Clair George

Clair Elroy George was born Aug. 3, 1930 in Pittsburgh. His family moved several times, ending up in the western Pennsylvania steel-mill town of Beaver Falls, Pa., when he was 9.

His father was a dairy chemist who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture.

George, nicknamed “Red” because of his hair color, was an academic standout, a musician (drummer) and president of the student council. He worked in a steel mill.

Later he majored in political science and debated at Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1952. He was set to enroll in Columbia Law School when he joined the Army instead in the midst of the Korean War. He learned Chinese and worked in counterintelligence. He joined the CIA after being impressed by agency officers he met in the Far East.

In 1960, George married a CIA secretary, Mary Atkinson; she died in 2008.[1][5] They had two daughters both born in Paris while George was assigned to Bamako, Mali.

As the CIA’s deputy director of operations for three years of the Reagan administration, the third-highest post in the spy agency, 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.

After the Korean War, George joined the CIA in 1955. Through cunning and mettle, he advanced through the ranks of the clandestine service, working in Cold War proxy zones in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. He went from Hong Kong to Paris, from Mali to New Delhi.

The Washington Post Magazine in 1992 quoted a colleague as calling George “a top-notch street man” who operated in what spies call the “night soil circuit”—the less desirable posts of the world.

George served as the CIA’s station chief in Beirut when civil war erupted there in 1975. His successor would be kidnapped and assassinated. The following year he volunteered to replace the Athens station chief, who had just been assassinated by the Revolutionary Organization 17 November for the alleged CIA support of the Regime of the Colonels. This gesture, perhaps more than anything, brought him recognition as a dedicated officer willing to make his safety secondary to the needs of the agency.[1]

George returned permanently to Washington 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 George to successively higher positions, among them as the CIA’s liaison to Congress. He served later as deputy director from 1984 until his retirement in 1987.

George was the recipient of three Distinguished Intelligence Medals from 1983 to 1988 and was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit.

George was the highest-ranking CIA official to stand trial over the biggest White House scandal since Watergate: a White House-led operation to covertly sell weapons to Iran and divert the profits to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras. The operation had been engineered out of the White House by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, who served on the National Security Council staff. North was then aided by CIA Director William Casey. Aspects of the operation violated a congressionally-mandated restriction of overt U.S. support of the Contras. George initially told Congress that CIA was not involved in the operation, and he later apologized for being evasive. He said he was trying to protect the agency.

George would later explain that he had reservations about the operation all along but said he did not push hard enough to stop it outright. "At no time—which maybe I should have—did I dash into the director’s office and say, ‘Hey, Bill, we have got to stop all this stuff,’"  George testified before Congress in 1987, to the Congressional committees investigating the Iran–Contra affair.[1] Called in front of to Congress in 1987, George said he’d been "almost megalomaniacal in trying to prove one thing: that we were not involved in that activity because it would have been illegal." Motivated by loyalty to CIA, he said he had not answered as fully as he might have. He said he had "perceived my charter too small" when initially speaking before Congress, but he added, "I don’t lie, and I did not mean to lie."

Casey died in May 1987. FBI Director William Webster took over CIA with a mandate to clean house. That December, George was asked to retire. In September 1991, George was indicted on 9 counts, including making false statements to Congress. After the first court case ended in a mistrial, George was retried in the fall of 1992 on seven counts, resulting in being found guilty on two charges of false statements to Congressional staff. However, despite years of negligent reporting, George was never "convicted" because he was never sentenced.

Before George was sentenced, President Bush pardoned him on December 24, 1992.[6] On Christmas Eve, President George H. W. Bush pardoned George and several other former administration officials, including former defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger. The special prosecutor immediately thereafter moved to vacate the indictments against George altogether.

At the end, George was found guilty but pardoned under an indictment that was vacated and a law that was eventually held unconstitutional. Notably, he had been found guiltless on several other counts, notwithstanding Senators' wild allegations.

Amid the Iran-contra investigations, George seemed to take the long view of a seasoned operative who knew the nature of politics and spycraft—and their shadowy nexus. He told congressional Iran-Contra investigators in 1987: "This is not the first administration and will not be the last that becomes totally frustrated with its spy service."[1]

In the book and subsequent film adaptation of Charlie Wilson's War, Clair George is referenced in an argument between CIA case officer Gust Avrakotos and Director of European Operations Henry Cravely, portrayed on screen by Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Slattery respectively.

• List of people pardoned or granted clemency by the president of the United States

• Article about Jan Pottker events
• Article about animal rights activists
• Contemporaneous article about Clair George's 10-count felony indictment
• Obituary of Mary George, Clair George's wife