Iran Contra

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thom 8 24

alternet-no lnx

It's time for Bill Barr to be brought to justice

U.S. Attorney General William Barr meets with states attorneys general on protecting consumers from social media abuse Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in the Cabinet Room of the White House.

Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour

Thom Hartmann August 06, 2024

The Washington Post reported last week that there’s very good reason to believe that Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, organized a $10 million cash bribe to Donald Trump when he was most desperate for the same amount of money during the 2016 election.

American intelligence reported that el-Sisi ordered $10 million in $100 bills be taken from a bank in Egypt — representing a large chunk of that country’s entire US dollar foreign reserves — and have them transported, possibly, to Donald Trump.

As The Washington Post reported:

“Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash. …

“Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, a Washington Post investigation has found.”

If proven, it’d be the worst presidential corruption scandal in American history. And it might have been proven (or disproven) years ago, were it not for the intervention of Trump’s then-Attorney General Bill Barr.

The Washington Post reports that Barr fired two US attorneys in a row — Timothy Shea and Michael Sherwin — in an apparent attempt to make the investigation into the possible Trump bribe go away. His final choice made the investigation go away.

READ ALSO: Trump just entered his 'Fat Elvis' phase

This sort of Republican criminal coverup by Bill Barr shouldn’t surprise us.

There was also a time when George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan were facing the possibility of treason charges, much like Trump is facing with regard to January 6th — both even worse than accepting a bribe like Agnew did.

Who did they call? Bill Barr.

That was in the ’80s and early ’90s, but now we discover that Bill Barr really, truly, definitely also lied to America about presidential treason this decade. And, based on The Washington Post’s reporting, appears to have covered up the possibility that Trump took a $10 million bribe.

In March of 2019, Robert Mueller and the FBI laid out 10 prosecutable incidents of Donald Trump committing felony obstruction of justice, all to cover up the assistance he was seeking and receiving from Russian oligarchs and the Russian government that ultimately helped him win the 2016 election.

Looking back five years ago, seeing the actual documents from the time, Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson noted that Barr’s lies to the American people, to Congress, and to federal judges were “so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence.”

In other words, Barr lied or covered up repeatedly to protect Trump.

And he did it to avoid prosecuting Trump, who we can now see had clearly committed crimes — particularly reaching out to a foreign power for a bribe — that would’ve landed any other American in prison for decades.

Geoffrey Berman’s 2022 book details Barr’s attempts to stop prosecutions of Trump’s friends and co-conspirators, to fire prosecutors with integrity and replace them with toadies who corrupted the Justice Department, and even to focus the police power of government against people Trump considered enemies.

For example, when Trump got pissed at John Kerry, he tweeted that he should be investigated and prosecuted. Immediately Barr jumped into action, as former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman told Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe:

“[T]he statute they wanted us to use was enacted in 1799 and had never been successfully prosecuted. So for about 220 years, this criminal statute had been on the books, and not a single conviction, so we investigated it and John Kerry was entirely innocent, and yet the Justice Department pushed us and pushed us and pushed us and when I declined, Bill Barr did not take no for an answer."

Meanwhile, Barr succeeded in getting Trump’s role in a variety of the felony crimes ignored, including the crime of campaign fraud for paying off Stormy Daniels to keep her mouth shut about Trump having sex with her. The list in Berman’s book is mind-boggling.

And now, as of this week, we can add the possibility of accepting a $10 million bribe from a foreign dictator.

The corruption of law enforcement and the courts is a cardinal characteristic of fascism, which is what Trump and — it turns out, Barr — apparently did to America.

But this shouldn’t surprise us: it’s not Bill Barr‘s first time playing cover-up for a Republican president who had committed crimes that could rise to treason against The United States.

Back in 1992, the first time Bill Barr was U.S. Attorney General, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as “Coverup-General Barr” because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bush’s involvement in “Iraqgate” and the “Iran-Contra” scheme with Iran to steal the election from Jimmy Carter.

Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Earlier that week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.

But Bush’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to leave the White House to retire back to Connecticut, Maine, or Texas (where he had mansions) but, rather, that he may end up embroiled even deeper in the Iran-Contra treason.

In other words, George HW Bush’s concern was that he and his colleagues may face time in a federal prison after he left office.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on him and Reagan, and Bush’s private records, subpoenaed by the independent counsel’s office, were the key to it all.

Walsh had been appointed independent counsel in 1986 to investigate the Iran-Contra activities of the Reagan administration and determine if crimes had been committed.

Was the Iran-Contra criminal conspiracy limited, as Reagan and Bush insisted (and Reagan said on TV), to later years in the Reagan presidency, in response to a hostage-taking in Lebanon?

Or had it started in the 1980 presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter with treasonous collusion with the Iranians, as the then-president of Iran asserted? Who knew what, and when? And what was George H.W. Bush’s role in it all?

In the years since then, the President of Iran in 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, has gone on the record saying that the Reagan campaign reached out to Iran to hold the hostages in exchange for weapons.

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan,” President Bani-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor, “had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

That wouldn’t have been just an impeachable crime: it was treason.

Walsh had zeroed in on documents that were in the possession of Reagan’s former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who all the evidence showed was definitely in on the deal, and President Bush’s diary that could corroborate it.

Elliott Abrams had already been convicted of withholding evidence about it from Congress, and he may have even more information, too, if it could be pried out of him before he went to prison. But Abrams was keeping mum, apparently anticipating a corrupt pardon from Bush.

Weinberger, trying to avoid jail himself, was preparing to testify that Bush knew about it and even participated in the 1980 election theft, and Walsh had already, based on information he’d obtained from the investigation into Weinberger, demanded that Bush turn over his diary from the campaign. He was also again hot on the trail of Abrams.

So Bush called in his attorney general, Bill Barr, and asked his advice.

Barr, along with Bush, was already up to his eyeballs in cover-ups of shady behavior by the Reagan administration.

Safire ultimately came refer to Barr as “Coverup-General” in the midst of another scandal — one having to do with Bush illegally selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein — because the Attorney General was already covering up for Bush, Weinberger, and others from the Reagan administration in “Iraqgate.”

On October 19, 1992, Safire wrote in The New York Times of Barr’s unwillingness to appoint an independent counsel to look into Iraqgate:

“Why does the Coverup-General resist independent investigation? Because he knows where it may lead: to Dick Thornburgh, James Baker, Clayton Yeutter, Brent Scowcroft and himself [the people who organized the sale of WMD to Saddam]. He vainly hopes to be able to head it off, or at least be able to use the threat of firing to negotiate a deal.”

Now, just short of two months later, Bush was asking Barr for advice on how to avoid criminal charges in the Iran-Contra crimes. How, he wanted to know, could they shut down Walsh’s investigation before Walsh’s lawyers got their hands on Bush’s diary?

In April of 2001, safely distant from the swirl of D.C. politics, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center was compiling oral presidential histories, and interviewed Barr about his time as AG in the Bush White House. They brought up the issue of the Weinberger pardon, which put an end to the Iran-Contra investigation, and Barr’s involvement in it.

Turns out, Barr was right in the middle of it.

“There were some people arguing just for [a pardon for] Weinberger, and I said, ‘No, in for a penny, in for a pound,’” Barr told the interviewer. “I went over and told the President I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others.”

Which is exactly what Bush did, on Christmas Eve when most Americans were with family instead of watching the news. The holiday notwithstanding, the result was explosive.

America knew that both Reagan and Bush were up to their necks in Iran-Contra, and Democrats had been talking about treason, impeachment, or worse. The independent counsel had already obtained one conviction, three guilty pleas, and two other individuals were lined up for prosecution. And Walsh was closing in fast on Bush himself.

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The second paragraph of the Times story by David Johnston laid it out:

“Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger’s private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush’s endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.” (emphasis added)

History shows that when a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, Bill Barr is the go-to guy.

For William Safire, it was déjà vu all over again. Four months earlier, referring to Iraqgate (Bush’s selling WMDs to Iraq), Safire opened his article, titled “Justice [Department] Corrupts Justice,” by writing:

“U.S. Attorney General William Barr, in rejecting the House Judiciary Committee’s call for a prosecutor not beholden to the Bush Administration to investigate the crimes of Iraqgate, has taken personal charge of the cover-up.”

Safire accused Barr of not only rigging the cover-up, but of being one of the criminals who could be prosecuted.

Barr, in other words, was apparently trying to keep himself out of jail every bit as much as he was trying to keep Bush out of jail.

“Mr. Barr,” wrote Safire in The New York Times in August of 1992, “...could face prosecution if it turns out that high Bush officials knew about Saddam Hussein’s perversion of our Agriculture export guarantees to finance his war machine.”

He added:

“They [Barr and colleagues] have a keen personal and political interest in seeing to it that the Department of Justice stays in safe, controllable Republican hands.”

Earlier in Bush’s administration, Barr had succeeded in blocking the appointment of an investigator or independent counsel to look into Iraqgate, as Safire repeatedly documented in the Times.

In December, Barr helped Bush block indictments from another independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, and eliminated any risk that Reagan or George H.W. Bush would be held to account for Iran-Contra.

Walsh, wrote Johnston for the Times on Christmas Eve, “plans to review a 1986 campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush.” The diary would be the smoking gun that would nail Bush to the scandal.

“But,” noted the Times, “in a single stroke, Mr. Bush [at Barr’s suggestion] swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh’s effort, which began in 1986.”

And Walsh didn’t take it lying down.

The Times report noted that:

“Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President’s action, charging that ‘the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.’”

Independent Counsel Walsh added that the diary and notes he wanted to enter into a public trial of Weinberger represented:

“{E]vidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.”

The phrase “highest ranking” officials was apparently meant to included Reagan, Bush, and Barr himself.

Walsh had been fighting to get those documents ever since 1986, when he was first appointed and Reagan still had two years left in office. Bush’s and Weinberger’s refusal to turn them over, Johnston noted in the Times, could have, in Walsh’s words:

“[F]orestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan” through a pattern of “deception and obstruction.”

Barr successfully covered up the involvement of two Republican presidents—Reagan and Bush—in two separate and impeachable “high crimes,” one of them almost certainly treason involving the government of Iran. And now here was Trump taking bribes from Egypt.

Months after January, 1993, newly sworn-in President Clinton and the new Congress decided to put it all behind them and not pursue the matters any further.

Will Biden do the same, for both Trump and Barr? He’s publicly said that he’s going to let his new attorney general, Merrick Garland, make those kinds of decisions.

Or will the Biden administration direct the FBI to declassify and release the information they’ve gathered so far about Trump receiving a bribe from Turkey?

In the Senate, it’s up to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois to institute an investigation of Barr.

Will Bill Barr — and Donald Trump — ever be brought to justice?

That might depend on how often we raise the issue with our elected officials…

NOW READ: This Project 2025 architect is urging Republicans to be 'fearless' with far-right agenda

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thom

an 3 24 no lnx

Bill Barr laid the foundation for today’s MAGA movement

How Bill Barr laid the foundation for today’s MAGA movement

Thom Hartmann

March 11, 2024

With nepo-daughter-in-law Lara Trump taking over the GOP, Donald Trump has essentially declared the “old Republican Party” — the party of Reagan and Bill Barr — dead, arguing that it no longer exists in the form it’s taken since the 1970s.

At a Virginia rally a week ago Saturday, Trump said his neofascist MAGA movement has taken over the Republican Party, that it “represents 96%, and maybe 100%” of Republicans, and that, “We’re getting rid of the Romneys of the world. We want to get Romneys and those out.”

While many in the GOP love the nativist, authoritarian turn the party’s taken, others — like former Attorney General Bill Barr — are mourning the loss of the old guard, calling Trump’s actions “despicable” and “nauseating.”

But what is — or was — the old GOP that Bill Barr so loved?

While not as openly fascist as the MAGA movement, the Republican Party of the past five decades or so was frighteningly corrupt and based, itself, on lies and corruption.

Just this week, The New York Times revealed how Bill Barr apparently inserted himself into a Justice Department criminal investigation of a billion-dollar corporation for allegedly corruptly hiding their income offshore to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

As the Times notes:

“In the months leading up to the canceled interview in the Netherlands, Caterpillar had enlisted a small group of well-connected lawyers to plead the company’s case. Chief among those was William P. Barr, who had served as attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.”

And, the Times reported, one of the lead investigators into Caterpillar’s tax avoidance scheme came right out and complained that because of Barr’s involvement:

“It appears that Caterpillar was given special political treatment that the average U.S. citizen cannot obtain.”

But helping out alleged tax cheats is just the tip of the iceberg of “old GOP” corruption and lies since the days of Nixon and Reagan.

— They lied that if we cut taxes on the morbidly rich, the benefits would “trickle down” to everybody else.

— They lied that if labor unions were destroyed, “job creators” would create “prosperity” and pay workers better.

— They lied that if “originalist” judges were put on the Supreme Court, the rights to vote, abortion, and birth control would be protected.

— They lied that Reagan’s 1983 decision to stop enforcing our anti-trust laws would make business “more efficient” and create opportunities for entrepreneurs and locally-owned businesses.

— They lied that if we forbade the federal government from negotiating drug prices, consumers and taxpayers would save money.

— They lied that if we privatized Medicare, like George W. Bush did in 2003 with his Medicare Advantage scam, the system would save money.

— They lied that racism was “over” in America with the election of Barack Obama, so if the Supreme Court simply let former Confederate states do whatever they wanted, there would be no more suppression and purging of Black voters.

Every one of those lies was intended to increase the wealth and power of the morbidly rich at the expense of average working-class Americans.

But most important, the Bill Barr old-school Republicans lied that they’d protect our democracy and bring honesty and integrity to American politics. Barr’s own history is probably the best example of how dangerous and destructive that lie has been.

The depth and breadth of Barr’s possible crimes against democracy while Attorney General for Trump are just now coming into clearer focus. We shouldn’t be surprised: like Ghostbusters, Bill Barr has been the “Who ya gonna call?” guy for Republican presidents committing treason for over 30 years.

Most people know that when the Mueller investigation was completed — documenting ten prosecutable cases of Donald Trump personally engaging in criminal obstruction of justice and witness tampering to prevent the Mueller Report investigators from getting to the bottom of his 2016 connections to Russia — Barr buried the report for weeks while lying to the American people about its content.

(Merrick Garland, Barr’s heir to the AG job, is still hiding large parts of the report from the American people, another reason President Biden should replace him.)

While shocking, this was not Bill Barr‘s first time playing cover-up for a Republican president who’d committed crimes that could rise to the level of treason against America.

He’s the exemplar of the “old GOP” that helped Nixon cut a deal to prolong the Vietnam War in 1968, worked with Reagan in 1980 to sell weapons to Iran in exchange for holding the hostages to screw Jimmy Carter, and stole the 2000 election from Al Gore in Jeb Bush’s Florida.

Instead of today’s GOP, exemplified by Nazi marches, white trash like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and racist rhetoric against immigrants, Barr’s “old GOP” committed their crimes wearing $2000 tailored suits and manipulating the law to their advantage.

For example, back in 1992, the first time Bill Barr was U.S. Attorney General, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as “Coverup-General Barr” because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bush’s involvement in Reagan’s scheme to steal the 1980 election through what the media euphemistically called “Iron-Contra.”

On Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra “scandal.” (see the bottom of this article)

Earlier that week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.

But Bush Senior’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to leave the White House to retire back to one of his million-dollar mansions in Connecticut, Maine, or Texas: instead, he was worried that he may face time in a federal prison after he left office, a concern nearly identical to what Richard Nixon faced when he decided to resign to avoid prosecution.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on Bush and Reagan, and Bush’s private records, subpoenaed by the independent counsel’s office, were the key to it all.

Walsh had been appointed independent counsel in 1986 to investigate the Iran-Contra activities of the Reagan administration and determine if crimes had been committed.

Was the criminal Iran-Contra conspiracy limited, as Reagan and Bush insisted (and Reagan said on TV), to later years in the Reagan presidency, in response to an obscure hostage-taking in Lebanon?

In the years since then, the President of Iran in 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, has gone on the record saying that the Reagan campaign reached out to Iran to hold the hostages in exchange for weapons.

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan,” President Bani-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor in 2013, “had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

That wouldn’t have been just an impeachable and imprisionable crime: it was every bit as much treason as when Richard Nixon blew up LBJ’s 1968 peace talks with North and South Vietnam to win that November’s election against Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Elliott Abrams had already been convicted of withholding evidence about it from Congress, and he may have even more information, too, if it could be pried out of him before he went to prison. But Abrams was keeping mum, apparently anticipating a pardon.

This was the moment the “old GOP” was at the height of its power and prestige, and Bush and Barr weren’t about to let it be exposed for the criminal enterprise that the “party of Lincoln” had become.

Weinberger, trying to avoid jail himself, was preparing to testify that Bush knew about the deal to hold the hostages and even participated in it, and Walsh had already, based on information he’d obtained from the investigation into Weinberger, demanded that Bush turn over his diary from the campaign. He was also again hot on the trail of Abrams.

So Bush called in his attorney general, Bill Barr — the respectable scion of the “old GOP” — and asked his advice.

At that point Barr, along with Bush, was already up to his eyeballs in cover-ups of other shady behavior by the Reagan administration.

Safire had started referring to Barr as “Coverup-General” in the midst of another scandal — Bush illegally selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein — because the Attorney General was already covering up for Bush, Weinberger, and others in the Reagan administration with a scandal the newspapers called “Iraqgate.”

Ironically, that illegal sale of weapons to Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s and early 1990s was cited by George W. Bush, Bush’s son, as part of his justification for illegally invading Iraq in 2003.

On October 19, 1992, Safire wrote in The New York Times of Barr’s unwillingness to appoint an independent counsel to look into Iraqgate:

Now, just short of two months later, Bush was asking Barr for advice on how to avoid another very serious charge in the Iran-Contra crimes they committed to defeat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. How, he wanted to know, could they shut down Walsh’s investigation before Walsh’s lawyers got their hands on Bush’s diary?

Turns out, Barr was right in the middle of it.

Which is exactly what Bush did, on Christmas Eve when most Americans were with family instead of watching the news. The holiday notwithstanding, the result was explosive.

America knew that both Reagan and Bush were up to their necks in the Iran-Contra hostages-for-weapons scandal, and Democrats had been talking about treason, impeachment, or worse.

The independent counsel had already obtained one conviction, three guilty pleas, and two other individuals were lined up for prosecution in the case that lost Jimmy Carter the White House. And Walsh was closing in fast on Bush himself.

The second paragraph of the Times story by David Johnston laid it out:

History shows that when a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, the “old GOP’s” go-to guy was Bill Barr.

For William Safire, Iran-Contra was déjà vu all over again. Four months earlier, referring to Iraqgate (Bush’s criminally selling WMDs to Iraq), Safire opened his article, titled “Justice [Department] Corrupts Justice,” by writing:

Safire accused Barr of not only rigging the cover-up, but of being one of the criminals who could be prosecuted.

He added:

“They [Barr and colleagues] have a keen personal and political interest in seeing to it that the Department of Justice stays in safe, controllable Republican hands.”

Earlier in Bush’s administration, Barr had succeeded in blocking the appointment of an investigator or independent counsel to look into Iraqgate, as Safire repeatedly documented in the Times.

In December, Barr helped Bush block indictments from another independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, and eliminated any risk that Reagan or George H.W. Bush would be held to account for Iran-Contra.

Walsh, wrote Johnston for the Times on Christmas Eve, “plans to review a campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush.” The diary would be the smoking gun that would nail Bush to the scandal.

And Walsh didn’t take it lying down. The Times report noted that:

“Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President’s action, charging that ‘the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.’”

Independent Counsel Walsh added that the diary and notes he wanted to enter into a public trial of Weinberger represented:

“{E]vidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.”

The phrase “highest ranking” officials almost certainly included Reagan, Bush, and Barr himself.

Walsh had been fighting to get those documents ever since 1986, when he was appointed and Reagan still had two years left in office. Bush’s and Weinberger’s refusal to turn them over, Johnston noted in the Times, could have, in Walsh’s words:

“[F]orestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan” through a pattern of “deception and obstruction.”

Back in the 1990s, Barr successfully covered up the involvement of two Republican presidents — Reagan and Bush — in two separate and impeachable “high crimes,” one of them almost certainly treason committed just to win a presidential election.

And now we learn he apparently went so far as to cover up Trump’s involvement with Putin, leading to multiple opportunities for Trump to extort Ukraine and pass sensitive intelligence along to Russia.

Trump is proudly proclaiming that Barr’s old GOP is dead, replaced by the hateful, nativist MAGA movement. Old-school Republicans are wringing their hands, and some are even leaving the party.

But is the difference really that big?

The corrupt “old GOP” merely laid the foundation for today’s MAGA movement: in many ways Trump was the inevitable next step, after 50-plus years of catering to the morbidly rich while taking a meat-axe to voting rights and the rule of law.

Don’t be fooled: the crocodile tears of those like Bill Barr and the “ex-Republicans” who fill the cable airwaves daily longing for a return of their “Grand Old Party” are every bit the con of Iran-Contra, Bush v Gore, and Citizens United.

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how Bush Sr.'s pardons for Iran-Contra conspirators set the stage for Trump’s impunity

By Greg Grandin, Democracy Now

As the media lauds George H.W. Bush’s legacy, we look at his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. READ MORE»

https://www.alternet.org/it-started-over-lunch-and-led-exposure-one-greatest-scandals-us-history

https://www.unicornriot.ninja/2017/roots-iran-contra-crisis-found-recording-airport-attack-plan/

Roots of Iran-Contra Crisis Found in Recording of Airport Attack Plan

MARCH 28, 2017

In November of 1985, an American pilot working in El Salvador, Wally Grasheim, and a veteran CIA officer, Felix Rodriguez, were both deeply involved in covert operations to aid the U.S. effort against the Nicaraguan Sandinista government and other leftist groups in Central America. In a transcript obtained by Unicorn Riot, it seems as though the men created an attack plan similar to the operation that set off the Iran-Contra scandal less than a year later.

On January 2, 1991, Grasheim furnished a recording that he claimed was made with Rodriguez in El Salvador on November 11, 1985 to theOffice of the Independent Counsel (OIC) of Lawrence Walsh. At that time, Independent Counsel Walsh had already successfully prosecuted several former Reagan officials, and was gearing up for the last set of indictments.

According to an interview with Grashiem conducted by the OIC and the FBI the next day, January 3 (embedded below), Grashiem first presented the idea to General Paul Gorman, who had been the commander-in-chief, United States Southern Command (USCINCSO) from 1983 to 1985. “Right after” this, CIA officer Rodriguez came to him “without warning and asked to talk about the idea.”(Footnote 1)

In the transcript, Grasheim works through a plan with Rodriguez to launch a low-tech Contra aerial attack against the joint civilian-military Sandinista-controlled airport in Managua, while debating how to expand their covert aerial warfare operations into 1986.

Grasheim suggests to Rodriguez: “Come right up the fucking runway and drop a 55 gallon drum, half gasoline, half oil, a grenade in each as it goes out the door. Okay?” Note: the [energy release from detonating each 55 gallon drum would be roughly comparable to detonating a ton of TNT (PDFs).]

Unicorn Riot received the transcript from researcher Michael Best (@NatSecGeek) who obtained it from the Walsh investigation archives. We attempted to reach Rodriguez to verify the authenticity of the recording via the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami, where today he works as the Executive Director, and were given no response.

The 1985 plan prefigures the mission that set off the Iran-Contra scandal less than a year later, the exposure of which effectively killed the plan to attack the airport. While this airport attack never took place, the credibility of their November 1985 chat is bolstered by how closely it reflects similar events – and the Managua airport as a strategic location. (Footnote 2)

The recording shows Grasheim and Rodriguez were trying to advance the Contra cause by giving them “publicity” of a successful Contra attack, with U.S. support, against Nicaragua’s government, using the same sorts of tactics, personnel and equipment that was exposed in October 1986.

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What was Iran-Contra and why does it matter today?

In the narrowest sense, Iran-Contra is a sprawling geopolitical scandal that entered the public eye with the air crash of Corporate Air Services HPF821, the C-123K registered to Southern Air Transport, which had been a CIA-operated airline company since 1960. Details of US arms sales to Iran were exposed by the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa less than a month after this crash.

Less than a year after Grasheim’s recording, on October 5, 1986, the Nicaraguan military shot down the C-123K (serial HPF821, tail N4410F) on a mission organized by Rodriguez to send arms to the Contras with a U.S. crew. Crew member Eugene Hasenfus was captured and explained his mission, setting off the international scandal that eventually led to dozens of criminal charges against Reagan Administration officials.

“Iran-Contra” is one way to reference aspects of American covert policy in South and Central America. As Unicorn Riot’s 2017 mini-doc Crisis: Borderlands discusses in interviews with organizers in Arizona, America’s covert wars in the region dislocated millions of people, ultimately setting off waves of migration into the United States that continue today.

In a much broader sense, “Iran-Contra” was the main label for the arena of exposure around American-led covert operations that unfolded in the 1980s and early 1990s. It involved the steady documentation of CIA-involved covert arms deals that fed several wars, and a large set of prosecutions of government officials. By 1990, “Iran-Contra” had become a series of blue-ribbon investigations, a time of intense scrutiny of America’s covert political operations.

In the timeline of America’s covert history, the Iran-Contra period is like a flash of lightning. It showed how far agencies would go to crush popular movements, and the fusion of America’s wars against drugs and leftism. Researchers at the time observed that the investigations were illuminating a familiar cast of characters and front organizations. It had continuity with previous scandals, including threads leading to the Iran hostage crisis, Watergate, the Kennedy assassination, Cuban aircraft bombings, the crack cocaine wave, Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, and Operation Condor across South America. (See references below)

Iran-Contra style covert operations may surge once again during the Trump Administration due to a return of key Iran-Contra figures once again plugging in with senior officials. Former Attorney General Ed Meese helped set up the Trump Administration, and Oliver North was spotted in Trump’s box at the high profile Army-Navy game after the election. Classified Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) operations were also. Last year, Unicorn Riot discovered through a data request, that FEMA “Field Force Operations” are part of a nationwide riot police training curriculum.

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How Grasheim’s recording illuminates several parts of Iran-Contra

Interestingly, Wally Grasheim’s tape illustrates three phases of Iran-Contra at once: the late 1985 run-up just before the Contra campaign entered its final covert phase; the impending arrival of the C-123 planes that triggered the scandal’s exposure in October 1986; and another big push of exposure and pressure on public officials in early 1991.

In 1985, Grasheim was actively in the field with Contras supplying them with weapons and material while helping them organize attacks on Nicaragua; historians and government investigators generally agreed on this later. Assuming the tape is indeed authentic, it documents how Felix Rodriguez met with Grasheim. The first thing they discussed was how to coordinate airstrikes.

The following is a transcript, lightly edited for clarity, of a tape that has been purported to depict a conversation between Felix Rodriguez aka “Max Gomez” (FR/MG) and Wally Grasheim (WG) which allegedly took place in El Salvador on November 11, 1985. (Max Gomez is the same alias crewman Hasenfus stated after his capture.) While the positive identification of the participants has not been confirmed despite enhancements performed by the Department of Defense, they were also unable to find any indications that the tape was anything other than what Grashiem claimed.

FR/MG: “Because to be able to identify your people with good heading no mistakes warranties so we could go right ahead of you and start shooting maybe 50 meter ahead of you. You know –”

WG: “[…] [T]hey’ve done good in practice so far work with the helicopters in calling in the air strikes but. They are accurate enough that the pilots didn’t have any trouble finding them or hitting the targets.”

FR/MG: “Antonio (?) will work in your team with the 500 ahead of you, so we can precisely mark it from them. Fly over, mark it, or shoot with the minigun and mark it, one of them rather than….” […] “I talked to Lucas (?) here and he told me that you have some kind of a plan with the MI-24 we come to work whatever and he consulted some people in the Washington and the guy told me to talk to you and try to coordinate but haven’t working very….”

WG: “I asked him for a few things –”

FR/MG: “but they didn’t –. The only thing he told me is to talk to you and evaluate if it is feasible.” […]

WG: “Well, basically it would mean launching from Tamarindo. […] There were two possibilities. Possibility number one was I wanted to take, you know the DC-3 they got with the rollers?”

FR/MG: “Um hum.”

WG: “I want to put some 55 gallon drums in there. Okay.”

FR/MG: “Um hum.”

WG: “And half gasoline, half –.”

Here Rodriguez brings up the key news: new aircraft.

FR/MG: “They will some other planes come Christmas.”

WG: “Well, I’m hoping to getting the two 123’s.”

FR/MG: “Yes.”

WG: “Okay. […] Let me tell you what — there’s about three different ways they can go but I needed to know from Lucas if they would give me some support like I want some aerial photographs and a few other things.”

FR/MG: “Yeah, that’s no problem.”

WG: “Well I haven’t gotten it yet.”

FR/MG: “Well, that they do have already.”

WG: “Okay.”

FR/MG: “You might have seen it.”

WG: “Okay. There’s three plans, plan number 1 is purely a DC-3 go over, we can go — but we got to leave from Tamarindo cause I need – I can’t — otherwise I don’t have the distance. You go 50 feet over the water, cut across use the via lock [aviation beacon] from Managua, home in on it. Okay. Come right up the fucking runway and drop a 55 gallon drum, half gasoline, half oil, a grenade in each as it goes out the door. Okay? Have you landed in Managua?”

FR/MG: “Yeah, many times.”

WG: “You know where the MIs were sitting right off the runway?”

FR/MG: “They are the sitting of the runway in a small either concrete shipments. Nothing –”

WG: “There’s no concrete.”

FR/MG: “No, the base is black concrete.”

WG: “Yeah, the base. But I mean it’s no revetment they’re wide open.”

FR/MG: “No, no, no. Maybe some — myestron (phonetic) trees on the side …”

WG: “Yeah, you should be able –. Yeah, you can come in there and just clean that clock.”

Rodriguez continues to hear out Grasheim’s plan, and they debate how many anti-aircraft guns surround the area.

WG: “For the 3:00 o’clock in the morning Max, 50 feet over the ground. Chances are you were gone before they even know they were there. That’s number one. Number two is a coordinated attack which I prefer. And that was based, on their infrastructure there, to come in, hit them on the ground. Okay, and if they would take a chance and I don’t know if they will.”

FR/MG: “Do they take that possibility, do they have that capability?”

WG: “They have a special group which is a commando group of 50 men. They say they can do it. They can get them in. And then, you let me finish now. Their job would be to suppress the anti-aircraft, special charges in the aircraft on the helicopters and land the two 123s, pick them up and go. And that’s doable because nobody can chase them. There’s nothing to chase them. You see.”

FR/MG: “I don’t think they would be rising to race the 123 [….] 123 would be U.S. crews.”

WG: “Well if they’re U.S. crews, then that’s a different ball game.”

FR/MG: “In the beginning, it would be U.S. crews.”

WG: “Now, are they going to fly those into Nicaragua? With U.S. crews … Okay, they may not want to do that. It is a very difficult place to get out of once you go in by ground. If you go in by ground, you cannot get out by ground, it’s too far.”

Full text of Grasheim’s 1985 recording (PDF):

Full text of Grasheim’s 1991 interview with FBI / OIG (PDF):

---

Missions with the two cargo aircraft they both describe here foreshadowed the incident less than a year away: a “U.S. crew” on a C-123 entering Nicaragua gets shot down, setting off the biggest political scandal of the 1980s.

---

How did Grasheim’s recording fit into later investigations?

Government investigators from the DOJ Office of Inspector General detailed a conflict between Grasheim and Celerino “Cele” Castillo III, a former DEA agent. Castillo had been stationed in the region to help the DEA find traffickers, and one of his informants claimed that Grasheim was masterminding cocaine trafficking through restricted access hangars in the military side of Ilopango Airport near the capital of El Salvador.

Reporter Gary Webb looked into Castillo’s allegations in the Dark Alliance book. Webb’s footnotes reference the same set of Walsh research that this recording originates from. (At the time Grasheim gave Walsh this recording, FBI Special Agent Michael Foster had been detailed to the Walsh investigation and was helping forge ahead in collecting depositions before Congress could grant broad immunity to Iran-Contra participants.)

The 1997 DOJ OIG report covered Grasheim’s role in detail – including how a source at the US Embassy in El Salvador told Castillo that Grasheim had said “everybody else was going to go down with him” if he got arrested — and that he’d made recordings to protect himself.

Thus Grasheim’s motive to make this recording with Rodriguez, a regional (if unofficial) coordinator for the CIA, is logical from his perspective, as it would help prove that he wasn’t an isolated actor in setting up these covert operations.

The 1997 DOJ OIG report said:

“[Cele] Castillo’s report stated that on August 28, 1986, he had advised the U.S. Ambassador in El Salvador, Edwin Corr, of Grasheim’s illegal activities. Corr said that Grasheim was at one time employed by the United States Embassy Military Group (Milgroup) in El Salvador.

According to the report, on September 1, 1986, based on surveillances and informant information that Grasheim was in possession of drugs and weapons, the Salvadoran police searched his residence in El Salvador and seized a small amount of marijuana, plastic explosives, cases of grenades, sniper equipment, silencers, anti-tank rockets, machine guns, pistols, night vision equipment, military radios, and an undetermined amount of ammunition for a variety of weapons. Three vehicles were also seized, one of which had a license plate registered to the U.S. Embassy. The Embassy denied the license plate belonged to it.

[…..] Castillo’s report stated that he and Rivera next interviewed General Adolfo Blandon, who had recently been contacted by Grasheim. Grasheim had asked General Blandon to certify that Grasheim’s possession of the weapons found at his residence was legal. Blandon had declined to do so.

Castillo also reported that he had interviewed an unidentified source of information at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador. This source said that Grasheim had contacted a member of the U.S. Milgroup at the Embassy and had threatened that if he “was arrested, then everybody else was going to go down with him.” According to the source, Grasheim said that he had telephone recordings of conversations with other members of the Milgroup.

Grasheim denied that he had been the main player in cocaine smuggling, later suing several former government officials including Castillo for defaming him.

In brief it’s worth noting that Rodriguez was a key figure in many areas of covert operations for the CIA. He joined as a teenager in 1960 and participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as operations of the JM-WAVE CIA station in Miami.

Felix Rodriguez (L) and the captured Ernesto “Che” Guevara (R) in Bolivia, 1967

The CIA dispatched Rodriguez to Bolivia where he played a critical role in capturing the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. He later participated in CIA’s Phoenix program in Southeast Asia which used widespread torture as an instrument of counterinsurgency.

In 2014 the journalist Chuck Bowden investigated the fate of DEA agent Enrique Camarena who was murdered in 1985. Bowden was able to revisit the area that his late friend Webb had looked at during the 1990s. Through retired DEA agent Hector Berrellez, Bowden was able to meet with witnesses to Camarena’s death, which they attributed to someone people called “the Cuban”, i.e. Rodriguez. The events around Camarena would have unfolded just months before this recording.

---

More Iran-Contra insights roll out in 2017

While Iran-Contra seems distant today, many new documents like this one are coming to light in 2017. The CIA ‘CREST’ database of released materials finally reached the Internet in January, and researchers have been poring over the new materials in detail. The release is already yielding results, as one report located in the database documents attempts to cover-up the affair and obstruct the investigation.

Other new explorations of Iran-Contra have documented the problems with various investigations. These include the Tower Commission’s conflict of interest resulting from the lead Senator’s brother-in-law having been a CIA gun runner tied to Iran-Contra. Other recent releases show that the federal government has begun reclassifying information about Iran-Contra.

Iran-Contra continues to resurface in American popular culture with media exploring related stories such as Kill the Messenger (2014), Freeway: Crack in the System (2015), the 2015 Narcos series, American Made (2017), and a series in development about Oliver North.

Self-described shell company and money laundering specialist Al Martin wrote in 2001’s “The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider”:

“Some would like to say Iran-Contra is long over. There are no entrails. There are no further connections. Read my lips. Iran-Contra is not over. It’s as alive as it ever was. The same people, the same banks, the same firms. It’s as much alive as ever.” (p323) “In some cases, it’s the very same names and faces. In other cases, it’s a newer, younger generation of names and faces. But the narcotics, weapons, and fraud aspects still continue to this day. The same facilities are used now that were used back then.” (p330)

Michael Best contributed writing to this article.

---

Footnotes

1: Since Grashiem didn’t tell Rodriguez about the plan, he assumed that General Gorman had. According to Grashiem, Rodriguez told him that he was talking to both the White House and the National Security Council, a fact confirmed by other documents.

2: Contras attacked the Managua airport in September 1983 using two aircraft including a Cessna. Covert operations pilot Barry Seal crash-landed at the Managua airport in May 1984 on “his first DEA-sanctioned cocaine run.” The DEA then provided Seal with a C-123K he nicknamed “The Fat Lady”. In June 1984, Seal ran a sting to collect photos of Nicaraguans loading drugs onto the C-123K, which was publicized by President Reagan on national television. After the sting, the C-123K was sold to Southern Air Transport, and was one of the two C-123s scheduled to arrive at “Christmas” 1985 that Grasheim and Rodriguez discussed on the recording.

---

Selected Iran-Contra Research References

see iran contra book cspan malcolm byrne the diversion is the diversion: memo said Ollie would divert 12m$ to Contras; Meese knew much he could not insulate RR from, but this he could [went astray b/c of typo?] Dems did not want blood/impeachment; many mods in comm but all GOP meat-eaters, eg Hatch , Cheney)

http://www.booktv.org/Program/16191/IranContra+Reagans+Scandal+and+the+Unchecked+Abuse+of+Presidential+Power.aspx:{}:

Approx. 1 hr. 31 min.

"Iran-Contra: Reagan's Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power" :{

Malcolm Byrne}:

chomsky hedges

And sometimes it's kind of outlandish. For example, there was just a review in The New York Times Book Review of Glenn Greenwald's new book by Michael Kinsley, and which bitterly condemned him as--mostly character assassination. Didn't say anything substantive. But Kinsley did say that it's ridiculous to think that there's any repression in the media in the United States, 'cause we can write quite clearly and criticize anything. And he can, but then you have to look at what he says, and it's quite interesting.

In the 1980s, when the major local news story was the massive U.S. atrocities in Central America--they were horrendous; I mean, it wasn't presented that way, but that's what was happening--Kinsley was the voice of the left on television. And there were interesting incidents. At one point, the U.S. Southern Command, which ran--you know, it was the overseer of these actions--gave instructions to the terrorist force that they were running in Nicaragua, called theContras--and they were a terrorist force--they gave them orders to--they said "not to (...) duke it out with the Sandinistas", meaning avoid the Nicaraguan army, and attack undefended targets like agricultural cooperatives and, you know, health clinics and so on. And they could do it, because they were the first guerrillas in history to have high-level communications equipment, you know, computers and so on. The U.S., the CIA, just controlled the air totally, so they could send instructions to the terrorist forces telling them how to avoid the Nicaraguan army detachments and attack undefended civilian targets.

Well, this was mentioned; you know, it wasn't publicized, but it was mentioned. And Americas Watch, which later became part of Human Rights Watch, made some protests. And Michael Kinsley responded. He condemned Americas Watch for their emotionalism. He said, we have to recognize that we have to accept a pragmatic criterion. We have to ask--something like this--he said, we have to compare the amount of blood and misery poured in with the success of the outcome in producing democracy--what we'll call democracy. And if it meets the pragmatic criterion, then terrorist attacks against civilian targets are perfectly legitimate--which is not a surprising view in his case. He's the editor of The New Republic. The New Republic, supposedly a liberal journal, was arguing that we should support Latin American fascists because there are more important things than human rights in El Salvador, where they were murdering tens of thousands of people.

That's the liberals. And, yeah, they can get in the media no problem. And they're praised for it, regarded with praise. All of this is part of the massive system of--you know, it's not that anybody sits at the top and plans at all; it's just exactly as Orwell said: it's instilled into you. It's part of a deep indoctrination system which leads to a certain way of looking at the world and looking at authority, which says, yes, we have to be subordinate to authority, we have to believe we're very independent and free and proud of it. As long as we keep within the limits, we are. Try to go beyond those limits, you're out.

The single biggest scandal of the Eighties resulted from a confluence of the two great conservative themes I have been describing: the “freedom fighter” mentality and the cult of political entrepreneurship.

The outlines of the Iran-Contra story are well known. President Reagan’s CIA was waging a “secret” war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua; the Democratic Congress understandably objected, as we were technically at peace with that nation, and, in 1983, cut off funds to the CIA-backed Contras. Over at the National Security Council, however, Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North came up with a scheme to get money to the Contras anyway, using a network of private donors, weapons sales to Iran, and private supply operations. He also organized behind-the-scenes efforts to lobby Congress to change its mind.

Quite early on in the annals of Iran-Contra our pioneering political entrepreneurs make their inevitable appearance. Jack Abramoff crops up in North’s notebook for February 14, 1985, his name misspelled but the beginnings of a great lobbyist unmistakable. On March 26, Abramoff showed up on a list of people helping North to influence the upcoming Contra-aid vote in Congress. Later that day, Abramoff phoned North and told him that a number of “votes” were available in exchange for some or other favor.

We do not ordinarily remember Iran-Contra for the business opportunities it generated, but in the long, winding history of conservatism-as-industry it remains a particularly instructive chapter. The aforementioned political entrepreneur Spitz Channell, for example, sensed the Contras’ potential early on and used them to become the most successful fund-raiser in all of Washington, circa 1985. Channell’s marks were conservative widows; he made his pitches in person, often using a scary slide show put together by Oliver North about the dangers of Nicaraguan communism. Not only did his donors reap tax write-offs by giving to one of the “nonprofit” groups Channell had set up but they sometimes got to meet President Reagan too, a favor the fund-raiser arranged simply by throwing some change to one of the president’s former aides.

None of this put much money into the pockets of the Contras, though. On the right, the fund-raiser typically prospers, even if the cause does not. And Channell was a professional; he later admitted that he became interested in Nicaragua only after he noticed how the subject ticked off rich folks. He proceeded to take the customary profiteering to dizzy entrepreneurial heights. Of the $12 million raked in by Channell’s empire of fund-raising organs in 1985 and 1986, it is estimated that only $2.7 million actually made it to the Contras. Huge sums were diverted to Channell’s friends, his lover, and his friends’ lovers. All the middlemen between here and Managua took a cut, too.

Iran-Contra was the scandal with the Midas touch, and it continued to rain money on the faithful even after the whole rotten operation had been rolled up. One day in July 1987, as the Democrats in Congress screeched hysterically about the White House and its illegal foreign policy,Ollie North put on his uniform, stood before the cameras, raised his hand, and summoned up a backlash that ultimately crushed the liberals and brought a flood of prosperity to the political entrepreneurs of the right.

Jack Abramoff’s IFF, for example, started selling copies of an Ollie North videotape made up of a slide show that was almost certainly the one Spitz Channell had used to scare his dotards, advertising it with a photo of the stern-faced Marine testifying before “the so-called Iran/Contra congressional committee.” Oliver North videotapes eventually became something of an industry unto themselves, but the one made by Abramoff, titled Telling It Like It Is, is almost certainly the only bit of filmed entertainment ever to be dedicated “to the memory of William J. Casey,” the CIA director made famous by his unabashed contempt for Congress.

The trade in Olliana boomed for years, as the persecuted patriot was indicted for his crimes and came to require a legal-defense fund (and also, apparently, a host of fake legal-defense funds). Jerry Falwell compared Ollie to Jesus Christ. There were Oliver North keychains and pocketknives and T-shirts and eventually even a TV show in which Ollie told America the secrets of war. There was the usual round of plunder, as funds raised to help Ollie stayed with the fund-raisers instead. And inevitably there was “Ollie, Inc.,” as the man himself went into the nonprofit direct-mail business. By 1994, when he ran for a Senate seat in Virginia, Oliver North had become the most successful political fund-raiser in the land, bringing in some $20 million over the course of his campaign. Remarkably, he lost anyway.

Prodigious though they may seem, these acts of retail profiteering were minuscule compared with the colossal entrepreneurial gambit that the Iran-Contra investigation revealed. The insiders called it “the Enterprise”: private money, raised through the sale of government favors and property, would go to fundprivatearmies of “freedom fighters” operating overseas. The ultimate aim of the Enterprise, as envisioned by CIA Director Casey, was privatization on the grandest scale imaginable: the construction of a foreign-policy instrument that was free from the meddling of Congress, financed by sales of weapons and another precious commodity that government had in abundance but had hitherto been reluctant to market—access.

Shocking New Evidence Reveals Depths of 'Treason' and 'Treachery' of Watergate and Iran-Contra

by Robert Parry, Consortium News

New evidence continues to accumulate showing how Official Washington got key elements of two major presidential scandals of the Nixon and Reagan administrations wrong. "Newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten the two scandals by failing to understand that they actually were sequels to earlier scandals that were far worse. Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency," Parry reports. FBI's J. Edgar Hoover's fingerprints are all over this one. ...http://www.alternet.org/print/tea-party-and-right/shocking-new-evidence-reveals-depths-treason-and-treachery-watergate-and-iran hmmn

===

Founding Fakers by Franklin Foer

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030818&s=foer081803

... the Reagan administration, by all accounts, engineered the political leadership of the Contras, falling in love with a series of counterrevolutionaries ... One such leader was Adolfo Calero, who became Washington's Contra of choice in the mid-'80s. After graduating from Notre Dame, Calero had gone on to run Managua's Coca-Cola bottling plant ... and helped launch the Authentic Conservative Party ... when the Sadinisitas seized power ... a life of exile in Miami ... made him an easy sell to American conservatives, a pitch enhanced by Calero's alliance with Republican consultant Roger Stone, from UNITA's lobbying firm. In direct-mail solicitations, Stone compared Calero to Washington at Valley Forge. ...

vice dc

ch 4 cia contractor cargo kicker broke rule parachute captured 1986 SAM; asst sec of state e abrams ex socialist, married podh, lied to congress? dems did not believe but dc on comm; ollie n gave iranians bible and choccake (hezbollah had hostages; RR lied to congree comm, then to ppl; AG found memo that said 12m fr4om arms sales wd go to contras 66 1st house/sen joint invest comm, wright deferredto exec, wanted it over quick, lost lev when took impeach off table 69; casey resign brain tumor then died, big brk for gop; hearing TV favored bad guys says spielberg 72 dc et al said taking away $ was congr negligence; dc absurd q of felix rodriguez, cia killed che 73 question/praised abrams (pardoned b1 1992, tho he covered up 1k ppl massacre by el salv army at El Mozote) 74, later dc got him dep nat sec advisor 75 b2 ollie stack of WU telgrams, but co gave 1/2 off; mine nic harbor world ct ~; jw wanted unanious, so dropped some tougher stuff, so gop spun as witch hunt, no big deal 81

===

maddow says B1 pardoned I-C and b2 hired them bolton? olson, casey

===

b1 ducked interview/depostion, withheld his notes, pardoned 6

oct surprise, passportgate (perry p 3- )

The Iran–Contra affair^{[^^1]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-0) (Persian: ماجرای مک‌فارلین, Spanish: caso Irán-contras) was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior U.S. figures, including President Ronald Reagan, agreed to facilitate the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo.^{[^^2]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-1) At least some U.S. officials also hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan contras.

The affair began as an operation to improve U.S.-Iranian relations. It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to a relatively moderate, politically influential group of Iranians, and then the U.S. would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of six U.S. hostages, who were being held by the Lebanese Shia Islamist group Hezbollah, who in turn were unknowingly connected to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. The plan deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages scheme, in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of the American hostages.^{[^^3]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-tce-2)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reagan_no-bbc-3)^{4]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reagan_no-bbc-3) Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.^{[^^5]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-4)

While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause,^{[^^6]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-5) no conclusive evidence has been found showing that he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras.^{[^^3]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-tce-2)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reagan_no-bbc-3)^{4]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reagan_no-bbc-3)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-report_sum-6)^{7]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-report_sum-6) Handwritten notes taken by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger indicate that Reagan was aware of potential hostages transfers with Iran, as well as the sale of Hawk and TOW missiles to "moderate elements" within that country.^{[^^8]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-7) Oliver North, one of the central figures in the affair, wrote in a book that "Ronald Reagan knew of and approved a great deal of what went on with both the Iranian initiative and private efforts on behalf of the contras and he received regular, detailed briefings on both." Mr. North also writes: "I have no doubt that he was told about the use of residuals for the contras, and that he approved it. Enthusiastically."^{[^^9]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-8) North's account is difficult to verify because of the secrecy that still surrounds the affair.

After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages.^{[^^10]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reaganspeech-9) To this day, it is unclear exactly what Reagan knew and when, and whether the arms sales were motivated by his desire to save the U.S. hostages. Notes taken December 7, 1985, by Defense Secretary Weinberger record that Reagan said that "he could answer charges of illegality but he couldnt answer charge [sic] that 'big strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free hostages.'"^{[^^11]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-10) Investigations were compounded when large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials.^{[^^12]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-Excerpts_from_Iran-Contra_Report-11) On March 4, 1987, Reagan returned to the airwaves in a nationally televised address, taking full responsibility for any actions that he was unaware of, and admitting that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."^{[^^13]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reaganspeech-tower-12)

Several investigations ensued, including those by the United States Congress and the three-man, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither found any evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs.^{[^^3]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-tce-2)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reagan_no-bbc-3)^{4]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-reagan_no-bbc-3)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-report_sum-6)^{7]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-report_sum-6) In the end, fourteen administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal.^{[^^14]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-13) The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the George H. W. Bush presidency; Bush had been vice-president at the time of the affair.^{[^^15]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#cite_note-14)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_K._Singlaub

missle to iran to get help releasing hostages held by lebanese hezebollah big lies 197

Ollie tried to convince kuwaitis to release Dawa terorrists (attacked americans) 199

tried to get saudis to fund saddam, so playing both sides 199

between '86-90, US sold $ 600m advanced technolgy, incl mustard gas (and biol) p 200 to?

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=175&name=Iran-Contra-scandal

Poindexter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi

Khashoggi was born in Mecca, the son of Muhammad Khashoggi, a medical doctor of Spanish, Basque and Turkish ancestry^[citation ^needed] who was King Abdel Aziz Al Saud's personal physician. The family name means spoonmaker (Kaşıkçı) in Turkish. The family moved from the Iberian Peninsula and settled in Saudi Arabia. Adnan Khashoggi's sister Samira Khashoggi Fayed married Mohammed Al-Fayed and was the mother of Dodi Fayed.

Khashoggi was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, California State University, Chico, Ohio State University, and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA. Khashoggi later left his studies in order to seek his fortune in business.

[edit] Business career

Iran–Contra affair

He was implicated in the Iran–Contra affair as a key middleman in the arms-for-hostages exchange along with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and, in a complex series of events, was found to have borrowed money for these arms purchases from the now-bankrupt financial institution the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) with Saudi and US backing. In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, accused of concealing funds, held for three months and then extradited to the United States where he was released on bail and subsequently acquitted. In 1990, a United States federal jury in Manhattan acquitted Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos, widow of the exiled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, of racketeering and fraud.^{[^^1]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi#cite_note-0) He has also worked for Col. Ghaddafi of Libya in 1992 as a mediator.

Kerry exposed drug aspect Hunt pres

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hmmn b1 role

http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-18-iran-contra/

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http://www.nndb.com/group/815/000044683/

mark levin, radio, ass't to meese landmark legal fdn

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citizens for america http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_America

Citizens for America

Citizens for America (CFA) was a United States conservative grass-roots organization founded by President Ronald Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet" (principally Jacqueline “Jack” Hume, CEO of Basic American Foods of San Francisco, and including Southern California car dealer Holmes Tuttle and others) to support President Reagan's national defense and economic initiatives. CFA called itself "President Reagan's Lobby" and was lead first by drugstore magnate Lewis E. :{Lehrman}: and later by Gerald P. Carmen, who had served as administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations mission in Geneva, Switzerland. CFA was organized as an IRS 501 (C) (3) and (4) non-profit. Among the early employees was Jack Abramoff, who was later terminated for cause.

Citizens for America staged an unprecedented meeting of anti-Communist rebel leaders called the "Democratic International", including Nicaraguan, Laotian, Angolan and Afghan (Mujahideen) rebels in 1985 in Jamba, Angola. The meeting was held in the UNITA headquarters of Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi. The guerrilla leaders were presented with a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, and a letter from President Reagan supporting CFA was read, although the Reagan administration refused to officially support all of the guerrilla groups.

Mark Holtzman (who later ran for governor of Colorado) served as CFA's first executive director. He resigned in 1985 and was replaced by Abramoff, who had been director of College Republicans. Lehrman fired Abramoff after only nine months due to his mismanagement of the organization’s $3 million budget and his hiring of friends and cronies.

Abramoff was replaced as executive director by Bill Wilson, formerly of Right to Work. He served for a year, after which attorney and writer Jack R. Stevens became the executive director. Stevens served for two years and was the organization’s executive director in its final days under President Reagan. Wilson and Stevens (who had earlier served as CFA’s western regional director) were credited with restoring CFA's finances and reputation after Abramoff’s brief but damaging tenure.

CFA supported its grass-roots lobbying campaigns by hosting two fundraisers annually. The "Founder's Circle" required a contribution of $25,000 per year and included donors like Joseph and Holly Coors, Holmes Tuttle and Jack Hume. President Reagan hosted CFA donors and staff regularly at the White House. At one such session in 1987, he recognized CFA National Director Gerald P. Carmen and Executive Director Jack Stevens for their efforts in orchestrating the organization’s successful campaign to secure $100 million in congressional aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. CFA staff met in the White House with Reagan Administration officials on a weekly basis to coordinate field activities.

Stevens hired Liam Weston, who later became Mayor Pro Tem of El Segundo, California and now a columnist for the Sacramento Union [1], as CFA’s eastern regional director in 1987. Weston later served as a Republican staff member in the 104th U.S. Congress. He left Congress and moved to Central America to administer the U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance 1989-1991. In 1991-1993, he was posted to Africa, where he managed an aid program for the Angolan UNITA rebels.

President Reagan credited CFA's extensive field operations, and cited field leaders Weston; Gordon Bloyer;(now an Internet blogger and video commentator); Kelly Cardwell of Alabama; Cecil Martin “Bud” Starr, III (now a Kern County, California prosecutor); Robert Miltenberg (now a Los Angeles advertising executive); former California legislator Doug Carter (now deceased); and San Francisco activist Dorothy Vuksich (now deceased) with having helped secure congressional support for Afghan rebel aid, Contra aid, and tax reduction and simplification, among other issues. CFA organized volunteer committees and chairmen in each congressional district to conduct grass-roots campaigns in support of Reagan's strategic and economic agenda. The organization was able to unite all segments of the conservative movement, though it took no position on social issues.

Stevens and Weston, in coordination with Reagan's OMB Director Jim Miller and former CFA communications director David Carmen (now CEO of the Washington, D.C. public affairs firm, The Carmen Group), created the first annual "Pork Barrel" spending awards, a dubious distinction for member's of Congress CFA considered to be profligate spenders. CFA published “The Pork Book” in 1987.. Taxpayers Against Government Fraud and Waste along with other public policy organizations have continued the annual event by recognizing certain congressmen for supporting excessive "pork barrel" spending.

The organization occupied the 4th Floor of the Heritage Foundation building on Massachusetts Ave. in Washington, D.C. Other employees of CFA included fundraiser Abigail Pearlman (now married to Congressman Roy Blunt); office assistant Marjorie Huge; communications director Andre Bogolubov; controller,Mike Russell; research director Peter Conlin (now a Sacramento, California attorney); Texas regional director Gwen Faro (now deceased); eastern regional director Kerry Moody; midwestern regional director Mike Semfenderfer; project manager Mary Ann Gordon; project manager Ed Priola; project manager Brian Malnak; computer operations director Grayden Frick (now deceased), research director Grover Norquist, field director Mathew Tsien, and western regional director and field operations director Carol Hallett. Hallett was appointed U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas during the Reagan Administration. She later served as director of U.S. Customs under President George H.W. Bush. Subsequently, she headed the Air Transport Association in Washington, D.C. and now is a senior officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

[edit] External links

"The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff" - Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi, The Washington Post, Thursday, December 29, 2005.
"My Dinner with Jack" - Mark Hemingway, The Weekly Standard, April 3, 2006.

[

](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Handshake_%28Workshop_Cologne_%2706%29.jpeg)

This article about a political organization is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

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iran contra?

Funding: Lehrman and Hume were able to attract major rightwing funders such as Joseph Coors and Ivan Boesky. Many backers of CFA come from the Fortune 500, including the heads of such corporations as Atlantic-Richfield, Shell Oil, Chase Manhattan, Dr. Pepper, W. R. Grace, Amway, and Northrup. (16) Ultra rightwing Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, Texas financier T. Boone Pickens, and Reagan "kitchen cabinet" members Holmes Tuttle and Earle Jorgensen have also contributed to CFA. (19) The J. E. and L. E. Mabee Fdn donated $20,000 in 1985, and in 1986 the Starr Fdn donated $50,000. (9,10) CFA's 1986 budget was $1. 8 million. (16)

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CFA has been listed among the DC-based political lobbies that provided "private" aid to the contras. (11)

CFA produced slick anticommunist publications targeting the Sandinista government which were distributed to interested audiences along with materials of the State Department, the Defense Department, Heritage Foundation, and the Senate Republican Policy Committee. The group also sponsored a major public relations campaign for the Nicaraguan contras, including a 1985 national tour of contra leaders to 200 congressional districts and a barrage of pro-contra aid radio and newspaper ads in 1986. (16,23) CFA worked closely with Oliver Northin North's contra supply efforts."Abramoff and CFA were assigned responsibility for organizing briefings by contra speakers, telephone-trees 'to targeted congressional offices encouraging them to vote for aid to the freedom fighters in Nicaragua'." (Interior quotes are from a declassified "NSC Intelligence Document," Exhibit OLN-217). (24)

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The Washington Post reported that Oliver North has been very close to Jack Abramoff and the CFA. North helped CFA select the contra leaders for the 1985 speaking tour. (25)

Louis "Woody" Jenkins was a Louisiana State Representative. (33)

President Reagan also hosted the top contributors to the CFA at the White House, having a picture made with each guest. (8)

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Jack Abramoff, former executive director of CFA, is the founder and former chairman of the International Freedom Foundation,an aggressive rightwing think tank. (24) Abramoff served as thechairman of the College Republican National Committee from 1981 to 1985 and in 1982 became the executive director of the political action committee of the Conservative Caucus--a position he still held as of early 1990. Abramoff also served as chairman of the United Students of America, a rightist student group based at the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. (24)

CFA was an active participant in the 1986 Conservative Political Action Committee, a group whose membership was a who's who of the far right. (26)

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Citizens_for_America

One of TBG's top executives happens to be former Miami businessman and ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich. During the Reagan administration, the Cuban-born Reich headed the US state department's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), whose task was to disseminate disinformation about the Sandinistas and discourage reporting critical of the contras. This outfit, whose operations were later found to be illegal by the US General Accounting Office, was staffed with five psychological warfare specialists from the 4th Psychological OperationsGroup of Fort Bragg. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, "the OPD...helped spread a scurrilous story that some American reporters had received sexual favors from Sandinista prostitutes in return for writing slanted stories". In 1987, after the US Congress shut down the OPD, congressman Jack Brooks called it "an important cog in the (Reagan) administration's effort to manipulate public opinion and congressional action".

Interestingly enough, the OPD was conceived at an August 1983 meeting between then CIA director William Casey and a small group of PR industry executives. The meeting, whose purpose was to create a propaganda strategy for the Nicaraguan contras, was attended by B-M senior vice- president Kenneth D. Huszar and Philip Morris publicist James Bowling, who later moved to B-M. Their advice to Casey included the creation of a communications function within the White House, a recommendation that led to the creation of the OPD.

B-M, Mexico and the Neoliberal Project

===

CHAPTER 7

IRAN-CONTRA

http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/BOOK3Ch7.html

CONTENTS

THE OCTOBER SURPRISE

ARMS FOR HOSTAGES

REAGAN'S AND BUSH'S INVOLVEMENT

IRAN-CONTRA INDICTMENTS

THE AFTERMATH OF IRAN-CONTRA

THE OCTOBER SURPRISE

The Iran-Contra scandal can be traced to the October Surprise during the 1980 Presidential election between incumbent Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. In the fall of 1980, Carter was marginally leading Reagan in the polls with the election right around the corner. The release of hostages before election day presumably would have insured the election for Carter. The Reagan team conspired to negotiate a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. Campaign manager William Casey and George Bush met with Iranian Prime Minister Bani-sadr in Paris in October, only weeks before the election and with Carter having a slight lead over Reagan. Part of the deal cut between the Reagan team and Iran was to provide military weapons which Iran desperately needed in its war with Iraq. As it turned out, the 52 American hostages remained captive in Teheran. Carter's popularity continued to plummet, enabling Reagan to be elected in November, and ironically the hostages were returned at 12 o'clock noon on January 21, 1981 when Reagan was inaugurated.

The first meeting regarding arms-to-Iran occurred in July 1980 in Barcelona, Spain and not in Madrid as was initially reported. The Republican team met at the Hotel Princess Sofia and at thePepsico International headquarters.The American team was led by Republican campaign director William Casey, who months later was to be named CIA chief by Reagan, and by Robert McFarlane, who later became National Security adviser under Reagan. Three months after Barcelona, a more important meeting took place in Paris. CIA agent Richard Brenneke testified that Bush was in Paris on Sunday, October 19, 1980 when he met with members of the Khomeini regime to consummate an arms package to Iran. Bush, along with Casey and other government officials, flew to Paris on a BAC 111 on Saturday evening, October 18. The plane arrived in Paris on Sunday morning October 19 at 8:40 a.m. European time.

While in Paris, the Republican team gave $40 million to the Iranian government as a gesture of good faith that the Reagan team was serious in dealing with the terrorist Khomeini government -- and that the 52 American hostages should remain captive until after the November election. After the meeting, Bush had to quickly return to the United States in order to deliver a speech at the Washington Hilton Hotel. He departed France in an SR-71 reconnaissance plane, piloted by Gunther Russbacher. The plane was refueled by an Air Force tanker nearly 2,000 miles out of Paris. The entire return flight to the United States was less than two hours.

When news of the Paris meeting leaked out, the CIA moved quickly to cover-up Bush's meeting. CIA agent Frank Snepp wrote an article in the Village Voice,stating that the SR-71 pilot, Gunther Russbacher, was not capable of flying an SR-71 and, therefore, his allegations were false. However, in an interview between government whistle-blower Rodney Stich and Russbacher, it was very clear that Russbacher had been trained in flying the SR-71.

Several other witnesses corroborated the story that Bush was present in Paris. Ari Ben-Menashea, a member of Israel's Mossad and involved in the transfer of arms to Iran, stated that Bush was at the meeting. Also, Iranian Prime Minister Bani-sadr produced documents indicating that Bush was present. On the other hand, CIA agent Donald Gregg, who was on the flight to Paris, failed a polygraph test when asked about Bush's presence.

The Secret Service unequivocally denied the fact that Bush was in Paris. Yet, the agency refused to allow any of its agents who were assigned to Bush at that time, to testify. Justice Department prosecutors called two Secret Service agents who swore that Bush was in Washington, D.C. on that weekend. The Secret Service claimed that Bush was in Pennsylvania on Saturday, October 18; however, the agency did not produce any evidence to indicate Bush's activities on the following day.

Under pressure by the Republicans, both the House and the Senate initially refused to investigate the October Surprise. However, eventually in 1991, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made a token gesture and superficially did look into allegations of improprieties. The investigation was virtually blocked, since the committee prevented investigators from traveling to Europe to interview witnesses; denied subpoena power to investigators; limited the time frame of the investigation; and limited the funds to investigate alleged illegalities.

In addition, the committee called Russbacher an imposter and refused to accept his sworn statements. The testimony of Brenneke was discredited. The committee claimed that he was in Portland, Oregon on the weekend of the October 19, 1980, since he had used his credit cards on that day on the west coast. However, Barbara Honegger, a member of the Reagan-Bush campaign team and one who claimed that Bush was in Paris on October 19, reported that a handwriting expert examined the credit card signatures and swore that they were not those of Brenneke.

A year after the Senate's "investigation" of the October Surprise, the House October Surprise Committee, chaired by Lee Hamilton of Indiana, was formed. However, chief counsel Lawrence Barcella, Jr. lacked credibility, since he earlier helped to conceal clandestine CIA operations in Libya. Also, Richard Pedersen, another key member of the investigation committee, had been involved in corruption. The House committee followed the pattern of its counterpart in the Senate and refused to hear testimony from anyone who had evidence that Bush was in Paris on the weekend of October 19, 1980. In 1993 the committee issued its final report which mirrored that of the Senate committee: the October Surprise was fabricated.

If the October Surprise did indeed occur, there would have been potential enormous consequences: the possibility of impeachment of high level government officials, including members of Congress; criminal activities of Republican Party nominees Reagan and Bush; and the exposure of illegal CIA activities.

Five months after the October Surprise and two months into his first term, Reagan gave CIA chief Casey the green light to begin clandestine activities to attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. For three years the Contras only killed innocent Nicaraguans and were incapable of seizing any villages. This frustration, coupled with the American public's opposition to Reagan's dirty war, influenced Congress to cut off aid to the Contras.

ARMS FOR HOSTAGES

"Since United States contact with Iran, there's been no evidence

of Iranian government complicity in acts of terrorism against

the United States."

President Ronald Reagan, November 13, 1986

In 1984, the CIA chief for the Middle East, William Buckley, was kidnaped by the Hezbollah which was operating out of Iran. Close sources to Reagan confirmed that he would do anything to obtain the release of Buckley. However, he was murdered several months later. This was followed by more abductions: Benjamin Weir, Father Jenco, Terry Waite, assistant to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and several professors from the American University in Beirut. The CIA and the National Security Council now moved to attempt to negotiate with Iran.

The NSC was composed of Vice President Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, CIA director William Casey, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, and National Security adviser Robert McFarlane.On June 7, 1985, the NSC was given permission to deal with Iran which could exert pressure on the Hezbollah to release the American and British hostages.

The secret funding of arms, which was sold to "moderate Iranians," was orchestrated primarily by North. Then the profits from the sales were used to send more weapons to the Contras in Central America. North controlled the secret and illegal treasury which financed "the Enterprise." This consisted of CIA agents turned arms merchants, dummy CIA corporations, and clandestine Swiss bank accounts. The Enterprise took in $48 million in cash. Some was pocketed by arms dealer Albert Hakim and by General Richard Secord. Some of the money was funneled into the Middle East to pay for North's failures in attempting to liberate the American hostages in Beirut.

Soon after the NSC was given permission to communicate with the Iranian regime, six separate arms deals took place.

**August 1985. 96 TOW missiles but no hostages were released. A DC-8 flew from Israel to Iran and transferred $1,217,410 into the Swiss bank account of arms dealer Ghorbanifar.

**September 1985. 408 TOWs were sold to Iran. One American hostage, Benjamin Weir, was released a day later.

**November 1985. 18 Hawk missiles were shipped to Iran via a Portugal and Israel. North arranged for the transfer of one million dollars which was placed into the bank account of Lake Resources, a CIA operated front to launder money in Florida. 80 Hawks were to be delivered; however, 62 were never delivered. North and Secord testified later that the money received covered the payment for the aircraft. $150,000 was actually spent for transportation, and $850,000 was diverted to the Contras.

**February 1986. 1,000 TOWs were sent to Iran in increments of 1,000 each and at $10,000 per missile. $10 million was placed in the account of Lake Resources. $3.7 million was used to pay for the TOWs. Of that amount, $6.3 million was profit.

**May 1986. $16.5 million was paid to the United States for spare parts for Hawk missiles. $6.5 million was given to the government, and $10 million was deposited in the bank account of Lake Resources. Two months later on July 26 Father Lawrence Jenco was released, and the remaining Hawk parts were sent on to Iran.

**October 1986. 500 TOWs were sold to Iran, David Jacobsen was released. $3.6 million was given to the United States. $2 million was paid for the missiles, while $1.3 million became profit.

On November 25, 1986, after a Lebanese newspaper broke the story of arms-for-hostages, Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that illegal funds had been diverted to the Contras. Reagan downplayed the weapons which were delivered to Iran. He stated that TOW missiles were "hand held" and that they all could be "transported in one cargo plane." Reagan also asserted, "The TOW anti-tank missile is a purely defensive weapon. It is a shoulder-carried weapon. And we don't think that in this defensive thing -- we didn't add to any offensive power on the part of Iran." The TOW missile weighed 56.3 pounds and was four feet long. The complete system required a crew of four people. In addition, TOWs could be used offensively by Iran to attack Iraqi tanks.

It took several days before North's White House office was sealed, so he and his secretary, Fawn Hall, were able to shred damaging papers in this time period.

Reagan attempted to convince the public that his administration was not dealing with Khomeini but with "moderate elements" within the country. Reagan sent both McFarlane and North on a goodwill trip to Teheran to meet with Khomeini and to present him with an autographed Bible and a cake in the shape of a Bible. The Khomeini government refused to allow them to meet with anyone, and they only waited on the Teheran tarmac for several hours before returning to the United States. Because McFarlane's frustration level increased and because he continued to wrestle with the unethical American covert operations, he resigned as Reagan's NSC adviser and was replaced by Navy Admiral John Poindexter.

The next year, a joint Congressional hearing was created to investigate Iran-Contra. The committee granted immunity to North, thus forcing him to testify. North bragged that the United States carried out an illegal covert operation to fund the Contras in Central America. Since the Boland Amendment prohibited the funding of the Contras in their effort to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the NSC sought other avenues. The first was to convince Congress to allocate funds for "humanitarian aid." However, this money was used illegally to arm the Contras and was terminated after several months. Therefore, the NSC had to look for other sources of funds.

North testified that he took it upon himself to carry out "Operation Democracy." He boasted that the profits from the illegal arms sales to the Khomeini regime were placed in secret Swiss bank accounts and that dummy CIA fronts such as Lake Resources in Florida. These funds were used to purchase weapons with which to arm the Contras in Central America. This was carried out by North along with Hakim, Secord, and Singlaub.

North skimmed $50,000 from a secret cash account which was set up by the Contras. Secord helped arrange for weapons which were illegally obtained with profits from the sales to Iran and then shipped south to the Contras. Hakim was a military sales agent who worked as a middleman with Secord. Hakim was quoted after President Carter's aborted hostage rescue in Iran in 1979: "He couldn't have been happier when the Carter administration needed." Air Force General John Singlaub, who was president of the World Anti-communist League, became involved in raising funds overseas for the Contras in 1981.

On the domestic front, North solicited donations from various wealthy people. Claiming that communism was entrenched in Nicaragua and that it would move northward, he was able to solicit $80,000 from Adolph Coors. An $80,000 Cessna spotter plane, to be used in flights over Nicaragua, was purchased. North called wealthy widows, promising them photo sessions with Reagan if they made large contributions. One wealthy woman contributed $200,000 and was rewarded with a five minute meeting with Reagan. Billionaire Ross Perot supplied $2.3 million to North in an attempt to liberate Beirut CIA station chief Buckley in Lebanon. The sultan of Brunei contributed $1 million, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia turned over $32 million.

North also lost more than $400,000 chasing false leads. An Iranian convince North that he was a Saudi prince with superior intelligence connections and was paid $15,000. An Armenian informant claimed that he knew the secret location of the American hostages. North slipped him $100,000, and he immediately disappeared in Syria. Lebanese "informants" received over $100,000 from North. Another Lebanese claimed that he had contacted Buckley, but it later turned out that Buckley had long been dead when he and North communicated. North also arranged for another informant to receive $200,000 of Perot's money and $11,000 from illegal Contra funds in exchange for information. This informant produced no information to North.

"Midshipmen will not lie, cheat, or steal."

First seven words of the United States Naval Academy's Honor Code

"There is great deceit, deception practiced in the conduct of covert operations. They are at essence a lie. We make every effort to deceive the enemy as to our intent, our conduct, and to deny the association of the United States to those activities ... and that is not wrong."

Oliver North

"In the United States Naval Academy, nobody taught me how to run a covert operation."

Oliver North

This illegal financing -- to operate an illegal war in Nicaragua -- allowed a clandestine arm of the government to run itself. North was not accountable to anyone or to any agency. This was a direct assault on the American constitutional system. The laws of the United States were ignored and broken by a continuous series of lies. Presumably North believed that he was waging a war against the Sandinistas and many members of Congress.

REAGAN AND BUSH'S INVOLVEMENT

BUSH SEEMS TO LOSE HIS MEMORY.Plans to fund the Contras originally emanated from the office of the vice president. In the summer of 1982 Bush and Casey launched the Black Eagle Operation, a plan to ship weapons to the Contras through San Antonio, Texas and then on to El Salvador and Panama. According to a CIA operative, Bush agreed to use his office as a cover after Donald Gregg became the NSC adviser and coordinated the logistics of the operation.

Bush always claimed that he was "out of the loop" in the Iran-Contra scandal as well as the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking while he was vice president. Plans to fund the Contras originally emanated from the office of the vice president. In the summer of 1982 Bush and Casey launched the Black Eagle Operation, a plan to ship weapons to the Contras through San Antonio, Texas and then on to El Salvador and Panama. According to a CIA operative, Bush agreed to use his office as a cover after Donald Gregg became the NSC adviser and coordinated the logistics of the operation.

In December 1983, Bush flew to Panama to meet with Noriega. This encounter was interpreted by Noriega as an appeal in training and arming the Contras.Jose Blandon was the top political aide to Noriega. When subpoenaed before the Senate investigating committee in 1988, Blandon testified that Bush asked for and received a commitment from Noriega to help secretly arm, train, and finance the Contras. In North's 1989 trial, more evidence surfaced about the Bush-Noriega Contra connection. A Costa Rican-based Contra leader testified that he received $100,000 from Noriega in July 1984. Bush continued to plead ignorance about Noriega's drug dealing activities. Blandon confirmed that the CIA used Noriega to funnel guns and money to the Contras and that Panama was used as a training base.

After the Boland Amendment outlawed further shipments of weapons to the Contras, the "Supermarket" began to covertly fly in weapons which were purchased with private funds. Bush always pleaded innocence, maintaining that he was never aware that funds were solicited from private individuals to purchase weapons for the Contras. However, a large amount of evidence indicated that Bush knew the precise details of how the "Supermarket" raised money and bought arms.

NSC adviser Gregg served in Vietnam with Felix Rodriquez, and later both worked in American intelligence. Rodriquez was recruited by Gregg to help supply the Contras with weapons. On September 18, 1984, Gregg claimed that he sent a memo to Bush, explaining the military and political aspects of the war. Gregg said that he told the vice president that the "Supermarket" was providing the Contras with about $1.5 million from private sources.

Telephone records proved that Gregg made a number of telephone calls from his home to the White House on December 15. Bush's office officially acknowledged that Gregg and Rodriquez discussed Contra aid. The statement said that Gregg communicated with Rodriquez, but that they were never involved in directing, coordinating, or approving military aid to the Contras. Bush insisted that these contacts concerned weapons to El Salvador and not to the Contras.

On February 25, 1985, Poindexter wrote to Bush: "We want the VP (Bush) to discuss the matters with (Honduras President Roberto) Suazo." On March 16, Bush flew to Tegucigalpa and met with the president and promised him that the United States would increase military aid to Honduras in return for helping support the Contras. Suazo was close to telling the White House that he would soon evict the Contras from Honduras. Bush assured the president that he would be rewarded if he would permit Contra camps in his country and if he would help to supply them with weapons.

White House aid to Honduras began almost immediately after Bush's visit. Yet Bush categorically denied that he cut a deal with Suazo. The vice president said, "No implication, no quid pro quo, direct or indirect, from me to the president of Honduras."

As vice president, Bush was a member of the NSC. He attended at least six documented meetings between May and October of 1986 and a total of at least 24 meetings in the 1980s. The arms-for- hostages plan was undoubtedly the primary agenda item at these meetings. One of the first meetings to discuss the plan to sell arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages held by the Hezbollah was on August 6, 1985. Bush was present when National Security adviser McFarlane outlined a scheme to attempt to retrieve the hostages.

Weinberger contended that Bush supported the arms-for-hostages, while he and Secretary of State George Shultz opposed the idea. Weinberger stated: "President Reagan decided to go with Israeli-Iranian offer to release our 5 hostages in return for the sale of 4,000 TOWs (anti-tank missiles) to Iran by Israel." Weinberger's notes read: "George Shultz + 1 opposed - Bill Casey Ed Meese (Attorney General) + VP favored." Weinberger's notes told of a straightforward swap of weapons for hostages: "Our 5 hostages in return for sale of 4,000 TOWs."

Bush conceded that he supported the sale of arms but did not realize that it concerned the release of American hostages. Bush consistently said that he was "out of the loop." In addition, he stated that Israel was not a third party in sending some arms to Iran.

After Reagan authorized the sale of arms to Iran on January 6, 1986, Shultz and Weinberger expressed their opposition. Weinberger confirmed that Bush was present at a White House meeting on the following day. The two cabinet members later testified to the Tower Commission that they disagreed with both Reagan and Bush on the arm' sales. A few weeks later John Poindexter, the successor to McFarlane as National Security adviser, sent a memo to North acknowledging the high level opposition to the arms-for-hostages: "President and V.P. are solid in taking the position that we have to try."

More evidence implicated Bush with the illicit funding of the Contra war after the Boland Amendment terminated congressional dollars. Ramon Milian Rodriguez, who served as the chief financial officer of the Medellin cartel, stated that Bush had connections with the Colombia cartels. Rodriguez informed Gregg in April 1986 that North was skimming profits from the arms sales. This directly implied that Gregg was aware of the efforts of North to arm the Contras. Yet Gregg maintained that he never informed Bush about the operation. The next month, Colonel Samuel Watson, an assistant in the NSC, met with Bush and Gregg to discuss the status of the Contras. The vice president was briefed on the status of the war, including the resupply network for the Contras.

On July 29, 1986, Bush met with Amiram Nir, Israel's adviser on terrorism, at Jerusalem's King David Hotel. Bush's aide, Craig Fuller,took notes that explained that Nir hoped to gain the release of the hostages. According to Fuller, they discussed whether the arms destined for Iran would be delivered in separate shipments for each hostage as they are released. Bush later said that he could not recall much about the briefing and that he did not fully understand what Nir was referring to when he was talking about Iranian radicals. Bush said that he merely listened to Nir and that he did not know any details of the arms-for-hostages swap.

At his deposition during the Iran-Contra hearings, Contra leader Pastora testified that Bush was in the Contra resupply chain of command. Furthermore, records showed that after CIA operant Eugene Hasenfus' was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, his first telephone call was made to the vice president's office.

Despite the overwhelming evidence indicating that Bush was at several meetings where there were conversations concerning the arms-hostages swap, Bush continued to say that he was unaware of what transpired Even after the media broke the story, the vice president continued to maintain that he had been oblivious to the fact that illegal funds were being diverted to the Contras. Bush claimed that he had been informed by the Senate Intelligence Committee until a month later. The vice president contended that the entire operation to resupply the Contras was carried out privately and that no one in the White House was privy to process.

At the end of the Reagan administration, the Sandinista government still survived. Two years after Bush was elected president, Nicaragua was readying itself for the another election. The Bush administration pumped in $9 million to the 1990 election campaign of Violetta Chamorro. This is the equivalent of an enemy country spending $2 billion on an American election. It took Chamorro and 14 other parties to form the UNO coalition, and they barely defeated Daniel Ortega's Sandinista Party. This brought to a close the 11 year war which cost the lives of more than 30,000 Nicaraguans. Most of the war's casualties were civilians, since the goal of the Contras was to break the morale of those people. The United States government spent $300 million on the Contras, and private contributions never were totally accounted for. And the United States was able to sustain $15 billion in damage to Nicaragua's infrastructure.

THE CHRISTMAS EVE PARDONS. In late 1992 -- with only a month remaining in Bush's presidency -- Iran-Contra once again resurfaced. Bill Clinton had just defeated him in November in his bid for a second term. Reagan's secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, was soon to be indicted for his part in Iran-Contra. Bush only had two months remaining before he would leave office. And Walsh was in his fifth year of investigating the players involved in Iran-Contra. Bush himself was well aware that there was a chance that he, too, could be subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury and perhaps be indicted.

C. Gordon Gray Reagan's White House counsel for eight years, also served as Bush's personal lawyer in those same years when he was vice president. In December 1992, Gray recommended that Bush pardon Weinberger as well as other Iran-Contra figures. If Bush pardoned only Weinberger, Gray believed, that would make it suspicious that the president would be covering himself. After all, Weinberger's diary was in the hands of the independent counsel, and it contained evidence which could have implicated Bush. Additionally, possible personal testimony could also damage Bush's credibility, since he had vehemently denied any role in Iran-Contra. Gray believed that all the high level Iran-Contra players should be pardoned. He believed that this would shield Bush from the charge that he was attempting to bring Iran-Contra to a swift conclusion so that he himself could never be implicated. The president had been convinced to go ahead and pardon Weinberger and other Iran-Contra figures who earlier had been convicted.

Gray contacted six high level officials who had been convicted of Iran-Contra crimes in order to see if they would accept a presidential pardon. Two CIA officials as well as former NSC adviser Robert McFarlane and former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams agreed to a pardon. Gray helped Bush write a three page memo explaining the purpose of the pardons. Bush said that "the five have already paid the price -- in depleted savings, lost careers, anguished families -- grossly disproportionate to any misdeeds or errors of judgment they may have committed."

On Christmas Eve, December 24, Bush issued the pardons. The president stated that Weinberger had been pardoned "not just out of passion or to spare the 75 year old patriot the torment of a lengthy and costly legal proceeding, but to make it possible for him to receive the honor he deserves."

Bush then hired Griffin Bell's law firm of King & Spaulding to investigate himself. After only three weeks, King & Spaulding issued its findings: Bush was not implicated in any wrong-doings in Iran- Contra. King & Spaulding did in three weeks what Walsh had begun seven years before. Even though Walsh was not finished with his probe, the Christmas Eve pardons brought the Iran-Contra investigation to a conclusion. Walsh was angry.

REAGAN'S MEMORY ALSO FAILS.Reagan attended four NSC meetings, but he also contended that he knew nothing of illegal arms shipments to Iran and illegal weapons sales to the Contras. In November 1986, a Beirut newspaper broke a story which explained that American arms sales to Iran.

A month earlier on October 8, 1986 Reagan was asked at a news conference: "Was there any United States involvement in this fight over Nicaragua -- carrying the arms -- any involvement whatsoever?" Reagan replied: "I'm glad you asked. Absolutely not. While they (three Americans, including Eugene Hasenfus) there is no government connection with that at all." Then after the Reagan administration acknowledged that the United States was selling weapons to Iran, Reagan stated on November 19, 1986: "To eliminate the widespread but mistaken perception that we have been exchanging arms for hostages, I have directed that no further sale of arms of any kind be sent to Iran." Reagan was then asked, "Didn't the United States condone shipments of arms to Israel and other nations?" Reagan denied this charge by saying, "We did not condone and do not condone the shipment of arms." Then Reagan was asked, "Could you explain what the Israeli role was here?" Reagan's response was, "No, because, as I say, have had nothing to do with other countries or their shipment of arms."

On December 8, 1986, Reagan stated, "Let me just say it was not my intent to do business with Khomeini to trade weapons for hostages, nor to undercut our policy of anti-terrorism." On March 26, 1987 Reagan stated: "With regard to whether private individuals were giving money to support the Contras, yes, I was aware that there were people doing that. But there was nothing to my knowledge, of anyone whom I was aware of." Two days later Reagan said, "As a matter of fact, I was definitely involved in the decisions about (private) support to the freedom fighters. It was my idea to begin with."

Reagan told the Tower Commission that he "approved the shipment of arms by Israel to Iran" but later said that he was "surprised that Israelis had shipped arms to Iran." Then he said that he had incorrectly remembered both instances.

In his 1990 autobiography, Reagan wrote: "To this day I still believe that the Iran initiative was not an effort to swap arms for hostages. But I knew that it may not look that way to some people. Unfortunately, an initiative meant to develop a relationship with moderate Iranians and get our hostages home took on a new shape I never expected and was never told about."

"Mistakes were made and I tried to rectify them, first by appointing the Tower board to investigate,

then by reorganizing the National Security Council so that no one there could ever again take it upon himself to set foreign policy. In time, my ranking in the opinion polls rose. However, that never made me feel happy as some might think; it was as if Americans were forgiving me for something I hadn't done."

"If I could do it over again, I would bring both of them into the Oval Office and say, ‘OK, John (Poindexter) and Ollie (North), level with me. Tell me what really happened and what it is that you have been hiding from me. Tell me everything.' If I had done that, at least I wouldn't be sitting here writing this book still ignorant of some of the things that went on during the Iran-Contra affair."

In November 1986, Reagan explained the TOW missile sales: "The modest deliveries could easily be put into a single cargo plane." He also stated that the TOW missiles could be hand-held. Additionally, Reagan denied that Israel was used as a third country to help deliver arms to Iran. John Tower was appointed by Reagan to head a commission to investigate Iran-Contra. In less than a year the Tower Commission exonerated Reagan of any wrong-doing. In 1989 newly elected President Bush appointed Tower to be his Secretary of Defense. Knowing that the Senate would not confirm his appointment because of allegations of womanizing and alcoholism, Tower withdrew his name, since it was impossible for him to receive a majority vote in the Senate.

Reagan ignored the warnings that he was waging an illegal and inhumane war. Instead he decided to put his men to work, cutting deals with right wing dictators in order to finance the Contras in exchange for drugs.

IRAN-CONTRA INDICTMENTS

It is not a crime to deceive the American public as high officials in the Reagan Administration for two years while conducting the Iran and Contra operations. However, it is a crime to mislead, deceive, and lie to Congress when Congress seeks to learn whether administration officials are conducting the nation's business in accordance with the law. Lawrence Walsh was hired as a special prosecutor to determine precisely if this had occurred. He subsequently found several upper-level Iran-Contra participants in violation of the law.

Several American laws were defied:

The National Security Act. Select committees in both houses must be informed of all intelligence gathering by the CIA.

The Hughes-Ryan Amendment (1974). The CIA may only use funds which are intended for obtaining necessary intelligence. The CIA must brief at least eight separate Congressional committees in regard to any covert action other than simple intelligence gathering.

The Boland Amendment (1984). The United States cannot use funds to support any military operations in Nicaragua unless appropriated by Congress.

The Neutrality Act (1794). It is illegal to initiate, organize, and/or provide money for military action against any foreign country which the United States is not officially at peace with. The United States had officially severed diplomatic relations with Iran which had been officially branded a terrorist nation.

At the Iran-Contra trials, North was found guilty of altering and destroying documents, accepting an illegal gratuity, and aiding and abetting in the obstruction of Congress. He was sentenced to a three year suspended prison term and two years probation and was fined $150,000. Ironically, North was given 1,200 hours community work to help young people with drug problems in Washington, D.C. However, since North had been given Congressional immunity when he testified, his convictions were overturned by an appeals court in July 1990 by a two-to-one vote.

Caspar Weinberger was charged with withholding and concealing notes; lying about his knowledge of illegal Saudi Arabian contributions and lying about the existence of such notes; as well as perjuring himself twice by denying knowledge of Israeli arms sales to Iran and the need to supply Israel with arms it sold to Iran.

Major General Richard Secord, who helped arrange illegally purchased arms for the Contras, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the Iran-Contra committee. He was sentenced to two years probation.

Richard Miller, who headed a Washington public relations firm, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and to withholding information from Congress. He was given two years probation. Carl (Spitz) Channell, a conservative fund raiser, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States government. He was sentenced to two years probation.

Former National Security adviser John Poindexter was convicted of five felonies involving conspiracy, obstruction of Congress, and making false statements. He was sentenced to six months in prison.

Robert McFarlane pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress. He was sentenced to two years probation and fined $20,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community work.

Clair George, former deputy director of the CIA, was charged with ten counts of perjury. He was convicted on two charges. Elliott Abrams, deputy Secretary of State to Central America, pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress. He was sentenced to two years probation and 100 hours community work.

Albert Fiers, part of the CIA's Central American task force, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges as part of the deal to cooperate with special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's investigation.

Albert Hakim, a California arms dealer in sending illegal arms to the Contras, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for supplementing North's salary. As a large shareholder in Lake Resources, he pleaded guilty to the theft of government property, and illegally shipping arms to the Contras. He was sentenced to two years probation and fined $5,000.

Thomas Clines, CIA official, was found guilty for under reporting his earnings to the IRS between 1985 and 1988. He also received illegal profits in Iran-Contra.

Other high level White House officials were unscathed. Chief of Staff Donald Regan was not implicated, even though he had participated in top secret meetings which dealt with the illegal sale of arms to Iran.CIA director William Casey who directly organized and orchestrated the covert Contra war died before any charges were brought against him.

Before special prosecutor Walsh completed his investigation, President Bush issued the Christmas eve pardons in 1992, just weeks before he was to leave office. This made it virtually impossible to convict anyone including Bush himself. He issued pardons to Casper Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert McFarlane, Alan Feiers, Clair George, and Duane Clarridge.

In July 1989, North and other Iran-Contra leaders were barred from Costa Rica on an order by President Oscar Arias. He acted on recommendations from a Costa Rican congressional commission investigating drug trafficking. The commission concluded that the Contra re-supply network in Costa Rica which North coordinated from the White House doubled as a drug smuggling operation. The Costa Rican government also barred Major General Secord, National Security Advisor Poindexter, United States ambassador Tambs, and CIA station chief Joseph Fernandez from its borders.

The Costa Rican narcotics commission started probing the Contra network centered around the northern Costa Rican ranch of CIA operative John Hull. North's personal diary mentioned "the necessity of giving Mr. Hull protection." Investigators held North responsible for Panama President Noriega's participation in the Contra supply network. The commission confirmed information about the Contra-drug connection from independent journalists, lawyers, and the United States Senate subcommittee. Ollie North's notebooks contained dozens of references to Contra-related drug trafficking, including a July 12, 1985 entry: "$14 million to finance (arms) came from drugs." (San Juan Star, Puerto Rico, July 22, 1989; Tico Times, Costa Rica, July 28, 1989)

During the United States' ten-year Contra war, the government failed to overthrow the Sandinistas and to bring back a capitalistic dictatorship to Nicaragua. The Reagan and Bush administrations fought against the people of Nicaragua instead of waging war against poverty. The war and the Iran-Contra probe, the latter of which began in 1986, finally came to a halt in 1992 with the Christmas eve pardons. In these years, the White House was incapable of eliminating a democracy based on Marxist principles, while on the home front the American judicial system failed as well. High-ranking officials, going all the way to the Oval Office, received minuscule sentences or no punishment at all.

EAGLE AVIATION SERVICE AND TECHNOLOGY

During the Contra war in the 1980s, Eagle Aviation Service and Technology (EAST) helped Oliver North covertly fly guns to Nicaraguan rebels after the Boland Amendment cut off congressional funding. North turned to General Richard Secord to set up an illegal private arms pipeline to the Contras. Secord hired Richard Gadd, founder of EAST, in 1985 to oversee the weapons delivery. North also arranged for another of Gadd’s companies to win a State Department contract to deliver legal, humanitarian aid. Through EAST, Gadd helped acquire planes to carry arms and ammunition from Portugal to Central America, and to make airdrops directly to Contra fighters. EAST also built an airstrip in Costa Rica near the Nicaraguan border. EAST received $550,000 for its covert work, according to the Iran-Contra report. (New York Times, June 5, 2001)

During the Iran-Contra hearings, Gadd testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution, and neither he nor EAST was accused of illegalities. In his testimony, Gadd said EAST was one of several companies he formed after retiring in 1982 as a lieutenant colonel from the Air Force, where he specialized in covert operations. Two decades later, that same company was used by the State Department to fly on dangerous drug eradication missions in Colombia. EAST received little attention, even as lawmakers scrutinize the use of contractors in the Latin American drug fight. (New York Times, June 5, 2001)

EAST was not directly contracted by the State Department. It was hired by DynCorp Aerospace Technology which the State Department hired to fly and maintain aircraft for counterdrug missions in Colombia. EAST pilots sprayed herbicide on coca, the raw material for cocaine. They frequently faced gunfire, sometimes from guerrillas protecting drug traffickers. The company also worked for the Defense Department. In 1999 and 2000, EAST received more than $30 million under several Defense contracts, which included providing engineering, supplies, and other services for Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, according to Pentagon records. EAST’s president, retired Air Force Colonel Thomas Fabyanic, declined to discuss the company’s work. (New York Times, June 5, 2001)

Plan Colombia was launched in 2000 with a $1.3-billion American contribution. It reflected a gradual escalation in the United States’ drug eradication effort in Colombia. Congress limited to 300 the number of civilian contract workers participating in Plan Colombia. By the middle of 2001, there were nearly 300 American citizens working on the program in Colombia. Then in August 2001, the State Department expanded to 400 the number of private pilots that could be hired by the Pentagon’s private contractor to fight the drug war. It was an attempt by the Bush administration to circumvent Congress’ attempt to keep the United States from becoming more involved into Colombia’s civil war.

The House allowed a total of 800 American military and civilian personnel in Colombia. The Senate insisted on maintaining the civilian cap at 300, with a separate cap of 500 American military personnel. State Department officials defended the move to not count foreign employees, especially since many are Colombians working as secretaries and drivers and in other low-level jobs traditionally given to host country citizens.

The largest employer was DynCorp, which had 335 civilians on the payroll. Fewer than one-third were American citizens. An estimated 60 to 80 American citizens worked for other contractors, including Bell Helicopter Textron, Sikorsky Aircraft, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. State Department officials said that they were not required to inform Congress that they had ordered DynCorp to hire as many as 50 pilots from Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, and other countries to transport Colombian army forces into cocaine-growing zones. The pilots, most of them former Central and South American air force members who flied the most dangerous anti-drug missions there, also were hired to reduce the risk that an American would be shot down and killed in the drug war. The private contract workers did everything from flying crop dusters to transporting troops to staffing radar stations.

The State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau, which oversaw most of the United States’ activities in the region, debated whether to count the former employees. At one point, the State Department acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue and initially discussed being “totally virtuous” and counting the foreign employees in its reporting to Congress. The department subsequently decided to not count foreign employees after what the official called a “hotly debated” discussion. (Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2001)