CASE OFFICER.Case officers are intelligence officials sent abroad
under cover to recruit spies—foreign officials with access to the
needed information—and acquire intelligence information. Case of-
ficers form the backbone of human intelligence (HUMINT) collec-
tion. In the U.S. government, most case officers are within the ranks
of the Directorate of Operations (DO) in the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), although the Defense HUMINT Service (DH) and
some other parts of the Department of Defense(DOD) also employ
case officers.CASEY, WILLIAM JOSEPH (1913–1987). Director of central intel-
ligence (DCI) during the administration of Ronald Reaganand a con-
troversial figure in the Iran-Contra Affairduring the 1980s. Al-
though a former member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
during World War II, Casey became a successful tax lawyer after the
war and later served in several senior positions in the administrations
of Presidents Richard M.Nixonand Gerald R.Ford, including
chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1973–1974)
and head of the Export-Import Bank (1975). In the 1970s, he also
served as a member of a presidential commission investigating U.S.
intelligence and on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board (PFIAB) until President Jimmy Carterabolished it on the
grounds that its members were too enamored of covert actions.
Aconservative Republican, Casey was President Ronald Reagan’s
campaign chairman. Upon President Reagan’s election, Casey tried
to get the position of secretary of defense, but President Reagan, con-
sidering Casey’s OSS experience, felt he needed him to revitalize
U.S. intelligence. DCI Casey was responsible for an aggressive ex-
pansion of the clandestine service, which had been decimated by his
predecessor, Stansfield Turner. Casey presided over a 25 percent in-
crease in the intelligence budget, whipped the intelligence estima-
tive process into shape, attempted to establish a healthy balance be-
tween human intelligence and technical intelligence collection,
improved competitive analysis, extended CIA’s mandate to study
such new issues as drug trafficking and terrorism, and established
the first fusion center—the Counterterrorism Center(CTC)—in- DCI Casey was also a central figure in the complex sequence
of covert activities that became part of the Iran-Contra Affair. He suf-
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