August 20, 2011
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Clair E. George, a consummate spymaster who moved the chess pieces in the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine games of intrigue before being convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-contra affair, died Aug. 11 in Bethesda, Md. He was 81.
The cause was cardiac arrest, said his sister, Gail Marshall. Before Mr. George was sentenced, the first President George Bush granted a full and unconditional pardon to him and five other Iran-contra defendants.
As the C.I.A.’s deputy director of operations for three years of the Reagan administration, the third-highest post in the spy agency, Mr. George was responsible for cloak-and-dagger activities worldwide. He reached this pinnacle after three decades of working as a spy around the world, specializing in recruiting foreign agents to spy on their own countries for the United States.
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 was the highest-ranking C.I.A. officer prosecuted by the independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh in what came to be known as the Iran-contra affair. After a mistrial caused by a hung jury, Mr. George was convicted of two charges of false statements and perjury before Congress. He faced a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines on each count.
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. Suspicions had been raised in October 1986, when an American cargo plane ferrying arms to Nicaraguan rebels was shot down. “George chose to evade, mislead and lie,” Mr. Walsh said.
Mr. George had been indicted in September 1991, partly on the strength of the testimony of an aide who told prosecutors that Mr. George had told him to withhold information from Congress.
However, his devotion to the C.I.A. was appreciated by agency employees and retirees, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his defense and came to his trial to show support. Some volunteered to pore through mountains of classified material assembled for the trial in search of useful evidence. Some suggested that President Ronald Reagan should have been the one on trial, saying that in professing ignorance of Iran-contra, the president was either lying or admitting that he had been asleep at the switch. But investigations by Mr. Walsh, Congress and an independent commission could not pin responsibility on the president.
Clair Elroy George was born in Pittsburgh on Aug. 3, 1930. His family moved several times, ending up in Beaver Falls, Pa., when he was 9. His father was a dairy chemist who worked for the federal Department of Agriculture. As a youth, Mr. George was a drummer in local dance bands and president of the high school student council and worked in a steel mill.
He majored in political science and debated at Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1952. He enrolled in Columbia Law School, but joined the Army instead. He learned Chinese and worked in counterintelligence in the Army in Japan. He joined the C.I.A. after being impressed by agency officers he met in the Far East.
After numerous assignments, in Washington and abroad, he returned to Washington for good in 1979. He placed first out of 100 candidates in a promotions ranking and was put in charge of the agency’s African division. William J. Casey, whom Reagan had named director of central intelligence, appointed Mr. George to successively higher positions. He served as deputy director from 1984 until his retirement in 1987. He then worked as a consultant.
Mr. George’s wife, the former Mary Atkinson, died in 2008. In addition to his sister, he is survived by his daughters, Leslie George and Ann Davies, and three grandchildren.
During Mr. George’s trial, the defense repeatedly tried to inform the jury of his espionage achievements, which prosecutors tried to quash because they might impress jurors. Finally, Judge Royce C. Lamberth told prosecutors they could admit “something equivalent to war-hero status” and leave it at that.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/us/21george.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
