WASHINGTON — After nearly two decades on the sidelines, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, the legendary CIA officer who played a key role in the Reagan administration's secret war in Nicaragua, is back in the game -- this time in Iraq and as a private citizen.
Clarridge has launched his own self-financed investigation into alleged prewar financial dealings between Saddam Hussein's regime and France and Russia. And he has arranged to keep U.S. intelligence agencies briefed on what he uncovers.
"It will be a huge bombshell if we can pull it off," Clarridge said in a recent interview, adding that he was collaborating with several people he preferred not to identify. "I think the White House will be delighted."
During his 33-year CIA career, Clarridge earned a reputation as a hard-liner who was not afraid to take chances. It was his idea to undermine Nicaragua's leftist government in the 1980s by mining its harbors -- a ploy the World Court later ruled illegal. In 1991, three years after retiring with an official reprimand, Clarridge was indicted for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. He was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush before going to trial.
Now, as the current Bush administration struggles with the delicate task of transferring power to a new government in Baghdad while trying to fend off insurgents and placate allies, Clarridge has reemerged as a freelancer.
He has lost none of his fire.
Clarridge is offering unpaid advice to Iraqi political figures, including Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial exile leader long favored by the Bush administration but now suspected of leaking U.S. secrets to Iran. Clarridge scoffs at those allegations, and at a recent U.S.-backed raid on Chalabi's Baghdad offices.
"The raid ... did him a great favor by destroying his reputation as a U.S. toady," he said. "In the old days, we would have orchestrated an operation like that to boost his credentials."
Clarridge has been advising Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress faction on what kind of intelligence agency the new Iraqi government should build.
His idea of a good intelligence agency came through in his stinging criticism of the present-day CIA, which he believes has grown far too cautious. "An intelligence agency has to take risks, and it's going to get into a little -- and sometimes a lot -- of trouble," he said.
After he retired from the CIA, Clarridge took an executive position in defense firm General Dynamics' international marketing division.
