THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412290427
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
As CIA director, R. James Woolsey was controversial within the agency and increasingly combative within inter-agency groups as well as with Congress.
``He's a lawyer who seems to enjoy the combat more than solving the problem,'' one intelligence veteran said.
Almost from the time he took over the agency, Woolsey exhibited a ``tin ear'' to the politics of his situation. He fought in 1993 to keep the CIA budget intact, when Congress and Clinton administration were making major cuts in national security spending.
When the Ames case exploded in public in February 1994, Woolsey did not take immediate steps against agency employees who were involved. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., the outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, charged that Woolsey acted like a civil liberties lawyer rather than the manager of a covert agency that had failed to keep its secrets.
After CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz in September identified 23 present and former employees as being lax or failing to perform adequately in the Ames case, Woolsey settled on a mild response in letters of reprimand to only 11, eight of them retired.
Woolsey attempted to shape the CIA's role by making small changes. He brought in Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor, to make national intelligence estimates more relevant and defended the agency's study of such topics as Soviet organized crime activities, environmental problems and world trade.
In the wake of the Ames spy case, he attacked the culture of the CIA's operations directorate, the agency's clandestine side, encouraging the merger of case officers and analysts in some areas.
Although Woolsey became the defendant on the part of the agency in the unprecedented sexual discrimination case brought by a former female station chief, he worked to put more women in high agency jobs than any of his predecessors.
Woolsey stepped down shortly before the CIA director's central planning role as head of the intelligence community is to be supplanted by a presidential commission, initially proposed by Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee and an old friend of Woolsey's. The 17-person, bipartisan group, whose yearlong study is to be chaired by former defense secretary Les Aspin, is charged with reshaping the intelligence community's roles and missions for the future.
After talking to the White House on Wednesday, Warner said: ``Intelligence now has the president's attention. He's going to find more time for it on his schedule and wants a strong intelligence budget.''
Warner also said there now is a new ``opportunity for restructuring the intelligence community with the convergence of new CIA director and the start of the new presidential commission.''
In a letter to Clinton, Woolsey said his family figured ``prominently'' in his decision to resign. A compulsive worker who once told a reporter that he arose before 5 a.m. to prepare for each day, Woolsey said he wanted to repay his wife and children ``for their patience and understanding in the face of lost evenings, weekends and holidays.''
KEYWORDS: RESIGNATION by CNB