WASHINGTON (AP) The late CIA Director William J. Casey turned to the Saudi Arabian government for money and help when it became clear that his own effort to create a secret anti-terrorist force was not going to work, according to excerpts published Sunday of a forthcoming book by Bob Woodward.

The book also describes Casey as an action-oriented man who was “struck by the overall passivity of the president …” And the book says that Casey, although a student of President Reagan, never “figured him out.”

Woodward also provides details of what he says was Casey’s deathbed confession of his knowledge of the diversion of Iran arms profits to the Nicaraguan contra rebels.

Casey’s impatience with the CIA’s emphasis on intelligence gathering rather than covert action reached a peak in 1985 when the administration was anxious to assert itself in the Middle East after terrorists had bombed U.S. facilities in Beirut, the book says.

“All the bold planning was going to be a wasted effort,” Woodward wrote. “After four years of frustration with his agency and Congress, Casey had reached the breaking point. He decided to go ‘off the books,’ to go outside normal CIA channels and turn instead to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi intelligence service …

“King Fahd pledged $3 million of Saudi money for the operation, enabling Casey and the Reagan administration to circumvent both the CIA and Congress, which would normally provide funds for covert operations.”

Excerpts from Woodward’s book, “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987,” appeared in Sunday editions of The Washington Post and in the newspaper’s magazine supplement.

The book said that Casey, working with the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, was able to have several covert actions undertaken. Bandar remains in the post.

One, the assassination attempt on Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, leader of the militant Hezbollah faction in Lebanon, failed. Instead, 80 bystanders were killed by the car bomb that had been intended for him in March 1985, the book said. A payment of $2 million in food, medicine and educational expenses later got Fadlallah to curb his anti-Western violence, the book said.

The Saudis also helped funnel money to Chad for use against Libya, the book said. Finally, the Saudis supplied $2 million to influence the May 1985 election in Italy to prevent the communists from making gains, the book said.

Casey was “keenly aware that Congress had no stomach for covert action in Western Europe,” and “the two operations were never traced to the Saudis or exposed,” the book said.

Calls to the Saudi Embassy in Washington seeking comment on the report were not immediately returned on Sunday.

In the book and in an interview with CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes,” Woodward described when, after eluding CIA security, he got to Casey’s hospital room.

“He was dying. It was not the Casey I knew physically,” Woodward said. “And so I got one question, and … that question was: ‘You knew about the diversion, didn’t you?’… And he nodded. … And I said ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘I believed.'”

Asked what Casey “believed,” Woodward answered, “That we can change the world. That we can reshape it. That we can support the contras, and we can do what he used to call ‘these things’—covert action.”

Casey died May 6 of complications after being diagnosed as having a malignant brain tumor.

Casey was a man of action “who would see to it personally” that his plans were carried out, even going so far as to plant an electronic eavesdropping device in the office of a senior official of a Middle Eastern country, according to the book.

The planting occurred shortly after he took over the agency in 1981 because other CIA officials were reluctant to take action, the book said. One version is that Casey put the bug in a book that he presented as a gift to the official.

“One senior agency officer insisted that the story was apocryphal, but others said it was true” Woodward wrote. “Among several Directorate of Operations (DO) officers, it was accepted gospel.

“Casey only smiled when I asked about this incident several years later. But he glowered dramatically when I mentioned the name of the country and the official. He said that should never, never be repeated or published.”

Woodward, in the interview with “60 Minutes,” said Casey was prepared to use just about any means to achieve his ends.

“Once you get outside the border of the United States, as far as Casey was concerned, there’s no law. It’s … get the job done,” Woodward said.

“At one point Casey got frustrated. He couldn’t get the people out in the (CIA) stations to do the dirty work … He goes off himself, and he says, ‘… I’ll do it myself.'”

Woodward said Casey would have liked to deal with terrorists the way the Soviet Union did when some of their diplomats were kidnapped by the radical Hezbollah faction in Lebanon.

“The Soviets went and kidnapped … somebody in Hezbollah, killed him, stuffed his testicles in his mouth, and sent the body back. And the next day, Hezbollah released the other three Soviet diplomats unharmed. Casey said, ‘The Soviets understand the language of Hezbollah,'” Woodward said.

The book portrays Casey as an action-oriented man who quickly grew impatient with bureaucrats and whose work ethic, shaped by the Depression, World War II and a humble upbringing, made him see Reagan as “lazy and distracted.”

Casey had managed Reagan’s 1980 election campaign.

“Casey was attracted to the variety in Reagan’s life—sportscaster, actor, labor union officer, governor and conservative spokesman with stamina,” Woodward wrote. “It mirrored somewhat the variety in Casey’s—lawyer, author, Office of Strategic Services spymaster in World War II … and former government official. They had both seen the Depression and four wars.”

Nonetheless, Woodward wrote: “Casey found Reagan strange … Casey was a serious student of Reagan, but he said he had not yet figured him out.

“Casey continued to be struck by the overall passivity of the president—passivity about his job and his approach to life.”