William Joseph Casey

Background

William J. Casey was born on 13 March 1913 in Elmhurst, New York, in a middle-class Irish-Catholic family.

Education

He received degrees at Fordham University in 1934 and Saint John's University Law School in 1937.

Career

Rather than practice law, Casey went to work for a company that published digests of federal regulatory and tax matters. In 1950 Casey left the company to found a competing business, which eventually made him rich. Commissioned a lieutenant in the navy in 1943, Casey ended up in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA's forerunner. He successfully ran a network of agents who parachuted into Germany to radio back information about bombing targets. After the war Casey elected not to remain in intelligence work, despite considering it the most exciting thing he had ever done. He returned to New York and for most of the next twenty years devoted himself to making money. He was a venture capitalist, investing in a variety of start-up businesses. Again he was successful, but he also earned a reputation for his fast and loose methods. He was frequently sued, something he regarded merely as an occupational hazard.

By the mid-1960 Casey was ready to enter politics. He tried his hand at elective politics, losing a 1966 race for Congress. An early and heavy contributor to Richard M. Nixon's successful 1968 campaign for president, he was finally rewarded in 1971 when Nixon nominated him to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

It was an unlikely appointment, and many regarded Casey as the fox sent to guard the henhouse. Casey, however, had cleverly managed to follow the letter of the law while evading its spirit. Bored with the SEC, Casey served briefly as under secretary of state for economic affairs. In 1974 Casey moved on to head the Export-Import Bank for twenty months. Casey resurfaced in politics in 1980 when he was brought on to take over Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign after the Iowa caucuses in which rival George Bush won an upset victory. Reagan's campaign was in trouble. Casey's job was to keep the campaign afloat. Never really interested in political strategy, Casey maintained overall responsibility while giving considerable leeway to subordinates. He is credited with luring James A. Baker, later secretary of state under Bush, from the defeated Bush campaign. Casey ran a private intelligence operation that monitored whether the incumbent Jimmy Carter administration was planning a last-ditch effort to free American hostages held in Tehran by the Iranian government. Casey was rewarded for his work with the CIA directorship, a post he had coveted since the 1960. Casey took over a CIA that had been bludgeoned since the end of Nixon's first term. The mid-1970 revelations of CIA misdeeds, going back to the 19506, had demoralized the agency. Covert operations had been discredited. Many intelligence officers were let go. Casey's predecessor, Stansfield Turner, had placed greater emphasis on passive intelligence gathering and analysis. The agency became, as one historian put it, more bureaucratic and less enthusiastic.

By 1980 conservatives worried that the agency was both operationally ineffective and too sanguine about Soviet intentions. The CIA soon funneled vast amounts of aid to the anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan, making it the largest covert operation undertaken since the Vietnam War. In 1982 it passed the first of the so-called Boland amendments forbidding the CIA from supplying the contras, the rebels fighting the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, with lethal aid.

Casey resigned from the CIA on 29 January 1987 and died on 6 May 1987.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Secret War Against Hitler

    (In his final written testament, the late CIA director chr...)

  • Where and how the war was fought: An armchair tour of the American Revolution

    (Used Very Good Copy. Signed copy. Signed with Inscription...)

Membership

The Knights of Malta

Connections

He was survived by his wife, Sophia, and a daughter.

Wife:

Sophia Kurz

Daughter:

Bernadette Casey Smith

References

• Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey: from the OSS to the CIA