the mind-boggling scale of BCCI’s corruption. It was the kind
of true story that makes people believe there is a “deep state.”
In 1991, federal prosecutors in Tampa
launched an investigation of money laundering at BCCI. The District
Attorney of Manhattan investigated a broad array of bank activities and
found itself getting zero cooperation from colleagues in the Justice
Department and CIA. Barr sat on the influential deputies committee of
the National Security Council, which controlled the paperwork.
“We couldn’t get records. We couldn’t get
witnesses. We could barely get a meeting,” said John Moscow, the lead
BCCI prosecutor in Manhattan, in a recent interview.
Barr was up for confirmation as attorney
general. Moscow said he heard that Democrats on the Judiciary Committee
made Barr promise to let the BCCI investigation go ahead.
“We didn’t have a problem once Barr was
in there,” Moscow said. “We got cooperation. We prosecuted seventeen
people here in New York. Of course, the biggest guys got away.”
Several of the BCCI ringleaders were
indicted, but they got away. Barr did not press Pakistan for their
extradition, nor did his successors in the Clinton administration.
Iraq-Gate
Barr played a more direct role in
sidelining an investigation into an Italian bank that the CIA used to
funnel aid to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The scandal was known,
briefly, as Iraq-gate.
The backdrop was the geopolitics of the
horrific war between Iran and Iraq in 1980-88, which killed millions. In
the interests of harming Iran, President Bush authorized a program of
covert support for Iraq, including the provision of targeting
intelligence and commercial loan guarantees. The latter were made via
the Atlanta branch of the Banco Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL).
The story was politically potent because
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
President Bush had to raise an international military coalition to drive
him out.
The Iraq-gate story illustrated how, once
again, a U.S. covert operation had backfired. The Iraqi dictator had
been emboldened by the covert support of the CIA to launch a war on a
weaker American ally.
“Were the
intelligence services of the U.S., Britain and Italy all aware of—and
participants in—the West’s secret, unlawful arming of Saddam?” asked New York Times columnist William Safire. “Of
course; but the stonewalling strategy of the departing Justice
politicians is to have the C.I.A. take the gaspipe for all the
wrongdoers.”
One of those “departing Justice
politicians” was Barr. He made sure CIA did not “take the gaspipe,”
i.e., commit suicide. Under pressure to appoint a special prosecutor to
investigate, Barr slyly appointed a special examiner, a magistrate with
much less time and money. A retired judge conducted a cursory
investigation and absolved both the CIA and Justice Department of
wrongdoing.
Incoming president Bill Clinton was not interested in investigating the CIA, and the BNL case was forgotten.
Barr later dismissed the Iraq-gate
allegations as “nonsense.” But there was no doubt Hussein had received
billions of dollars’ worth of loan guarantees via the U.S. branch of
BNL. How that happened was never determined.
Barr, more than anyone, made sure the Iraq-gate scheme was not fully investigated.
Iran-Contra Pardons
With President Trump reserving the
possibility that he might pardon former aides indicted by Mueller,
Barr’s handling of the Iran-Contra pardons of 1992 is revealing.
President Bush had been defeated for
reelection; Barr urged Bush to use his pardon power freely before
leaving office. Like Trump today, Bush was under investigation by a
special prosecutor, Judge Lawrence Walsh, for his role in the
Iran-Contra conspiracy.
Also under investigation were former
defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and two top CIA officials, Clair
George and Dewey Clarridge. They had all plotted to evade a
congressional ban on aid to the counterrevolutionaries in Central
America by illegally selling weapons to Iran.
The CIA was in real danger. The trials of
George and Clarridge promised to be a public relations nightmare or
worse. Sen. Pat Moynihan, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
had introduced a bill to abolish the clandestine service. The Cold War
was coming to an end, and the agency’s future was in doubt.
In his oral history, Barr says he urged
Bush to pardon the CIA men on the grounds that they were victims of the
“criminalization” of foreign policy. When it came to pardon power, Barr
said he “favored the broadest” use.
“There were some people arguing just for Weinberger, and I said, ‘No, in for a penny, in for a pound.’”
Bush took his advice. Barr had no respect
for the special prosecutor’s work and no regrets about consigning it to
history. Walsh accused Bush of hiding criminal misconduct, but the
former president and aides escaped justice.
In all three cover-ups, Barr sacrificed
the interests of transparency and accountability to the political needs
of Langley and the White House.
Can President Trump count on the same if Barr is confirmed? Yes, he almost certainly can.
Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State,
a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter
and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an
editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at
Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and
co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His
latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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