The Murky Depths of Anthony Lake

...The Miami Herald reported last year that federal agents also found photographs of Cabrera with Castro and other Cuban officials...

...Did he set aside crucial national security concerns in order to keep the Clinton fundraising machine well oiled...

...He added: "I was told by the NSC that Tony Lake was involved or at least was fully aware of the negotiations...

...Lake refused to testify before the committee under oath, as did Leon Fuerth, national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore...

...Beyond that, a simple search of almost any newspaper database will reveal articles going back years detailing the alleged mob ties of Coia and his predecessors...

...In a Wall Street Journal tribute to Tony Lake, former CIA Director Robert Gates dismissed the evidence of Lake's left-leaning views in earlier years "as wholly irrelevant and silly in 1997, even if true...

...The only part of this scandal that has emerged so far was Lake's decision in April 1994 to give Iran a "green light" to covertly ship arms to Bosnia —a gambit that bypassed the CIA Lake is now being asked to head...

...Instead, it turned out that the NSC actually coordinated the inter-agency decision to gut the legislation of meaning, through its Intelligence Directorate...

...It also meant, the report claims, that the Iranian embassy in Sarajevo "conducted aggressive activities to popularize radical Iranian political and Shi'a religious thought....With the backing of Iran and the green light from the Clinton administration, the Bosnian government became more fundamentalist in orientation...

...Wang's contributions...

...Four months later, however, the president exempted California-based Occidental Petroleum from the law, and allowed it to negotiate a $930 million oil deal with the government of Sudan...

...While the State Department was engaged in hard-nosed negotiations with Havana on human-rights violations and other issues, the Clinton administration had a differing covert aim: breaking the Republican stranglehold on Cuban exiles in Florida, so the president would have a chance at winning Florida in the 1996 election (he did...

...diplomatic representatives inside Cuba...

...Late last year, in a union election that was supervised by the Justice Department and which for the first time allowed members to vote directly for president, Coia was easily re-elected over a little-known opponent...

...The countries most affected by the law were Syria and Sudan, since the other terrorist states—Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba—were sanctioned under separate legislation or by the United Nations...

...Frank Gaffney says unequivocally that Lake's nomination should be shot down...

...One would have expected the NSC to reject such a soft approach to terrorism," says a congressional aide who investigated the case...

...Whatever the case, Arthur Coia is now in a position to keep contributing for the duration of the Clinton administration...

...The tape also shows a curious award ceremony, during which the head of the U.S...

...Ellsberg leaked the papers to the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and eventually the New York Times and Washington Post...

...federal agencies" over the past two years, and that the wiretaps revealed that the embassy was being "used for planning contributions to the DNC...

...The Chinese had explicitly promised the Clinton administration they would refrain from such sales, after the White House had briefly imposed sanctions the year before on China's Ministry of Aerospace Industry for having sold to Pakistan 280-km range M-u missiles designed to carry a nuclear warhead...

...What we haven't been able to confirm is whether Lake actually met with the Cubans while he was at Guantanamo...

...Then—CIA director James Woolsey has testified that he had no knowledge of Lake's Iran operation...

...Sources at the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which issued the regulations, said they had been drafted by Lake's National Security Council and by the State Department and contained a loophole so large that multi-billion dollar contracts could be driven through it...

...Bill McCollum (R-Fla...

...TAS has found that Lake's involvement was far more extensive than previously believed...

...Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff was fully briefed on the Conoco deal during a November 1994 tour of Persian Gulf countries, and "failed to raise any objections," congressional sources told the newsletter...

...Wang of Alexandria, Virginia...

...Not even the CIA could be actively involved, since that would entail a presidential finding, and that meant briefing the congressional oversight committees...

...As with previous clandestine attempts to open a backchannel to Tehran, the effort failed spectacularly...

...J.J...

...The anti-terrorism bill had been signed to great fanfare...

...French judicial sources in Paris have confirmed to The American Spectator that Dr...

...Occidental returned the favor with large donations to both the DNC and key congressional Democrats...

...Warren Christo84 April 19 97 The American Spectator pher threatened to resign in late 1994," the former official says, "because he never saw the president...

...Only days after Lake had given the green light for Iranian arming of the Bosnian Muslims, in early May 1994, he took the additional step of ordering the CIA to halt a covert operation aimed at destabilizing the Tehran regime...

...Lake's record is no less troubling in other areas...

...Behind the scenes," says an aide to South Florida Republican Congressman Lincoln DiazBalart, "there were secret negotiations over the immigration accord and other issues which reversed 37 years of policy toward Cuban refugees...

...policy toward Iran almost immediately...

...But China's Ministry of Aerospace Industry was a big client of major DNC donors—including McDonnell Douglas and Silicon Graphics...

...Asked about his newly imposed ban on trade with Iran, the president said that he had "tried it the other way for two years, and that didn't work...

...His network of Chinese fundraisers and donors, just on the basis of what is already known, betrays a staggering indebtedness to foreign nationals, and his administration has repeatedly contravened the spirit, and in some cases the letter, of U.S...

...Why you are doing this is beyond me...

...A senior Pentagon analyst told TAS that the delivery of coastal cruise missile batteries "will dramatically escalate tensions in the Gulf...

...Lake thus had an apparently sound reason for closing down the operation, and by January 1, 1995 the radio station went off the air...

...While Khamenei was angry, however, CIA officials say they had concluded that Ganji's work had been "ineffectual" and "would not succeed" at overthrowing the Tehran regime (this despite the fact that in January 1994 the CIA actually expanded Ganji's operations by providing him with a medium-wave transmitter that could reach most of Iran...

...However, I have noticed that you have been aimlessly attacking Republicans of late...

...What political opponent in his right mind would apply for a U.S...

...The error did not affect what we reported as the total amount of Dr...

...To date, the DNC has returned $3 million in questionable campaign contributions, and announced on February z8 there could be more...

...When Lake joined the Carter administration as director of the State Department's policy office, he hired Feinberg at State...

...introduced an amendment on February 12, 1997 to restore the intent of the original law...

...Adds Tom Moore, a former Republican staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee: "I personally think this is one of the worst appointments imaginable, because Tony Lake will wreck what is left of the intelligence community, both morale-wise, and otherwise...

...As reports of Iranian terrorism started coming in, and as Senator Alfonse D'Amato and the American Jewish lobby increased pressure on the administration to take a tougher line on Tehran, the White House tried to walk away from the policy—with giant strides...

...It also banned U.S...

...Documents found in Letelier's briefcase after his murder implicated a Treasury Department employee, Richard Feinberg, as a likely Cuban intelligence agent...

...Senior military and intelligence personnel see tremendous danger in Iran's possession of the weapons...

...Top aides to Lake are now blaming the administration's refusal to impose sanctions on Sen...

...Navy, for instance, currently has no effective defense against sea-skimming anti-ship missiles, such weapons were specifically included in 1992 legislation that imposes mandatory sanctions on any company or country delivering such weapons to Iran or Iraq...

...Having been at the NSC under Richard Nixon, he resigned in protest over the secret invasion of Cambodia in 1970...

...desperately wanted to block out of fears Iran would gain access to Russian nuclear weapons technology at the same time...

...Lake is seen inspecting the tent city where Cuban refugees were being held, and meeting with U.S...

...Oddly enough, on February 28, the Democratic National Committee announced that it was returning $5,000 to one Chi R. Wang—it's not clear whether he is the same Chi Wang of McLean, Virgnia, who contributed $27,000 to the DNC...

...During an accidental meeting on July 9,1995 at a Georgetown restaurant, at which this writer was present, President Clinton told the son of the former Shah, "I'd like to see (Continued on page 84) 41 that "It sometimes happens that men who preach most vehemently about evil and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically nothing else on their minds except sin, are really unconscious haters of other men...

...visa, knowing his name is going to be given to the Castro regime...

...Under Lake, we fear things will get worse...

...According to one former senior Clinton administration official, a decision to bug a foreign embassy would "have to be approved right at the top—by the director of Central Intelligence, the attorney general, the head of the FBI, the national security adviser, and by the president...

...Similarly, Dr...

...The case has attracted national attention because Cabrera was invited to a White House fundraiser at the same time the cocaine was entering the United States, and was photographed posing with Al Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton...

...The intermediary claimed the talks collapsed in April 1995 — just before President Clinton's Moscow summit with Russian president Boris Yeltsin —"after five or six months of intense legal work on both sides [because] neither side could agree on how to make the agreement public...

...Other panelists included Victor Marchetti and CIA "defector" Phillip Agee, who had begun to expose CIA agents working undercover overseas in the pages of CounterSpy, an IPS magazine...

...citizens and diplomats in Croatia, according to the House subcommittee report on the affair...

...TWO-FACED, PART TWO Lake seems then to have spearheaded a second two-faced diplomatic effort with another hostile nation, this time Communist Cuba...

...corporation...

...and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y...

...It was a curious repeat of the "no-instructions" instruction given to the Croatian government when it asked whether the U.S...

...But to get the cash, Clinton had to ignore warnings about the propriety of the contributions...

...Ganji was under 24-hour police protection, and that several assassination attempts against him had been thwarted...

...Ganji and his opposition group were "terminated" to deliver another message of conciliation...

...By Kenneth R. Timmerman ill Clinton's pick for Director of Central Intelligence —National Security Advisor Anthony Lake — is a study in paradox...

...Not derailing business—no matter what—seems to be as much a Lake as Clinton preoccupation...

...A lot of tough questions will have to be asked in the meantime...

...He is a man who has the president's trust—something professional intelligence officers value —yet his obsession with secrecy makes Congress suspicious that he will "skew" intelligence reports to support the administration's political goals...

...Although the Boeing deal eventually fell through because of congressional pressure, Lake and Clinton learned an important lesson: animosity against the Tehran mullahs was so high on Capitol Hill that any softening of the American position on Iran was going to have to be done in total secrecy...

...Another part of the Lake policy means Drug Enforcement Agency teams are now being sent to Cuba to share intelligence with the Cuban government, even though, as one congressional aide puts it, "we know that the Cuban government is directly engaged in narco-trafficking...

...Indeed his early political career is the stuff of left-wing legend...

...He has repeatedly urged the president not to penalize China and Russia for the sale of ballistic missiles to terrorist states such as Iran, despite U.S...

...troops...

...It was an utterly cynical sacrifice of human rights (and long-standing American policy) for the sake of vote collecting, and when Dennis Hayes, the State Department's Cuba coordinator, learned of the duplicity he resigned in disgust...

...But again the White House ignored the advice...

...In May 1995, the White House, under Lake's direction, announced that it had negotiated a more "orderly" refugee policy with Cuba...

...Clearly every senior leader—civilian or military, emir, king or chief of service—that I talk to in the Gulf today," Peay said, "describes Iran as the long-term threat...

...And they are investigating allegations that Lake helped to quash an FBI investigation into the murder of two Haitian leaders who opposed the U.S.-backed regime...

...Manoucher Ganji, who had been Iran's minister of education under the Shah...

...Encouraged by these signs, Tehran contacted a Houston oil firm, Conoco, and offered it a $600 million gas field development project—the first time a foreign oil company had been invited into Iran since the fall of the Shah in 1979...

...We went to the Asian clients of Clinton's Arkansas friends...

...As in so many other examples of his minimalist approach toward foreign policy, Lake operated here by a negative gesture, or a passive approach ("no instructions"), rather than by taking action that would leave fingerprints or require congressional notification...

...What may be most damning of all is Lake's alleged involvement in (and knowledge of) the illegal solicitation of campaign contributions from foreign governments...

...Instead, Warren Christopher was encouraged to engage in a campaign of hot rhetoric against the Tehran regime, which he called "an outlaw state...

...Meanwhile, other U.S...

...The formerly all-powerful Chicago Laborers have fallen, and Coia remains standing...

...In the end," Scowcroft declared at a Dallas conference in May 1996, "we left the decision for the new administration...

...A U.S...

...But the Justice Department sent the "mob puppet" warning in January 1994...

...He ignored three separate warnings from government ethics lawyers in 1993 to sell his oil company stock holdings, refusing to do so until they had racked up 36 April 1997 • The American Spectator an additional $40,000 in earnings...

...And John Serpico, Samuel Caivano, and David Caivano all say Arthur Coia told them he had discussed the RICO issue with the president in the first week of November 1994...

...Evidence is now emerging, including detailed accounts provided by two direct participants who carried messages to Tehran, that the green light was only part of a much broader covert policy toward Iran...

...officers...

...policy toward Iran had been under review during the final months of the Bush administration, according to Bush national security adviser Brent Scowcroft—but the shift was going to be toward greater pressure on Tehran, not cooperation...

...He helped Occidental Petroleum, a California firm, obtain an exemption from the 1996 anti-terrorism act in order to pursue a lucrative oil deal in Sudan— a country that is on the State Department's list of international terrorist nations—by ordering the Treasury Depaihnent to write regulations that took the teeth out of the law...

...embassy overseas to reduce the number of targets available to Iranian terrorist teams who were shadowing them...

...was eager to convince Tehran to build a natural gas power plant instead, and was prepared as an inducement to unfreeze assets blocked in the United States since the 1979-1981 hostage crisis...

...policy Clinton's Chinese network truly has —and just what type of pressures were brought to bear on Lake during his tenure as national security adviser...

...It symbolically elevated the war against international terrorism to a "national security priority" and gave the president sweeping powers to initiate covert action and even military force "to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy international infrastructure used by international terrorists, including overseas terrorist training facilities and safe havens...

...Because a quarter of the world's oil passes through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, and is thus jeopardized by Iran's possession of these missiles, the decision to waive sanctions seems inexplicable — except as a sop to the Chinese...

...A BLIND EYE FOR FRIENDS Nor was this the only time the administration has looked away from China's dangerous proliferation of missiles...

...In the end, it was a classic covert operation—which, had it succeeded, might have endeared him to the CIA...

...According to an Iranian-American who participated in these negotiations, the U.S...

...We felt the economic consequences of sanctions would be much broader than originally intended because of the Helms amendment," the aides said...

...Testifying before the Senate Banking committee on March 15,1995, Conoco Vice President J. Michael Stinson said his people were never told by the administration to back off...

...Then he gave the strongest clue yet as to what had really been going on...

...And Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith may have been in the forefront of the arms pipeline, but had no idea what Lake was up to elsewhere...

...RAMBO via the Internet Free at Last This is a happy day...

...In the 1970's, Lake also served as a consultant to the Center for International Policy (CIP), a far-left Washington think tank that was funded by the openly pro-Communist Fund for Peace...

...We don't give a damn about day care or swimming pools," one irate operations officer said...

...For example, you ran this headline on your Feburary cover: "Why Republicans Won't Keep Uncle Sam From Taxing, Regulating, Fining, Harassing, and Threatening You...

...E . MENDOZA via the Internet Correction Last month's Kenneth Timmerman article, "All Roads Lead to China," incorrectly attributed donations from Chi Wang of McLean, Virginia, to Dr...

...the least...

...Why did Tony Lake ignore intelligence findings to please a major U.S...

...Chuck Robb's campaign, not $so,000 as we reported...

...diplomats sta39 honed in Zagreb, where the arms were flowing...

...The source described a meeting in May 1995 in which the president was "incredibly intense" about the need to raise millions of dollars for his re-election campaign...

...Lake and Halperin eventually agreed to give a copy of their study to Daniel Ellsberg, then a member of the Council on Foreign Relations...

...And if that is true, then it seems likely that Lake knew that the Communist Chinese government was trying to influence the outcome of the 1996 presidential election by funneling campaign contributions to the DNC...

...One interesting result of Coia's pact with the government is that he was able to use the cover of cleaning up the union to get rid of his most potent rivals...

...missile technology to the Chinese, which the administration waived after fourteen months at Peking's insistence...

...At CIP, Lake worked with CIP board member Orlando Letelier, a Chilean socialist who knew Lake from IPS...

...On March 14, 1995—the day before Conoco officials testified before the Senate Banking Committee—Clinton issued an executive order banning the deal...

...Everybody thinks the administration is setting a much higher standard of proof when it comes to Chinese proliferation violations," he said...

...And, like so many other Clinton associates, Lake has a motley history of murky business transactions and, to put it mildly, astonishingly poor judgment...

...Former Pentagon missile expert Richard Speier disagrees...

...embassy in Dubai twice sought instructions from the State Department about the negotiations in 1994, but never received a reply...

...Boeing began pressuring Clinton to okay a $r billion civilian airliner deal with Iran, and, as Clinton wrote to an irate Jesse Helms in early June 1993, the Commerce Department was likely to approve the deal...

...We are not getting very good intelligence as it is, and already it's being politicized...

...What Christopher did not know was that the White House was going to allow the secretary of state to look ridiculous and ineffectual with U.S...

...May I ask why you are doing this...

...law to keep the Chinese dollars flowing...

...Tony Lake takes a different view...

...allies...

...It was the most explicit call by Congress for covert action since the early days of the Vietnam war...

...Lake's assurances that the U.S...

...What we want is someone who cares about our product...

...Rep...

...And on April 3o, he banned all U.S...

...The administration's reversal outraged the anti-Castro Cuban-American community but pleased others in south Florida who stood to gain by opening trade with Havana...

...Although Tony Lake called the administration's new approach toward Iran "dual containment," in practice, it amounted to a dual policy: while then–Secretary of State Warren Christopher was taking a very hard public line against Iran, Lake and Clinton were working secretly to build bridges between Washington and Tehran...

...The White House waived the sanctions in exchange for the "no new deliveries" pledge, even though Clinton and Lake knew the Chinese had broken a similar agreement with the Bush administration...

...Now the story is coming to light...

...Hayes was taking a hard line on the Cubans at the official talks at the United Nations," Diaz-Balart's aide says, "only to discover that the same Cubans left the meeting, walked down the street to a New York hotel, and won major concessions from [Undersecretary of State] Peter Tarnoff...

...Conoco was used to deliver a message to Tehran, but had no idea the administration was engaged in a larger effort...

...Clinton has turned the coddle into a full-fledged love affair...

...As Senator Shelby put it, his committee's task is to ensure that if Lake is confirmed, he will "have the confidence of the Congress and the nation...

...Along with his former Defense Department colleague Morton Halperin, State Department analyst Leslie Gelb, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wamke, Lake authored the "Pentagon Papers," a devastating academic review of U.S...

...Iran had been (and, it should be noted, remains) steadfast in its determination to develop nuclear weapons and to use terrorism against American targets...

...Jesse Helms, because of an amendment he sponsored in 1991 that extended the missile proliferation sanctions to virtually the entire aerospace industry in "non-market countries" that were not former members of the Warsaw Pact—in other words, China...

...Senator Shelby and his colleagues have also requested documents on decisions Lake made during the debacle in Somalia in 1993, which cost the lives of some twenty-eight U.S...

...policy at the time, as have U.S...

...JOSEPH H. SAYLOR Swannanoa, North Carolina You Have to Ask...

...During his tenure at the National Security Council, for example, Lake undertook a series of clandestine diplomatic initiatives which bear a striking resemblance to 011ie North's escapades in the Iran-contra affair...

...Beginning in January 1993, following the inauguration of President Clinton, United States policy was neither to oppose nor support the shipment of arms to the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina from other countries, including Iran," the report states [emphasis added...

...As in other cases the intelligence committee will examine, the Iran initiative bears all the hallmarks of Tony Lake's secretive, minimalist approach toward world leadership...

...In other words, national security adviser Tony Lake would have known about the bugging...

...Tehran clearly viewed the Conoco deal as a friendly sign from Washington," said Housang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers University professor who helped convey messages unofficially between Washington and Tehran...

...The strategy worked...

...On the same day Christopher told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that the administration was using all its influence to convince the Europeans to join the U.S...

...During the first two years of the Clinton administration, U.S...

...The Subcommittee is adamant, however," reads the report, "that there is no basis in law for staff of the NSC to refuse to appear before authorized Congressional subcommittees and give sworn testimony demanded by a valid subpoena on matters pertinent to the legislative inquiry...

...Their advice was ignored...

...Frank Church (who orchestrated the live televised confessions of former CIA Director William Colby...

...The excuse they use is that they don't want a single issue to derail U.S.-China relations...

...Buried in the minority report of the House select subcommittee investigating the Iran-Bosnia green light is an extraordinary admission that suggests the covert policy was initiated in the very early days of the Clinton administration...

...When Woolsey first got wind of the Iranian arms shipments in May 1994 through reports from the CIA station in Zagreb, he immediately initiated an investigation by the president's Intelligence Oversight Board to ensure there was no unauthorized covert operation in the works...

...Accordingly, he's already twice postponed Lake's confirmation hearings and requested voluminous documentation on Lake's record at the NSC from the White House...

...companies were being quietly encouraged by Commerce Department officials to skirt export licensing requirements and ship dual-use equipment to Iran without seeking administration approval —an effort the White House and the Commerce Department have consistently denied, despite documents uncovered during an investigation by congressional Democrats in September 1993...

...Perhaps as investigators in Congress push for more information about the source of questionable donations—and how the Clinton administration might have changed its policies as a reward for the money—they'll add the case of Arthur Coia and the Laborers union to the list of suspicious transactions...

...Two weeks later, the Iran Brief newsletter (which this writer publishes) reported that the U.S...

...Remove my name from your mailing list...

...His attempts to normalize relations with Castro's Cuba were only foiled when Cuban MiG's brutally shot down unarmed Cessnas flown by a Cuban exile group in February 1996...

...But partisan politics seem to have played in fact a very large role in Lake's activities, especially as they relate to Bill Clinton's prodigious fundraising machine...

...Because the U.S...

...The restrictions applied to a broad range of products, including certain composites, spin-forming machine-tools, navigation and guidance systems, special alloys, propellants, and electronic test equipment...

...After his identity and residence were exposed in CounterSpy, the CIA bureau chief in Athens, Richard Welch, was assassinated by Greek leftists...

...Another aspect of this multi-pronged effort involved back-channel negotiations over a nuclear power plant Iran was seeking to purchase from Russia, which the U.S...

...The Justice Department subsequently concluded that Lake had done nothing illegal, but the subcommittee hearings left many on Capitol Hill incensed...

...04 86 April 1997 • The American Spectator...

...He is technically correct...

...As the report has it, "Deputy Secretary Talbott observed in a statement...

...The Spreading Scandal In mid-February, the New York Post's Jack Newfield wrote a column in which he quoted a "conscience-stricken Clinton adviser...

...In the case of the Laborers, the Justice Department played a similar role: it twice warned the White House that Coia and the Laborers were trouble...

...The U.S...

...We now know that American and Cuban officers were meeting once a week at the Guantanamo North Gate," the aide to DiazBalart said...

...These will be some of the questions asked at the confirmation hearings...

...LAKE GOES UNDERCOVER Those hearings will also examine a foreign policy scandal that is proving to be far more extensive, and bizarre, than previously known...

...Now we're going to try it this way, and hope we will have greater success...

...According to another congressional expert on Cuba, State Depar lucent country experts such as Hayes were "simply cut out of the loop...

...We know full well that the U.S...

...However Lake pulled it off, the affair led the select House subcommittee on Iran-Bosnia to submit a 26-page criminal referral about Lake and other officials to Attorney General Janet Reno last year, so that she might investigate whether they had broken laws governing covert actions or committed perjury in their testimony to Congress...

...The real foreign policy decisions were very close hold," says one former cabinet official, "between the president, the vice president, Tony Lake, and Sandy Berger," Lake's deputy and successor as national security adviser...

...CHINESE PUZZLE Lake has thus far denied any involvement in the fundraising scandal, telling Shelby, "I have sought to keep the NSC staff and its work out of domestic and partisan politics...

...diplomats and citizens working overseas, and setting off a new campaign against Israel aimed at killing the Middle East peace process...

...Associating with men who revealed CIA identities is not the kind of background many Americans want in their CIA director...

...They think the world does not appreciate them, and this is their way of getting even...

...Tehran had other reasons to believe the Clinton administration was seeking better ties...

...That was to be the beginning of breaking the logjam in relations between the two countries...

...A second way to keep the policy quiet was to spread implementation among actors who could glimpse only a very small portion of it...

...We now know, for example, that in the case of illegal Asian donors, some members of the National Security Council tried to warn top White House staffers to stay away from the shady characters...

...has given the list of potential visa applicants to the Cuban authorities," says a congressional aide...

...Lake also did work for the Center for National Security Studies (CNSS), an IPS offshoot...

...We went to dirty unions like the Laborers International...

...The architect of the secret policy seems once again to have been Tony Lake...

...The statement is even more extraordinary for being so matter-of-fact...

...that the green light did not open the door to Bosnia for Iran...

...Within months of Lake's green light to Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia, the Iranians had made their Zagreb embassy Iran's "largest in Europe," and were using it for staging intelligence operations, including "active surveillance" of U.S...

...Ganji's opposition labors earned him the ire of the ruling mullahs, and on March 16, 1993, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa, or religious order, calling for Ganji's assassination...

...opposed allowing Iranian arms shipments through Croatia to Bosnia...

...That new administration began contemplating a reversal of U.S...

...Atlantic Command, Marine Corps General John J. Sheehan, is seen pinning a medal on the uniform of Cuban General Perez Perez...

...Then–CIA director Jim Woolsey has testified that this was not how he understood U.S...

...Excluded from that loop were the CIA directors (Woolsey, Deutch), the secretary of state (Christopher), and the secretaries of defense (Les Aspin, William Perry...

...I realize that you are a conservative magazine, and that is why I buy it...

...This officer—like many others who were interviewed—believes that Tony Lake has demonstrated a convincing commitment to their work...

...The American Spectator • April 19 97 85 LEFT TO HISTORY Lake's willingness to cater to the whims of communist regimes in China and Cuba points to another difficulty with his nomination—his long history of far-left politics...

...The last director, John Deutch, appalled and dismayed agency officers for having turned over the day-to-day running of the Agency to his deputy, Nora Slatkin, who became notorious for spending more time on planning new day care facilities at the CIA's home base in Langley than she did in reading operational intelligence reports...

...Did Bill Clinton really not know...

...One reason is that the usual fingers were kept out of the pie...

...John Serpico and Samuel Caivano, who at one time were two of the most powerful officials of the union, are out—ousted by Coia as part of the deal with the Justice Department...

...Things became so bad that in May 1995 the American embassy in Zagreb "evacuated individuals who were believed to be most at risk," according to The American Spectator • April 19 9 7 the second-ranking diplomat at the embassy, Ronald Nietzke, to diminish the number of targets available to Iranian terrorist teams operating in and around the Croatian capital...

...companies actually stepped up their purchases of Iranian crude oil, despite Christopher's rhetorical assault on Tehran, until they were buying 25 percent of all Iranian oil exports...

...40 April 1997 • The American Spectator Both of these were run by Dr...

...military officer stationed at Cuba's Guantanamo naval station gave Rep...

...DiazBalart's office a videotape showing Lake on a secretive visit to the base in early 1995...

...it would instead require that they apply for asylum before U.S...

...On September 13, Km, Lake and Halperin co-chaired a panel on "Covert Operations and Decision Making" at a Capitol Hill conference sponsored by CNSS and Sen...

...Mannerud has raised funds for the DNC, and congressional Republicans allege that Lake contacted her in 1995 to encourage her to organize pro-Castro Cuban exiles into a political force that could help split the Cuban-American vote...

...It included back-channel discussions with Tehran that have not been made public before...

...Sources at the CIA, NSC, and State Department say the operation involved a Cairo-based radio station beaming news and instructions to anti-government militants inside Iran since 1986...

...That history guarantees that his confirmation hearings, scheduled to begin March 11 as we go to press, will be difficult, to say KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN writes frequently on security issues for The American Spectator and publishes the Iran Brief, a monthly newsletter...

...had to evacuate key operatives, diplomats, and family members from a U.S...

...It was a stunning reversal of legislative intent...

...what the green light did was to throw the door wider open and put out a welcome mat...

...Many observers thought it a disheartening sign that just 15 percent of the union members eligible to vote cast their ballots, but in some ways Coia appears to have more power today than before...

...That's what caused people to start cutting corners," the adviser said...

...Where do you go for so much soft money...

...Lake has regularly expressed an unusually strong desire not to upset the apple cart in Sino-American relations, begging the question of just how much influence over U.S...

...involvement in Vietnam...

...The reason...

...It is now becoming clear that Tony Lake and Bill Clinton had engaged in cautious overtures to the mullahs in Tehran that were kept so secret that not even the CIA knew they were taking place...

...Nietzke cabled the State Department in disgust, blaming the terrorist threat on the green light policy...

...John McCain, the bill's other cosponsor, sent a letter to the administration urging that sanctions be invoked, Undersecretary of State Lynn Davis replied that the administration had "concluded at present that the known transfers are not of a destabilizing number and type" — Clintonese for saying it had no intention of enforcing the law...

...Wang and his wife contributed $4,000 to Virginia Sen...

...Noting the State Department's suppression of a critical memorandum from Ambassador Galbraith, which may have exposed still unknown underpinnings of the affair, the report went on: "Clearly demonstrating the Administration's efforts to hide its actions behind the shroud of classification is the fact that several sentences and phrases were redacted from the memorandum that were clearly unclassified, but which would have been embarrassing to the Administration if they were known...

...On February 13 the Washington Post reported that the Chinese embassy in Washington had been bugged by U.S...

...Instead of the blanket ban on sales to terrorist governments, the regulations state that the law only intends "to prevent United States persons from bringing into the United States money received from a terrorism-list government that might be used to support terrorism here...

...Finally, Dr...

...Last August Lake prompted the Treasury Department to craft regulations that purged the 1996 anti-terrorism act of any real meaning...

...not so today...

...We apologize to both men...

...The Clinton administration has been unstinting in its willingness to appease China— a particularly egregious bit of Clintonian hypocrisy since, during the 1992 campaign, Clinton accused George Bush of "coddling dictators" in China...

...Many intelligence professionals agree with Gates, and hope that the game of musical chairs at CIA will soon come to an end (if confirmed, Lake will be the fifth director in six years...

...And another warning later that year...

...Al Gore was a co-sponsor of the bill, known as the Gore-McCain Act...

...in preventing new loans to Tehran by the World Bank, for example, the World Bank approved a $16o million loan to Iran to build an electrical plant...

...Why was the United States national security adviser "soft" on terrorism...

...There may have been another reason, however, that the efforts at reconciliation failed: the dramatic buildup by the Islamic Republic of its terrorist apparatus in Bosnia and Croatia...

...How did Lake keep his secret initiative toward Tehran quiet...

...The concerns over Lake's tenure at NSC are so serious the committee has sought to question NSC staff members under oath, which at this writing the White House has refused to allow...

...Under the new policy, the United States would no longer accept Cuban refugees off the high seas...

...The sanctions included a two-year ban on the sale of U.S...

...Evidence of large scale drug-dealing by the Cuban government has been supplied to federal prosecutors in South Florida by Jorge Cabrera, who was arrested on January 9,1996, in Miami (along with four other men) with three tons of cocaine...

...As previously reported, Lake gave Iran the go-ahead to ship arms to Bosnian Muslims in April 1994 (see "Iran-Bosnia Green Light," TAS, August 1996...

...The subcommittee report also makes clear that the policy allowed Iran to place officers of its Revolutionary Guards, intelligence ministry officials, and sundry political advisers at virtually all levels of the Bosnian government, from the office of the president down to the local police offices, where they trained thousands of Bosnian military and police personnel...

...To grant an exemption for a major California oil company...

...companies from doing business with governments on the terrorist list...

...money from the Laborers no doubt played a role in winning Clinton a second term...

...And yet the Clinton administration refuses to apply the sanctions...

...Removing civil aircraft from dual-use export controls," the president informed Helms, "is under active review...

...Lake faces formidable opposition from the powerful Senate select committee on intelligence that must confirm his nomination, especially from the committee's chairman, Sen...

...Or were Coia's contributions to the Democrats simply too valuable to let a Justice Department investigation come between the president and the generous union boss...

...To avoid an investigation, Feinberg resigned his Treasury job...

...Clinton had enthusiastically supported the measure, particThe American Spectator • April 1997 ularly since it was popular with Jewish voters and made him look tough on terrorism...

...also pledged to return Cuban "boat people" to Castro, and has already sent back at least 500 persons...

...Letelier was murdered by a car bomb in Washington by Chilean fascists, shortly after the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973...

...trade with Iran...

...would not seek to overthrow the regime emboldened Tehran to expand its terrorist networks, increasing the risk to U.S...

...Once again cutting against what Warren Christopher was declaring in public, the administration was privately seeking to cultivate pro-Castro Cubans and bring them into the Democratic Party, while limiting immigration of anti-Castro Cubans into the United States...

...York (Continued fror n page 35) early 1995 and perhaps far beyond that date...

...In another era, this alone might have doomed his chances at confirmation...

...If the Senate discovers that Lake knew this, and did nothing to stop it, his confirmation as CIA director could become the least of his concerns since he will have much bigger questions to answer—for Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director Louis Freeh, and possibly, a special prosecutor...

...The sources say the operation also involved a Paris-based political operation that organized and supervised opposition resistance cells inside Iran...

...An aide to Lake says that the Defense Department "determined the missiles did not pose a threat," and when Sen...

...Cabrera had been introduced to the Clintons by Viviane Mannerud, a Cuban-American businesswoman in Miami who runs a charter business to Cuba...

...But for others, the war is over...

...On hearing Warren Christopher's hot rhetoric on Iran, Conoco officials were understandably concerned that they were venturing into hot political waters, and sought guidance from top administration officials...

...laws requiring sanctions...

...In the past two years, China has delivered enough C-8o2 cruise missiles to Iran to equip the Islamic Republic's fifteen operational missile boats, and is beginning to deliver the missiles used in coastal batteries as well, Pentagon and congressional sources told TAS...

...An "avid consumer of intelligence" according to former colleagues at the NSC, in his younger years he was the darling of the radical left, nd vigorously opposed overt action by the very organization he has now been nominated to run...

...U.S...

...Lake, in the mid-197o's, taught a class at IPS — "the mother of all radical left-wing activist organizations," according to former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney...

...Shelby has also sought access to Lake's entire FBI background file—citing the precedent of John Tower's failed bid to become President Bush's defense secretary in 1989...

...The American Spectator lacks virtue, honesty, integrity, and "family values...

...Richard Shelby, who calls the Lake nomination "controversial" and "troubling...

...A TAS investigation has uncovered Lake's direct participation in a scheme to make a secret overture to the Islamic Republic of Iran during the first three years of the administration, which backfired so dramatically that the U.S...

...According to a June 1995 top secret report leaked to the New York Times, the CIA 38 April 1997 The American Spectator discovered that the Chinese have delivered "perhaps hundreds" of guidance kits and computerized machine tools to an Iranian ballistic missile project since November 1994...

...My last issue of TAS has just arrived...

...Binford Peay told Jane's Defence Weekly last year that the Chinese missile sales have dramatically increased Iran's potential for aggressive military action...

...034 Timmerman (Continued from page our two countries become friends again...