PART 1:THE IRAN/CONTRA CONNECTION:SECRET AND COVERT OPERATIONS IN THE REAGAN ERA

WHAT THE TOWER COMMISSION DIDN'T REPORT 

THE 

IRAN 

CONTRA 

CONNECTION 

SECRET TEAMS AND COVERT 

OPERATIONS IN THE 

REAGAN ERA 

BY 

JONATHAN MARSHALL, 

PETER DALE SCOTT, 

AND 

JANE HUNTER
 

This explosive book lays bare the full details of current events, exposing the personalities and institutional relations behind the headlines. It goes beyond the specific events of the recent period to discern the roots of contemporary U.S. covert activity in the history of the past two decades. It delves into the details of CIA and extra-CIA operations including drug trafficking, gun-running, government-toppling, and assassination. 

The authors argue that the Iran-Contra scandal is not merely a plan gone awry, but a consistent outgrowth of a long tradition of covert U.S. activities. From the Bay of Pigs invasion teams to the NSC organizational team; from the CIA and the World Anti-Communist League to the Israeli connection and State Department; this is the full story, unfettered by concerns of "damage control." 

"The Iran-Contra Connection" is as disturbing as "The Tower Report" is consoling. This extraordinary book narrates a frightening, shocking story that shakes the foundations of the republic. 

—Richard Falk, from the Preface 

Preface 

by Richard Falk 

R.W. Apple, the New York Times correspondent with a sure feel for the sweet spot in the public mood, introduces the published text of The Tower Commission Report (Times Books, 1987, p. XV) with a focus on managerial ineptitude: 

The report pictures a National Security Council led by reckless cowboys, off on their own on a wild ride, taking direct operational control of matters that are the customary province of more sober agencies such as the CIA, the State Department and the Defense Department. 

As a summary this is not too misleading, but offered as it is, in praise of the aptness of the Tower Report, it contributes its bits to the rituals of mystification that have become part of the American experience whenever the integrity of the governmental process is called deeply into question. The Warren Commission Report after John F. Kennedy's assassination initiated this kind of exercise in the politics of reassurance that now seems indispensable at times of public crisis. And yet the reassurance rarely reassures. So it is with the Tower Report. Nothing essential about the Iran-contra disclosures is there resolved. 

Contrary to the Tower presentation, the Iran-contra connections were not anomalous expressions of U.S. foreign policy, nor would the outcomes have necessarily been very different if the execution of the policy had been entrusted to professionals working for those supposedly more sober agencies. If we think back, the Bay of Pigs venture was pure CIA, exhibiting in 1961 at least as little respect for bureaucratic proprieties and simple dictates of prudence. Even without the benefit of recall, we need only consider the current CIA role in relation to the contras, which includes disseminating a manual advocating selective recourse to civilian assassination and arms supply arrangements that rely upon the darkest criminal and fascist elements to be found in the hemisphere.

The opportuneness of this book by Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter cannot be overstated. The authors provide a comprehensive account of what lies below the surface of mainstream perception, and as such, enable us to interpret these events in a coherent and clarifying fashion. Indeed, to be useful citizens these days we must be armed with such "subversive" texts. If we adhere to the customary decorum in the manner of Apple/Tower, we will find ourselves mesmerized by the investigative narrative of who did what when and who knew about it, especially in the White House. As Watergate showed us, such a drama can be exciting theater, but as politics it works out to be one more pacification program, closing down any tendency to ask questions about institutions, procedures, and prerogatives.

The Iran-Contra Connection is as disturbing as the Tower Report is consoling. This extraordinary book narrates a frightening, shocking story that shakes the foundations of the republic. Equally impressive, these crucial interpretations are accompanied by such substantial evidence and documentation as to be convincing for any reader with even a slightly open mind. It is quite remarkable that such a substantial book coincides with, or possibly precedes, the crest of the historical wave of public indignation and confusion occasioned by the original revelations of November 1986. 

Briefly, let me mention some of the more dramatic aspects of the picture portrayed. There is, above all, the lucid exposure of the deep roots of what appears on the surface as bureaucratic malady. The policies embodied in both the arms sales and the diversion of funds for a variety of dirty purposes were carried out by powerful transnational networks of individuals and organizations long associated with rabid anti-communism, and centering on a mixture of former CIA officials and anti-Castro exiles, bur stretching our to include military and civilian centers of reaction, as well as a mercenary cadre available for lethal undertakings of any sort. An extremely distressing element in the story is the incredibly durable half-life of former career participants in covert operations; only for plutonium is the disposal problem greater! For money, thrills, habit, and conviction these men find ways to regroup in the private sector and carry on with their efforts to destroy progressive and nationalist political possibilities in Third World countries, as well as to sell arms and drugs, and carry out an unauthorized private sector foreign policy that is vicious and invisible and acknowledges no limits. An unappreciated cost of the Reagan years has been to introduce into the sinews of government the virus of fascist conspiratorial politics, especially in the Western Hemisphere. In this regard, the reliance on North and Poindexter is not a managerial glitch, but rather a decision to depend on those with such a passionate commitment to the radical right who happened to be positioned for action, and would be trusted to serve as faithful instruments of policy, uninhibited by either standard bureaucratic procedures or constitutional restraints. 

It may be consoling, but it is wrongheaded to explain what went awry by reference to a rogue NSC or by the insistence that Reagan is indeed senile. It is now acknowledged that William Casey masterminded the whole undertaking, himself evidently seeking the more personalist control possible within the NSC setting than could be achieved within the reconstituted and still somewhat law-oriented CIA of the 1980's. Marshall, Scott, and Hunter explain the powerful circumstantial case that links large campaign contributions from and solicitation to the far right going back to the late 1970's, especially from sources prominently connected to the struggle to suppress democratic forces in Central America, with the Reagan resolve to stand and fight in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The immediate priority of the Reagan presidency to intervene in the region may well be an outgrowth of these pre-election relationships, and what is more, the subsequent tendency to adhere addictively to such policies despite their failure and unpopularity, and in the face of Congressional opposition, raises suspicions that some sort of illicit bargain had been struck. The adroit withdrawal from Lebanon after the 1983 incident killing 241 U.S. marines, exhibiting Reagan's skill in retrenchment, contrasts sharply with the compulsiveness of the contra commitment. All of Reagan's talent as a leader and command over the political process has been needed to keep the contra cause even vaguely viable during the years of his presidency, and at great cost to his leverage on other issues. 

But what is more frightening than these indications of presidential gridlock is the extent to which the real center of power and decision making on these matters may not even have been in the White House. A significant degree of policy-forming leadership may have actually been "privatized," passing to an assortment of fringe forces represented by such notables as Singlaub, Secord, and Clines, who in this sense provided the basic framework within which Reagan, McFarlane and Casey have acted, with North and Poindexter featured as trustworthy handmaidens. In this regard, the deferred consequences of the long buildup within government  during the 1950's and 1960's of a secret paramilitary capability entrusted with interventionary missions is beginning to be evident. The problem centers upon the CIA, and its large number of agents and ex-agents working around the globe in close collaboration with right-wing and criminal elements, including those that were operating death squads in El Salvador and Argentina, enlisting support from groups and individuals who were overtly fascist, even neo-Nazi. The laudable post-Vietnam move in Congress to cut back on the covert operations role of the CIA during the Nixon and Carter presidencies created an optical illusion that this secret government was being substantially destroyed, as indeed many hundred agents were prematurely retired or even fired. Thus CIA alumni were dumped into society or cynically relocated "off-shore," bitter, ambitious, and in contact with various anti-communist exile groups, as well as with a cohort of their colleagues continuing at work within the agency, themselves embittered by the adverse turn of the wheel of political fortune that deprecated their craft and scorned their politics. Such a subterranean presence brings terrorism home, as during the anti-Castro bombings of the 1970's carried out by exile extremists in the eastern part of the United States. At the same time, there is created the nucleus of a political conspiracy waiting to prey upon the very bureaucracy that seemed ungrateful, and lacks the convictions and capabilities needed to uphold American interests in a hostile world.

This drastic mind-set of the resentful paramilitary professional is receptive to any proposal for adventure, however sordid, so long as money, violence, and right-wing backing are assured. For Reagan to convict himself of terrorism by identifying as a contra is to suggest how close to power this kind of extremist politics apparently came. And what makes the whole dynamic so sinister is that the citizenry had become deluded enough to believe that by supporting Reagan they were affirming an archetypal embodiment of American values. At last, it seemed that most of us again had a president capable of making us feel good and proud to be Americans. True, this affirmation included a measured cruelty toward losers in the capitalist rumble, but this too struck the bulk of the middle-class white majority as the American way of sustaining a lean efficiency in an era of impending struggle over shares of the world market. Unlike the rosy picture accepted by most Americans, Reaganism has undermined constitutionalism in structural ways by implementing national security policy through a reliance on capabilities outside of government, entailing such violent and unprincipled action that it became disillusioning even for adherents of a neo-conservative political ethos. To embody this power shift in policy has made it necessary to circumvent Congressional will on the contra issue, which for rightist perspectives has become as symbolic as the Palestinian or South African issues are for the Third World. In effect, Iran is the tail wagging the contra dog. The dangerous temptation to wheel and deal in Tehran probably proved irresistible because it promised to shake loose some of the slush funds needed to pursue in earnest the forbidden agenda of the far right. The possible release of hostages from Lebanon was, from this angle, merely part of "the deep cover" for this kind of ideological cabal that takes added delight in defying Congress and public opinion, and overcoming the complacency and decadence of the American polity. At no time in American history have the basic forms of popular democracy been so jeopardized, rendered vulnerable to dangerous and destructive forces.  

We find ourselves as a country in an extremely precarious situation. The Reagan presidency has rebuilt the formal legions of covert operations in the CIA and has, as well, given a taste of power to the shadow network of ex-CIA, ex-military, exile, and extremist forces in this country and abroad. Unless this structure is exposed and effectively discredited and dissolved, there is every prospect that it will continue to do severe damage. It is not just a matter of revitalizing constitutionalism at home, it is also a question of protecting innocent people overseas and here at home from cruelty, repression, and outright criminality. The dangers are societal, as well as statal. This paramilitary orientation ravages society by preying upon its capacities for law and morality, infusing drugs, corrupting police and local government, and convincing the citizenry that their lives are played out in a virtual cesspool of vice and menace, and that activism is futile and unpatriotic.

Reinforcing this drift toward contrapolitics has been the special relationship with Israel. This book devotes two chapters to documenting the degree to which Israel contrived the Iran-contra diplomacy and contributed to its implementation. Israel desperately needed customers for surplus arms, hard currency, and an involvement in Latin America that would enable some relief from its situation of diplomatic isolation. PreKhomeini Iran was a major outlet for Israeli surplus arms production. After the fall of the Shah, Israel became the only reliable base for United States strategic operations in the Middle East, long regarded as the most volatile war zone in the world. In light of public and Congressional opposition to support for the contras and the falling away of Argentina after the Falklands/Malvinas War, it was left to Israel to fill the void. In all, the Israeli role is part of the deviousness with which unpopular and unlawful foreign policy initiatives were sustained during the Reagan years. 

Even before this book, it was evident that when it came to national security, our governmental system of checks and balances and electoral accountability was not working. The militarist consensus embodied in the state was too strong in relation to the formal checks of Congress and party rivalry and the informal checks of public opinion, media, and education. But now we find that even the modest limits set by these checks can be rendered inoperative by forces more extreme and corrupt than the governmental consensus, and that for these forces there are as yet no appropriate mechanisms of exposure and accountability. In this sense, North and Poindexter, like Rosencranz and Guildenstern, are quite expendable! 

Richard Falk 

Princeton, New Jersey

April 1987 

I. 

Introduction 

The Iran-contra crisis has plunged President Reagan from his former Olympian popularity into the most serious political scandal since Watergate. In the process it has called into question not only the viability of his administration, but the future of U.S. intervention in the Third World and the ability of the public or Congress to redirect foreign policy along more humane and constructive lines. 

"Iragua," "Iranscam," "Iranamuck"—the cute name for the latest crisis are as endless as the wags' imagination. But what they signify remains far from clear. In their narrowest and least useful meaning, the terms refer to the probable diversion of money paid into Swiss bank accounts by Iranian arms purchasers to the anti-Sandinista's known as the contras. In a broader and more urgent sense, they describe a usurpation of power by an imperial President bent on subverting democratic processes at home by covert means to satisfy the demands of ruthless policies abroad. 

The intrigues that constitute that usurpation reach back long before the initiation of the Iran arms deals, back at least to the formulation of Reagan's anti-Nicaragua strategy in 1981. And to understand the people and institutions that made those intrigues possible requires an historical vision extending to the brutal covert wars in Cuba and Indochina in the 1960's, even to the founding of the CIA in 1947. 

If the Iran and contra scandals have given the nation a chance to glimpse that vision, it is because they finally opened a crack in the President's teflon political shield. On November 25, 1986 what had been a growing political controversy over revelations of US arms sales to Iran became a full-blown scandal. Reagan went before a nationally televised press conference to confess that he "was not fully informed on the nature of the activities undertaken in connection with this (Iran) initiative" and to announce that his national security adviser, Admiral John Poindexter, and his National Security Council aide, Lt. Col. Oliver North, had been relieved of their duties. 

Then Attorney General Edwin Meese took the podium to deliver the bombshell: funds from the Iran arms sales had been diverted, possibly illegally, to the contras.1 The issue was no longer one of judgment but of law. 

What was revealed was nothing less than a conspiracy at the highest levels of government to break the law and contravene public policy on Iran, terrorism and military aid to the contras. Skeptics who deny the existence of conspiracies—after all, how many people can keep a secret?—miss the point. This conspiracy had never been a well-kept secret. The administration had a more effective defense than secrecy: a President whose personal popularity could deflect isolated charges and accusations and a political opposition whose disunity discredited it in the public's eye. Without Meese certifying before the nation the existence of a veritable scandal, prior press revelations never added up to an issue of political significance. 

What made the difference, and what ultimately put Meese up on that podium, was a gradual and almost imperceptible weakening of the Reagan presidency in the fall of 1986. For the first time he had begun to lose the unquestioned support of his conservative constituency. 

The broadest cause of the erosion of support was the administration's apparent inability to hit upon an agenda for the second half of its final term. The staggering federal deficit persisted despite Reagan's increasingly halfhearted attempts to command domestic budget cuts. The military buildup stalled in Congress. The President could not decide between arms control and Star Wars. Social legislation—on abortion, prayer in the schools and the like—was going nowhere. Tax reform inspired no great public enthusiasm. And forward movement was stalled by what one conservative commentator called the "internecine" warfare between Reagan's top aides.2 

Then came a series of episodes that cast doubt on Reagan's leadership, judgment and political clout. His swap of a Soviet for the American journalist Nicholas Daniloff disappointed conservatives and foreshadowed future revelations of hostage bargaining with Tehran. Worse yet was for those conservatives Reagan's performance at Reykjavik; in impromptu arms talks with Soviet leaders, the President betrayed a hopelessly inadequate grasp of strategic issues. When Congress passed sanctions against South Africa, Reagan could not prevent a veto override in both Houses. Most important, on the first Tuesday in November Reagan lost his key political ally, the Republican Senate. 

As the teflon chipped away, the press became bolder. It had always boasted a few fine investigative reporters whose early stories now seem remarkably prescient, like the CBS News account from 1984 of the CIA's use of Southern Air Transport, a private cargo line later tied to the Iran and contra affairs, to transport arms, airplane parts and soldiers to the contras via Honduras.3 AP reporters Brian Barger and Robert Parry consistently broke stories throughout 1984 and 1985 about Oliver North, the private aid network, and the contras' involvement in arms and drug trafficking. Jack Anderson reported the administration's tilt toward Tehran, and its arms sales, in April 1986. In July 1986, the financial conduits used by North for his fund diversions began unraveling in public.4 But few people listened: Reagan's popularity bolstered his aides' denials. 

His weakness began to show—and the press in turn became more vigorous—following the crash of a contra supply plane in Nicaragua in early October 1986. Secretary of State George Shultz declared that the "private people" who hired the plane "had no connection with the U.S. government at all"5 —otherwise the administration would be in violation of a law barring the provision of military aid to the contras. 

But the pilot who survived, Eugene Hasenfus, made statements that top administration and CIA officials had their fingerprints all over the operation. Ample documentation that went down with the plane confirmed it. So did telephone records subsequently made available from the Salvadoran "safe house" where the whole supply operation was managed. The calls from that base to the White House clinched the case. In the following two weeks, a deluge of news stories painted a picture of mercenaries, terrorists and private "spooks" in the indirect employ of administration officials to evade the will of Congress.6 

On October 8, the FBI announced that it was investigating the company linked to the two American pilots killed in the supply plane crash: Southern Air Transport. FBI officials were soon to learn, by way of worried NSC operators, that Southern Air was just then involved in top secret shipments of arms to Iran. A mini-coverup began—in fact, a 26-day delay in the FBI's investigation 7 —but the White House was fast losing control. 

Behind the scenes, meanwhile, disgruntled Iranian political factions had lost faith in the arms-for-hostages deals with Washington. Leaflets distributed in Tehran in mid-October revealed some details of a secret US mission to Tehran. Then on November 3, the weekly Lebanese magazine Al Shiraa, quoting sources close to the Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, revealed that former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane had personally visited Iran to trade military spare parts for American hostages held in Beirut. Not to be outflanked, the speaker of Iran's parliament who had been conducting the negotiations, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, moved preemptively to distance himself from the embarrassment of negotiating with representatives of the "Great Satan." His confirmation that McFarlane and four other Americans had traveled to Iran set the press loose on its next—and far more explosive—scandal. 

What followed were a classic series of denials and half denials until the Reagan/Meese press conference blew the lid off the story. That press conference was the result of a complex correlation of forces: blackmail threats by investors in the Iran arms deals, complaints by Secretary of State Shultz over what he believed would be perjured testimony before Congress by CIA Director William Casey, and North's statement to Meese that funds had been diverted to Central America. Bureaucratic rivalries within the administration, in particular the bitter reaction of officials kept in the dark about the arms deals, ensured the quick disintegration of the administration's efforts at damage control. 

Since then, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Tower Commission, appointed by President Reagan to report on the scandal, have issued initial findings on the Iran deals and certain related aspects of the contra supply operation. More investigations are underway by Congress, an independent counsel and armies of reporters. 

We are indebted to all of these sources for the raw material of the book that follows. But as vital as the search for information is the contest to impose an interpretation. If the nation is to profit at all from its recent political trauma it must come to understand what went wrong and what is needed to cure the political pathologies that, in retrospect, were inadequately addressed after Watergate. But if the reporters and congressional investigators pose their questions too narrowly, the answers cannot supply that understanding.8 

Was "Irangate" the Reagan-era equivalent of a third-rate burglary— an aberrational lapse by an inattentive president whose "compassion outstripped his competence," to quote Sen. Pete Wilson of California? Did it simply reflect the inadequacy of President Reagan's "management style," as members of the Tower Commission declared? Did it call merely for a housecleaning to rid the administration of a few bad "cowboys" among the NSC and CIA staff? 

If the American public learns these lessons it will have learned nothing. New faces will inhabit the old slots. But the substance of policy and the potential for future abuses will remain intact. 

We shall argue instead that the extraordinary breakdown in political judgment, the bizarre execution of policy and the outright violations of law were all part oi a much broader aggrandizement of power by an administration committed to a militant program of foreign intervention and forced by domestic political opposition to use covert means to achieve it. Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 marked not only the personal triumph of a former conservative outcast, but the victory of individuals—many of them CIA or military special operations veterans—dedicated to regaining power at home and abroad through clandestine politics. Emboldened by Reagan's landslide victory, which they interpreted as a sweeping mandate for action, they turned the power of the presidency against Congress and the American people in the course of turning it against foreign enemies. 

We shall argue further that the Iran and contra scandals were no aberration. They were a logical product of an administration that prized "covert" above "democratic" politics. In that spirit, former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane wrote his long-time deputy Oliver North, "if only the world knew how many times you have kept a semblance of integrity and gumption to US policy, they would make you secretary of state. But they can't know and would complain if they did— such is the state of democracy in the late 20th century."9 

Time and space constraints have necessarily limited the scope of this argument. We make no attempt to recount the full, sorry history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, nor the political and economic relationships underlying that history. A valuable and growing literature, including Noam Chomsky's Turning the Tide,10 illuminates those essential topics. Nor, with our focus on the Reagan years, can we fully suggest the similar complicity of past administrations in foreign crimes and domestic cover ups. 

This is a book about Irangate and Contragate, not primarily about the contras or Iranians. There are relatively few Nicaraguan or Iranian names here, for this is emphatically a book about the United States. This analytical limitation imposes a narrower moral focus than the whole of the events in Central America and Middle East surely warrant. In the larger context, the murder of peasants and health workers in Nicaragua and the stoking of a war that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Iran and Iraq far outweigh the legal or constitutional implications of America's scandals. 

But the millions of foreign victims have a stake in curbing the people and institutions in Washington that promote the destructive maintainance and expansion of American power abroad. To that end, an assertion of law and democratic control over foreign policy is at least a necessary, if not sufficient, condition. Our book is not written to promote a total politics of critical consciousness and understanding but to end the covert policies that have given Reagan—and prior presidents—the means to launch costly and often tragic interventions overseas. This is a subject to which we shall return in our conclusions. Suffice it to say for now that in Iran and Central America, as in the Vietnam War, those responsible for intervention were not the American people. Our book is an act of faith that ordinary citizens, if educated to the lies, law-breaking, drug-running and other scandals of the Iran-contra secret teams, can be roused to protest and force an end to such interventions, wherever their political sympathies lie. 

II. 

Contracting Out U.S. Foreign Policy 

The imperial presidency, temporarily checked by the Vietnam defeat and Watergate scandal, has reemerged during the Reagan years. As always, the reason lies in excessive congressional deference to the executive branch. But since 1980, presidential power has been aggrandized by the Reagan administration's sophisticated strategies for circumventing Congress in the shaping and implementing of foreign policy. 

President Reagan's secret weapon is "contracting out" such normal government functions as funding and executing policy to the "private" sector while keeping policy making itself in the hands of the state. But unlike typical commercial examples of the practice, the administration has contracted to agents who are themselves total creatures of government—in particular, of government intelligence agencies. In their "private" capacities, however, these agents nonetheless fall largely outside congressional purview. 

This strategy involves much more than confining policy making and implementation to a tight circle within the National Security Council, however much a dismayed Secretary of State George Shultz has focused public attention on his personal exclusion from decisions. President Reagan's dependence on the NSC to the near exclusion of traditional bureaucracies is, after all, far from unique; Henry Kissinger mastered that art in the Nixon era and for it won the admiration of Congress and the American press. 

Reagan's innovation was much more significant: while bypassing standard channels of government, his administration found foreign governments and rich individuals to contribute the money; CIA and military special operations veterans to contribute the manpower; and private firms to contribute the logistics for its operations. In effect, White House operatives set up a parallel Treasury, Army, Air Force and State Department to negotiate with terrorists, fight covert wars and subvert the law wherever they deemed appropriate. Farming such covert operations outside even the CIA served to insulate the president and his advisers from scrutiny and responsibility.1 

As a result, major elements of White House policy escaped public notice or congressional review. This parallel private network functioned outside normal lines of oversight and accountability, and once set in motion, could operate effectively with minimal presidential guidance. But as distinguished from "privatization," a term often misapplied to the Iran and contra affairs, the contracting method always left essential policy direction in the White House. 

The Reagan strategy had its roots in the classic intelligence practice of using proprietaries and "cut-outs" to effect policy while preserving deniability. Always useful against unwanted public scrutiny, these techniques were perfectly suited to the 1980s' political environment of presidential activism on behalf of the "Reagan Doctrine," the commitment to roll back pro-Soviet regimes in the Third World. Congressional doubts and public hostility made overt pursuit of that doctrine difficult or impossible. Even the CIA was a problematic tool of policy owing to legal requirements that it report covert operations to Congress.2 

"Since the Vietnam War," one Reagan NSC member told a reporter, reflecting the widespread distrust of Congress by administration policymakers, "we have had this growing involvement by the legislative branch in the details of foreign policy that—you can make a constitutional argument—are properly left to the president. When you do that, you drive him in the direction of using other techniques to achieve objectives."3 

Ironically, however, deep-cover contracting also appealed to administration activists frustrated by bureaucratic gridlock between warring departments and the tendency of rival policymakers to leak details of unpopular, unwise or illegal policies. 

Such rivalries "made it impossible to function at all" except in secret, argued former Pentagon special operations planner Noel Koch. The lesson that individuals like Oliver North drew, according to Koch, was "If you're going to do anything bold or innovative, you're going to have to do things through irregular channels."4

Or as another "covert missions planner" said of North's decision to rely on former Pentagon special operations veterans for his secret missions, "the CIA and NSC have no capability to do things in a secure fashion. You want to do something quietly, then you can't tell the bureaucracies. Here's a guy who can go to key people in foreign countries and get things done. As a private citizen, he has no obligation to tell anyone."5 

And quite apart from the matter of capabilities, many insiders doubted even the resolve of the CIA to implement tough policies abroad. Angelo Codevilla, a hawkish former staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed the view of many "roll-back" conservatives in Washington: 

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Casey...personally seems to favor the victory of liberation movements. His Agency has the charter for dispensing the aid. But from among the CIA's senior personnel have come strong echoes of the State Department's view of the role of liberation movements in U.S.-Soviet relations. In their dealings with Congress and the NSC, CIA officials have often outdone even their colleagues in the State Department in reticence to provide aid to such movements quantitatively and qualitatively sufficient for victory, declaring that the Agency would rather be rid of the burden of supplying such aid at all.6 

The White House decision making center for covert operations and contracting-out strategy lay within a tiny team of select State, Defense, CIA and NSC officials known as the "208 Committee" or "Policy Development Group." Oliver North, the workaholic organizer of secret contra supply missions and Iran arms deals, was one of its most active members.7 Meeting in the Crisis Management Center in Room 208 of the Old Executive Office Building, surrounded by secure computer data links to the National Security Agency, this group could plan secret operations free from the obligation to report to the intelligence committees of Congress. Its mission was to implement the Reagan doctrine of fighting Soviet influence throughout the Third World, wherever possible by supporting indigenous forces.8 Its thorough overview of missions and logistics included such details as "which weapons will be shipped, which secret warehouse goods used, which middlemen will deliver them to clandestine airstrips."9 For the most sensitive policies, as with the Iran arms shipments, only a few members of even this group took part in policy discussions. 

For North and others in this select circle, the guiding principle was power and the task was to expand it without answering to other authorities. As one White House memo from 1982 outlined the mission of "Project Democracy"—the rubric under which the NSC began to undertake foreign policy initiatives of its own—"we need to examine how law and executive order can be made more liberal to permit covert action on a broader scale."10 Contracting-out provided means to subvert the law and stretch the scope of executive orders. 

Nicaragua: The Test Case 

Nicaragua saw the first application of the strategy. The Reagan administration's policy toward the Sandinista's from the start was summed up by the title of a report prepared by then-State Department counselor Robert McFarlane in early 1981: "Taking the war to Nicaragua."11 But owing to congressional reticence, the White House had to lie about its ultimate intentions, pledging that CIA assistance to the contras merely served to block Sandinista arms shipments to the Salvadoran rebels. "There were always two tracks," one CIA official explained, "the publicly stated CIA objective of interdicting weapons to Salvadoran guerrillas, and the overthrow of the Sandinista government."12 On March 9, 1981, President Reagan took the first step to launching the covert war under that public goal by issuing an official "finding" that Nicaraguan arms smuggling was harming U.S. national security interests. 

The need for continued deception and greater action prompted a November 16, 1981 presidential order to begin a full-scale campaign against Nicaragua. It authorized an initial $19.5 million for the guerrilla war, justified once again by the need for arms interdiction.13 But as one contra source said of that rationale in 1982, "If that's what the CIA told Congress, they forgot to tell us."14 

The November order specifically directed the CIA to wage its covert war "primarily through non-Americans" and "with foreign governments as appropriate."15 In implementing that early version of the "contracting out" strategy, the CIA piggybacked on operations already underway by two other governments: Argentina and Israel. 

Gen. Leopold Galtieri

The first of these "deniable" partners was Argentina, whose military rulers had, since the mid-1970's, unleashed an orgy of violence against their own civilian population in the course of stamping out a leftist guerrilla movement. Argentine agents had worked in Nicaragua even before Somoza's overthrow to help track down Argentine Montoneros guerrillas who had teamed up in exile with the Sandinista's; they also advised security forces and death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador. Now Argentina's military junta supplied as many as 100 veterans of its own dirty war against the left to train the first contras in urban terrorist tactics and guerrilla war. These were not just any contras: Argentina's proteges were all recruits from Somoza's brutal National Guard. Visits to Buenos Aires in 1981 by such Reagan administration emissaries as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Edwin Meyer, Ambassador-at-Large Vernon Walters and UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick helped establish the alliance of the CIA and Argentine military in Central America. A November 1 meeting of CIA director William Casey and the American-trained leader of Argentina's military junta, Gen. Leopold Galtieri, cemented it.16 At the same time, CIA paymasters who had allocated $50 million to the training program 17 prevailed on several key contra leaders to unify their anti-Sandinista groups behind the Argentine-trained veterans of Somoza's National Guard. Thus the Nicaraguan Democratic Front, or FDN, was formed on August 11, 1981, just when Gen. Galtieri was in Washington on an official visit.18 

Foreign Money, Foreign Arms 

Money for the contras that once flowed freely from CIA contingency accounts began to dry up in 1983 when Congress began setting limits on its funding of the burgeoning and ever-more-unpopular war. Legislators were finally awakening to the fact that the Argentine-trained Somocistas wanted not a democratic accommodation with the Sandinista's, but their ouster. 

On December 8, 1982, the House of Representatives passed a bill sponsored by Rep. Edward Boland of Massachusetts barring U.S. covert actions "for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua." That new law alone did not slow the administration down, but the demands of an enlarged war did. Later the next year, the CIA had to augment its budget by persuading the Pentagon to donate $12 million in "surplus" arms to the agency for delivery to the contras.19 That December, however, Congress voted a $24 million ceiling on CIA spending for its covert war in the coming fiscal year. 

In May 1984 that half-closed spigot was fully plugged in the wake of revelations that CIA agents, acting in the name of the contras, had seeded Nicaraguan harbors with mines. These agents included Salvadoran, Hondurans, Argentinians, Chileans and Ecuadorans—but ironically, no Nicaraguans. That provocative escalation had been conceived by the NSC's Oliver North and a top CIA officer in charge of anti-Sandinista operations to get more bang for limited bucks.20 But it outraged Managua's Western trading partners and chagrined Congress, whose intelligence oversight committees were taken by surprise. The fiction of "arms interdiction" held up no longer. Congress rejected a supplemental appropriation for the contras. Three months later, in August, it passed the Boland Amendment, prohibiting any administration agency involved in "intelligence activities" from "supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization or individual."21 

Robert McFarlane

The contras had some resources of their own to fall back on most notably, as we shall see in Chapter VI, profits from drug trafficking. But without more substantial help from the United States, their cause still seemed doomed until North covered his own harbor-mining folly with an even greater one: the proposal (accepted by National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane) to subvert Congress' intent by building a "private" funding and supply network.22 North claimed that the Boland Amendment's reference to any "agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities" did not apply to the National Security Council.23 He criss-crossed the globe in 1984 and 1985, raising as much as $1 million a month from private and foreign government sources to keep the administration's proxy war alive.24 North's agents in turn carried cash from his office safe to Central America for disbursement to the rebels.25 

One of North's allies in this project was Elliot Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and an enthusiast of the contra war against Nicaragua. Abrams solicited money from other countries, ostensibly for humanitarian purposes. But he consciously "decided to use the account opened by North without procedures for monitoring expenditures from the account," according to a Senate committee report.26 This studied lack of interest closely paralleled the CIA's own official policy of asking no questions about the origin of large sums of money in the contras' bank accounts. 

Together with Abrams and other officials and private agents, North raised money from a remarkable variety of sources outside the United States—and thus outside the jurisdiction of Congress. Amos Perlmutter, an American political scientist with close connections to the Israeli government, reports that, "All those who are clients of the United States have been told more or less, 'You've got to do something for the contras.'"27 

According to contra fundraiser and presidential candidate Pat Robertson, one helping hand for the anti-Sandinista rebels came from South Africa.28 For example, some of the planes that supplied the contras were made available by a South African air freight company,29 apparently after the head of the CIA's Latin America division took a secret trip to South Africa in early 1985 to solicit aid for the anti-Sandinista cause.30 The South African aid may help explain Reagan's vigorous opposition to economic sanctions and CIA director William Casey's efforts to line up Saudi oil for the apartheid regime.31 

Brunei: In the summer of 1985, during the dry spell in congressional aid, Secretary of State George Shultz and his chief assistant on Latin American affairs, Elliott Abrams, approached the Sultan of Brunei for a donation to the contra cause.32 The sultan, fabulously wealthy from oil and gas revenues, reportedly deposited $10 million in a Swiss bank account controlled by Oliver North.33 He was also a creditor to the key Irangate arms broker, Adnan Khashoggi.34 Some U.S. officials suspect that the Sultan's money never reached the contras, but instead went to reimburse Khashoggi, who advanced millions of dollars to finance U.S. arms sales to Iran.35 

Saudi Arabia: Casey also worked on Saudi Arabia—successfully— to support Washington's cause in Central America. The CIA director met with King Fahd in February 1984 to press his case. Working in tandem with Casey to persuade the royal family were two private individuals with tremendous experience in the field of Mideast arms sales: retired Air Force Gen. Richard Secord, who steered the sale of AWACS surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia through Congress in 1981, and Robert Lilac, former commander of the U.S. Air Force Logistics Command in Saudi Arabia, who left the NSC in 1983 and now works for the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, D.C.36 The Saudi royal family reportedly turned over $32 million to the rebels in Honduras and Costa Rica in gratitude for the administration's success in overcoming the Israeli lobby's resistance to the $8.5 billion AWACS sale.37 Saudi money also supported anti-communists in Angola and Afghanistan.38 Most recently, evidence has come to light that Saudi Arabia financed arms purchases by its feared adversary Iran, in hopes of moderating the regime's revolutionary, messianic mission.39 Some of these monies in turn were allegedly deposited by Israeli intermediaries in Switzerland for disbursement to the contras.40 

South Korea: Less visibly, South Korea, too, has given generously to the contras,41 and on at least one occasion shipped them arms paid for by Saudi Arabia.42 It has also provided an important back channel for arms shipments to the Khomeini regime in Iran.43 The arms and funding pipelines from South Korea were kept open by a combination of Washington lobbyists, ex-CIA officers and private organizations, many with ties to Saudi Arabia as well.44 

No country, however, has played a more significant surrogate role in both Central America and Iran than Israel. As early as 1981, Israel's economic minister Ya'acov Meridor had declared, "Israel will be your proxy."45 Although Israeli leaders have officially denied aiding the contras, the record of their involvement is clear and unequivocal.46 As recently as September 1986, according to Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, Israel sent the contras by sea a large shipment of Soviet-made arms, presumably captured in Lebanon.47 Israel's proxy activities on behalf of the contras grew out of a long tradition of military support for authoritarian regimes in Central America, including that of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua. Israel was also in on the ground floor with the contras when Somoza finally fled the country. Haifa University professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi reports that "when the CIA was setting up the contra organization in 1981, the Mossad was also there, carrying out the training and support for the first units."48 Finally, Israel was a leading arms supplier to Argentina during the period of its military rule, despite ami-Semitic violence and the Falklands War. Indirectly, therefore, Israel bolstered the contras by arming their direct military supporters in the first years of opposition.49 

The first major Israeli arms deliveries to the contras appear to have begun shortly after the pull-out of Argentine trainers and suppliers from Central America in the aftermath of the Falklands War.50 "As early as 1982," according to U.S. News and World Report, Gen. Richard Secord took charge of a Pentagon operation "in which Israel shipped tons of weapons captured during its invasion of Lebanon to a CIA arms depot in San Antonio. From Texas, the guns were shipped to the contras."51 

More than arms seem to have been involved. Replacing the Argentine advisers were "retired or reserve Israeli army commanders...hired by shadowy private firms," according to Time magazine.52 America's contractors had apparently subcontracted the job. 

Ariel Sharon

The point man for this cooperative strategy was David Kimche, a 30- year Mossad veteran who rose to direct Israel's Foreign Ministry until the fall of 1986. Known as Israel's "key contras specialist,"53 he has been directly linked to surrogate funding of contras. And it was Kimche, by all accounts, who in 1985 persuaded the Reagan administration to sanction Israel's arms pipeline to Tehran in order to influence Iranian "moderates."54 Kimche's Israeli patron Ariel Sharon was himself an architect not only of the contra supply operation but also of Israeli arms sales to Iran.55 And Kimche's White House contacts on the Iran operation—Robert McFarlane and Oliver North—were in turn the masterminds of the contra aid network. 

Nearly all of these foreign funding sources were either untraceable (AWACS kickbacks, Iran payments through Switzerland) or untouchable (Israel, South Korea). A Congress united behind Israel was not (and still is not) inclined to ask too many questions about its arms deliveries in Central America or Iran.56 Nor, after Jimmy Carter's abortive talk of a pullback from Korea, would Congress cut off the Seoul regime. Thus the White House could, for a time at least, safely flaunt the intent of Congress with help from these U.S. aid recipients. 

Personnel and Logistics: Going Private 

Just as Congress was loathe to touch these offshore suppliers, so was it reluctant to rein in the elaborate old-boy network of retired CIA and military covert operators who carried out Reagan's policies in the field. Their common experiences run the gamut from the CIA-sponsored war against Castro in the early 1960's, to the covert war in Laos later in that decade, to shady arms and intelligence operations in Iran by the mid-1970's. Out of these experiences came shared expertise, close-knit contacts and trusting friendships that would bring them together again as a covert network in the 1980's. 

Gen. John Singlaub,

Among the most significant of these figures is retired Gen. John Singlaub, a veteran of the CIA and military "special operations" in Indochina who now implements the Reagan doctrine through his leadership of the World Anti-Communist League and his Pentagon advisory role. His special operations colleagues from the Vietnam era run similar aid groups, including the National Defense Council, Refugee Relief International, and Air Commandos Association. All these groups coordinated their efforts through Oliver North on the NSC.57 

Richard Secord.

Working with North and Singlaub in Vietnam and Laos as an air supply specialist on CIA-connected covert missions was (then) Lieutenant Colonel Richard Secord. In 1981, as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Near East, Africa and South Asia, he acted as the Pentagon's chief representative and lobbyist on the AWACS sale that set the terms for subsequent Saudi kickbacks to the contras. His job also put him in a position to follow Israel's covert arms shipments to Iran in the early 1980's. A career-long specialist in cover operations, Secord had what one congressional source called "incredible intelligence contacts."58 After leaving the government in 1983, Secord and his Iranian-born business partner Albert Hakim managed the private supply network for the contras under North's supervision, using Saudi and Iranian money deposited in Switzerland to purchase planes and other supplies.59 Secord was also a key logistics agent in the Iran arms deals of 1985-86.60 One intelligence source called Secord "the 7-Eleven of this type of intelligence activity open 24 hours a day." North's own assessment was equally apt: "A man of many talents ol' Secord is."61 

Thomas Clines

Another Laos-era associate of Singlaub and Secord was CIA officer Thomas Clines. As a private businessman by 1986, he helped Secord arrange clandestine arms deliveries to the contras out of Portugal, recruited ex-CIA pilots for the supply operation and helped Oliver North obtain a ship used in the attempt to rescue American hostages in Lebanon.62 

Clines had begun putting together a private aid network even before Ronald Reagan entered the White House. In 1978, he and Ed Wilson, a former CIA agent and friend of Secord who has since been convicted of supplying explosive devices to Libya, reportedly began negotiating a $650,000 deal with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza "to create a search and destroy apparatus against Somoza's enemies."63 The negotiations commenced just as the Israelis were moving to supply essentially all of Somoza's arms. Both Israel's munitions representatives and Clines, who left the CIA on bad terms with the Carter administration, were operating directly against official policy toward Nicaragua. But their efforts foreshadowed perfectly Reagan's more militant strategy. 

So, it would appear, did the work of another retired CIA officer, Felix Rodriguez, who had served under Cline's in countless CIA operations in Cuba, the Congo and Vietnam.64 In his "retirement," Rodriguez went to work for Cline's in the late 1970s as a representative of his arms sales business in Latin America. Rodriguez also served as an arms broker for Gerard Latchinian in 1979-80. Latchinian, who would later be convicted of a drug-financed assassination plot in Honduras for the benefit of the CIA's favorite general, Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, was particularly close to Israeli arms merchants in Guatemala and Miami. Thus Rodriguez appears to have supplied a connection between Cline's and the Israelis in Central America.65 Rodriguez would later become the contras' logistics mastermind at Ilopango military airport in El Salvador.66 

A host of lesser covert operators joined these private individuals in carrying out the aims of the Reagan White House. They included Cuban exile terrorist veterans of the secret war against Castro directed by Clines from the CIA station in Miami, former CIA contract pilots who flew supply missions to Central America, former Pentagon special operations officers skilled in covert missions, and a private aid network revolving around such organizations as the World Anti-Communist League, Sovereign Military Order of Malta and CAUSA, a political arms of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

Serving this group was also a network of private companies long experienced at serving undercover operations of the government. The best known of these is Southern Air Transport, a CIA proprietary company since 1960 that was sold in 1973 to its president. Sales of other such proprietaries were conditioned on "an agreement that the proprietary would continue to provide goods or services to the CIA," according to a 1976 congressional report.67 Southern Air Transport (SAT) was the airline of choice for both the private contra aid operation and the delivery of U.S. arms to Iran in 1985-86. The same aircraft that delivered U.S. weapons to Tehran via Israel picked up Soviet-made arms from Israeli-controlled stocks in Lisbon on their return trips to Central America.68 One retired Air Force officer involved in supplying the contras warned crew members to protect SAT's cover: "We don't want to get SAT or ourselves burned with a leak or get money hung up where we would have to expose the operation] to get it back."69 

In retrospect, the practice of contracting out foreign policy to such private agents, with all its dangers and abuses, was almost inevitable given the conditions of the Reagan presidency. A militant, sometimes radical group of policy makers confronted a much more cautious Congress and bureaucracy. A president flush with a tremendous election victory was frustrated by the unpopularity of so many of his specific foreign policies. The temptation under such circumstances was to skirt the law, even break the rules in the faith that deeply covered clandestine acts would go unnoticed and that the President's personal popularity would prevail in a showdown with political critics. The temptation, in short, was to use the contracting out strategy to achieve total presidential supremacy in foreign policy. Curbing the ability of future presidents to avoid public accountability this way is an essential first step toward also curbing the domestic and foreign abuses that result.[Crap like Al Queada and ISIS, tell me they failed in a BIG way DC] 

NEXT
"Shadow Networks" and Their Stake in Covert Operations[28S] 

Footnotes:Chapter1
1. San Francisco Chronicle, 11-26-86. 
2. Gregory Fossedal, "Strategic Defense Indecision," Washington Times, 2-9-87. 
3. Cited in Washington Post, 7-9-84. 
4. San Francisco Examiner, 7-27-86. 5. Los Angeles Times, 10-8-86. 
6. On October 13, 1986 the Los Angeles Times referred to "a secret network of ex-CIA officials, foreign governments and arms dealers that has operated with the knowledge and approval of the White House but out of public view." 
7. Wall Street Journal, 12-24-86. 
8. The reluctance of those probers to cast their net too widely should be clear from a comparison of standard press accounts with the material in this book. To take a central example: over the last forty years the New York Times has given only the most cautious and limited references to those U.S. covert operations that have continuously, without interruption, intersected with and been enhanced by the international drug traffic. The sordid story of the drug-linked Nugan Hand Bank in Australia, and its connections to at least four members of the contra secret team, made front-page stories in the Australian press and were the subject of intensive investigation by two separate Australian government commissions. Yet despite the fact that the key figures were American intelligence veterans based mostly in the United States, the New York Times never reported the story until after the relevant pages in this book had (in slightly different form) already been published (see Peter Dale Scott, "Contra-gate and the CIA's 'Off-loaded Operations'," Pacific News Service, January 28, 1987; New York Times, March 8, 1987. Cf. Jonathan Marshall, Inquiry, November 24, 1980; Parapolitics/USA, March 1, 1983). 
9. Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, 2-27-87. 10. South End Press, 1985. 234 

 Footnotes to Chapter II 
1. Cf. Newsweek, 12-15-86 on Poindexter's concern for "insulation" for Reagan. 
2. Michael Ledeen, a key private operator in the Iran arms-for-hostages deals, "made the point that any serious covert action operation directed against Iran using Manucher Ghorbanifar should be run out of the White House not CIA because 'it will leak from Congress.'" TCR, p. 204, citing undated CIA memorandum. 
3. James Bamford, "Carlucci and the NSC," New York Times Magazine, 1-18-87, p. 76. 
4. Washington Post, 11-30-86. Vice President George Bush came to much to same conclusion: "There has got to be a chance for the president and his NSC adviser to undertake certain things and do certain things for him that the State Department and the Defense Department can't do because of the bureaucracy or because of the ability of any individual who does not like the policy to abort the policy" (New York Times, 2-27-87). 
5. U.S. News and World Report, 12-15-86. 
6. Angelo Codevilla, "The Reagan Doctrine—(As Yet) A Declaratory Policy," Strategic Review, XIV (Summer 1986), 19. Codevilla may well be referring to former CIA deputy director John McMahon, who allegedly left the agency after conservatives complained of his lukewarm support for the Afghan rebels. It was McMahon—an opponent of Iran arms deals from the start—who insisted that the CIA demand a presidential finding before aiding Oliver North's back-channel arms deals with Iran (New York Times, 1-17-87; Washington Post, 1-22-87; Mideast Markets, 12-8-86). 
7. Washington Times, 12-8-86; Newsweek, 12-22-86; Washington Post, 12-19-86; Washington Times, 12-23-86; Los Angeles Times, 12-21-86; Boston Globe, 12- 28-86; Village Voice 12-9-86. Besides North, the 208 Committee included CIA veteran Vincent Cannistraro, who helped direct the contra operation until moved aside in the wake of the scandal over the CIA-produced assassination manual; Clair George, the head of the CIA's clandestine service; Michael Armacost, Undersecretary of State; Fred Ikle, Undersecretary of 235 236 The Iran-Contra Connection Defense for Policy; Morton Abramowitz, head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Navy Captain James Stark and the late NSC Deputy Director Donald Fortier. 
8. Newsweek, 3-2-87. Some of this smaller group's operations were later handled out of Room 302, right next to the NSC intelligence directorate on one side and the Crisis Management Center (moved to room 304) on the other. 
9. Washington Post, 3-9-86. 
10. New York Times, 2-15-87. 
11. Christopher Dickey, With the Contras (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 107. 
12. Washington Post, 2-24-85, quoted in NACLA Report on the Americas, July/August 1986, 
13. New York Times, 4-8-83. 
14. Miami Herald, 12-19-82. 
15. New York Times, 4-8-83; Christopher Dickey, With the Contras, 112. 
16. The cooperation continued up to, and to some extend beyond, the Falklands war. On March 9, 1982, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American affairs Thomas Enders, on an official visit to Buenos Aires, said he expected Argentina to be "active in whatever action is taken in Central America" by other Latin powers. One month earlier, Argentina had made public its commitment of military aid to El Salvador (Washington Post, 3-10-82). 
17. Washington Post, 1-2-87. 
18. Tribune (Oakland) 11-7-82; Washington Post, 12-18-82; Miami Herald, 12- 19-82; New York Times, 12-6-82; Wall Street Journal, 3-5-85; Dickey, With the Contras, 54, 117, 123; Edgar Chamorro testimony before the World Court, reprinted in Peter Rosset and John Vandermeer, eds., Nicaragua: Unfinished Revolution (Grove Press, 1986), 236-237; Shirley Christian, Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family (NY: Random House, 1986), 197-202. Vernon Walters himself handled these negotiations, according to Chamorro. Several accounts note that Chilean officials supplemented the Argentinians' role in Honduras and El Salvador; cf. Latin America Regional Reports, Mexico & Central America, RM- 81-10, 11-27-81; New York Times, 12-9-81. 
19. Washington Post, 9-15-84; U.S. News and World Report, 12-15-86 (Operation Elephant Herd). 
20. New York Times, 1-3-87. The CIA officer was Duane Clarridge. In May 1984, according to former contra leader Edgar Chamorro, Clarridge showed up with North in Tegucigalpa and reassured the rebels that "If something happens in Congress, we will have an alternative way, and to assure that, here is Colonel North. You will never be abandoned" (New York Times, 1-21-87). 
21. Washington Post, 12-7-86. 
22. Ibid; Miami Herald, 11-27-86. The process of "contracting out" to private individuals accelerated after the Boland Amendment in 1984. As one special operations veteran told U.S. News and World Report, "In Central Footnotes 237 America, there is no such thing as a private mercenary. But after the mining of the harbors in 1984, we needed deniability. So these guys now work on contract" (U.S. News and World Report, 10-20-86). 
23. Washington Post, 12-7-86. 
24. Washington Post, 11-30-86. 
25. Los Angeles Times, 1-8-87 (Robert Owen to John Hull in Costa Rica). With the money taken care of, the White House also saw to it that the contras had access to private arms sources regardless of congressional will. As early as 1981, CIA officials began advising the Nicaraguan exiles on how to smuggle weapons out of Miami under the nose of U.S. Customs (Miami Herald, 12-19-82). The FBI is now investigating a March 1985 shipment of mortars, rifles and ammunition from Fort Lauderdale to El Salvador, for transshipment to the rebels. 
26. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on Preliminary Inquiry into the Sale of Arms and Possible Diversion of Funds to the Contras (January 29, 1977), p. 45. 
27. Legal Times, 12-8-86. The major countries approached were Israel, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan; San Francisco Chronicle, 1- 23-87. 
28. Israeli Foreign Affairs, (IFA), March 1986. 
29. Dallas Morning News, 10-18-86. 
30. ABC News, 2-25-87; San Francisco Examiner, 3-12-87. At least 15 South African pilots and cargo handlers were based in Honduras to deliver supplies to the Contras. 
31. San Francisco Examiner, 10-21-86. 
32. The sultan had earlier been turned into a CIA "asset" by Ronald Ray Rewald, a Honolulu investment counselor convicted of fraud following the collapse of what he says was a CIA front company (San Francisco Chronicle, 11-8-84; Counterspy, June-August 1984). 
33. Los Angeles Times, 12-6-86; New York Times, 12-7-86, 12-25-86; Saw Francisco Chronicle, 1-16-87 (Jack Anderson). 
34. Los Angeles Times, 12-16-86. 
35. Los Angeles Times, 1-7-87; cf. MidEast Report, February 1, 1987. 
36. San Francisco Examiner, 10-21-86; New York Times, 10-22-86, 11-30-86. 
37. San Francisco Chronicle, 10-28-86; San Francisco Examiner, 1-12-87; New York Times, 2-4-87, 2-27-87, 3-15-87. 
38. New York Times, 10-22-86. 
39. San Francisco Chronicle, 11-27-86. 
40. San Francisco Chronicle, 11-26-86. 
41.Miami Herald, 10-12-86. 
42. San Francisco Examiner, 12-3-86. 
43. NBC 11-25-86; Wall Street Journal, 11-6-86, 5-2-84; Time, 7-25-83. 
44. Some of the relevant individuals with ties to South Korea are: * Michael Deaver, the Reagans' trusted friend and a registered lobbyist for 238 The Iran-Contra Connection both South Korea and Saudi Arabia. He got his $500,000 a year contract to represent Riyadh from Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States who coordinated covert Saudi aid to Afghanistan, Angola and the Nicaraguan contras (Washington Times, 12-8-86.) Deaver steered Robert McFarlane into the slot as national security adviser where he organized the contra supply operation and the Iran arms route (New York Times, 11-17-86 [Safire]). A California businessman, Sam Bamieh, alleges that King Fahd endorsed using Deaver to promote a U.S.-Iran rapprochement (Los Angeles Times, 2-25-87). 
*Robert Owen, a registered lobbyist for South Korea, Taiwan and the League of Arab States. He acted as the NSC's chief field liaison to the contras (Miami Herald, 6-8-86; NBC 6-13-86; AP 6-10-86; CBS 6-25-86; New York Times, 10- 16-86). 
*Donald Gregg, George Bush's top national security aide, and former CIA station chief in South Korea. He served as a key White House contact of the veteran CIA Cuban exiles who organized the contra supply flights (Miami Herald, 10-11-86, Mia mi Herald, 10-12-86, Washington Post, 10-24-86). 
*Albert Hakim, chief executive of Stanford Technology Trading Group. He played a key role with retired Air Force major general Richard Secord in establishing the Swiss financial conduits through which Iranian arms money was transferred to the contras. The Iranian-born Hakim sold electronic security and monitoring systems to both South Korea and Saudi Arabia (Wall Street Journal, 12-5-86; San Jose Mercury, 7-18-86; Tribune, 12-4-86). 
*Retired Gen. John Singlaub, who served in South Korea with the CIA and later as commander of U.S. forces there in the mid-1970s. As a private citizen and Pentagon counterinsurgency adviser in the Reagan period, he was assigned the task of raising funds in the United States and oversees for the contras and similar anti-communist resistance groups (Washington Post, 12-10-84; Boston Globe, 12- 30-84; Village Voice, 10-22-85). 
*The World Anti-Communist League, an umbrella group for right-wing extremists including European nazis and Latin death squad leaders. It operated under Singlaub's direction as a prime conduit for funds and arms to the contras. Much of this support came from W ACL's two founder countries, South Korea and Taiwan (Miami Herald, 10-28-86). WACL member organization Alpha 66, a group of Cuban exile extremists, reportedly trained former Nicaraguan National Guard members in the Florida Everglades for service against the Sandinistas. 
*CAUSA, the political wing of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. It has taken a leading role in organizing political and material support for the contras in the United States and Latin America. Like its parent church, it is assumed to have close Korean CIA connections (Nation, 10-6-84; Washington Post, 1-4-86 [Jack Anderson]). 
45. Quoted in Honduras Update, #5 (early 1983). 
46. Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 12-3-86; New York Times, 12- 3-86; San Francisco Chronicle, 11-26-86, 12-5-86; Washington Post, 11-28- Footnotes 239 86, 12-12-86. 
47. San Francisco Examiner, 1-12-87. 
48. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "U.S.-Israeli-Central American Connection," The Link, XVIII (November 1985). 
49. Bishara Bahbah, Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 123-134; New York Times, 12-5-86. 
50. During the period of its military dictatorship Argentina ranked behind only South Africa as a customer for Israeli arms; Argentina and Israel also collaborated on aid to right wing security forces in Central America (Washington Post, 12-16- 84, 6-16-84; The Middle East, September 1981; NACLA Report, May/June 1983). 
51. U.S. News and World Report, 12-15-86. 
52. Time, 5-7-84. 
53. San Francisco Chronicle, 11-26-86. 
54. Ironically, the chief Israeli intermediary on the Iran arms deal in 1986 admitted that summer that "we are dealing with the most radical elements" in Iran, not the moderates (San Jose Mercury, 2-8-87). 
55. Monitin, April 83 [Shahak]; San Francisco Chronicle, 11-12-86 (Sharon interview). 
56. Wall Street Journal, 12-5-86. 
57. Miami Herald, 4-30-86,6-8-86; Washington Times, 10-8-85; New York Times, 11-9-86. 
58. Los Angeles Times, 12-7-86. 
59. New York Times 10-24-86; Los Angeles Times, 7-27-86; San Francisco Examiner, 7-27-86, 10-21-86; San Francisco Chronicle, 11-27-86; Joseph Goulden, The Death Merchant (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 47-8. 
60. San Francisco Chronicle, 11-24-86 (Jack Anderson); New York Times, 1-17- 87. 
61. Boston Globe, 12-14-86; TCR, p. 55. 
62. Wall Street Journal 1-2-87; New York Times, 12-6-86; San Francisco Examiner, 2-12-82. 
63. Peter Maas, Manhunt, 138, 231; Maas, "Oliver North's Strange Recruits," New York Times Magazine, 1-18-87, p. 22; San Francisco Examiner, 2-12-87; Dallas Morning News, 12-21-86. 
64. Los Angeles Times, 10-16-86. 
65. Miami Herald, 10-23-86. Oliver North urged the State and Justice Departments to go easy on Latchinian (New York Times, 2-23-87). 
66. New York Times, 12-13-86. 
67. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, (Washington: USGPO, 1976), p. 239. 
68. New York Times, 12-4-86; San Jose Mercury, 11-26-86; Miami Herald, 12-9- 86. 
69. Washington Post, 12-7-86. A more obscure firm, Race Aviation, reportedly made one U.S.-sponsored arms delivery to Tehran on July 4, 1986. 240 The Iran-Contra Connection Its predecessor, Global International Airways, previously flew arms to the Afghan rebels (presumably on behalf of the CIA) and, most significantly, delivered arms for EATSCO, the consortium associated with the Wilson-Clines group (Kansas City Star, 6-10-84,11-13-86; Wall Street Journal, 1-2-87).