Duane R. Clarridge,
Brash Spy Who Fought Terror
Networks,
Dies at 83
By MARK MAZZETTIAPRIL
10, 2016
Duane R. Clarridge
was a champion of a brawny United States
foreign policy and of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. CreditDennis
Cook/Associated Press
Duane R. Clarridge, a pugnacious American spy who helped
found the C.I.A.’s
Counterterrorism Center, was indicted and later pardoned for his role in the
Iran-contra scandal, and resumed his intelligence career in his late 70s as the
head of a private espionage operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on
Saturday in Leesburg, Va. He was 83.
His lawyer, Raymond Granger, said the cause was
complications of laryngeal and esophageal cancer.
Mr. Clarridge was an unflinching champion of a brawny
American foreign policy and of the particular role played by the C.I.A.’s
clandestine service — a cadre he likened to a secret army that “marches for the
president” and ought to be subjected to as little outside scrutiny as possible.
Mr. Clarridge, widely known by his nickname Dewey, delighted
in the role of rogue. He often arrived at work in white Italian suits or safari
jackets and bragged to other C.I.A. officers about the brilliant ideas he had
conceived while drinking the previous night.
“If you have a tough, dangerous job, critical to national
security, Dewey’s your man,” Robert M. Gates, the former director of central
intelligence and later defense secretary, was quoted as saying in “Casey,” a
1990 biography of William J. Casey, the Central Intelligence Agency’s chief
during the Reagan administration, by Joseph E. Persico. “Just make sure you
have a good lawyer at his elbow — Dewey’s not easy to control.”
He spent years overseas as an undercover officer, but
perhaps his most consequential effort at the spy agency was the creation of the
Counterterrorism Center (then called the Counterterrorist Center) in 1986 after
a string of attacks the previous year, including the hijacking of TWA Flight
847 and the massacres at El Al ticket counters in Rome and Vienna carried out
by the Abu Nidal Organization.
Up to that point, the C.I.A. had devoted little effort to
understanding international terrorism, and Mr. Clarridge persuaded Mr. Casey to
create the center with an unusual arrangement: having undercover spies and
intelligence analysts working together to try to dismantle terrorist networks.
Within a year, C.I.A. operations had significantly weakened the Abu Nidal
organization.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the
Counterterrorism Center has grown into a behemoth, the heart of a spy agency
transformed by years of terrorist hunting.
Mr. Clarridge’s efforts against international terrorism came
as he was becoming ensnared by investigations into the Reagan administration’s
efforts to use proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran to arm the contras, a
Nicaraguan rebel group battling troops of the country’s socialist government,
known as the Sandinistas.
Mr. Clarridge had been in charge of the C.I.A.’s covert war
in Nicaragua in the early 1980s (he told his colleagues that his idea to mine
the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983 came while he was drinking gin at home) and
had developed a close relationship with Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was running
the Iran-contra operation from his perch at the National Security Council.
According to the final report by Lawrence E. Walsh, the
independent counsel investigating the Iran-contra affair, Mr. Clarridge
testified that he had no knowledge that cargo ships sent to Iran to help secure
the release of American hostages contained any weapons. He also denied trying
to solicit money from foreign countries to circumvent a congressional
prohibition against financing the contras.
“In both instances,” the report said, “there was strong
evidence that Clarridge’s testimony was false.”
He was indicted on a charge of perjury in 1991, three years
after he had retired from the agency. President George Bush pardoned him on
Christmas Eve 1992, along with five other Iran-contra figures. He had the
pardon framed, and he eventually hung it in the front hallway of his home near
San Diego so it would be the first thing visitors saw upon entering his house.
But the scandal embittered him, and he used his 1997 memoir,
“A Spy for All Seasons,” to settle some old scores. He lamented in the book
that the C.I.A. had lost its swagger since the end of the Cold War, becoming a
risk-averse organization that was beholden to lawyers and was degenerating
“into something resembling the style, work ethic and morale of the post
office.”
Duane Ramsdell Clarridge was born in Nashua, N.H., on April
16, 1932. Both of his parents (his father was a dentist and his mother a
homemaker) were active in local Republican politics, and the nickname he
carried through life had Republican origins. According to his memoir, a
neighbor in Nashua began calling him Dewey in 1944 in honor of Thomas E. Dewey,
the New York governor who that year ran for president against Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
He joined the C.I.A. in 1955, after getting degrees from
Brown and Columbia, and served undercover in Nepal, India and Italy before
being promoted to run the Latin America division in 1981.
He is survived by a daughter, Cassandra; two sons, Ian and
Tarik; and five grandchildren. His first marriage ended in divorce; his second
wife, Helga, died before him.
More than two decades after his retirement from the C.I.A.,
Mr. Clarridge began working as a government contractor when military officials
in Kabul hired him and a small team to gather information about militant groups
in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Using sources in the region — he identified them
only by cover names, such as Waco and Willi — he would turn their field
dispatches into reports he sent to the military command by encrypted email.
Mr. Clarridge worked for a security firm hired by The New
York Times in December 2008 to assist in seeking the release of a reporter,
David Rohde, who had been kidnapped by the Taliban. Mr. Rohde escaped on his
own seven months later, but Mr. Clarridge used his role in the episode to
promote his spy network to military officials.
The Pentagon canceled the contract in 2010 after the private
spying operation was revealed.
But two years later, after Mr. Clarridge had moved into a
retirement home in Northern Virginia, he told a reporter that he still had his
“network” intact for the future.
In November 2015, Mr. Clarridge was back in the news when
The Times identified him as an adviser to Ben Carson, the retired
neurosurgeon and Republican candidate for president, who had come under
criticism for statements he made about foreign affairs during debates. Asked
about the candidate’s foreign policy acumen, Mr. Clarridge was typically
impolitic.
“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get
one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” he said.
