Iran-Contra: A Post-Mortem

...Within eight weeks, the Iran- Contra scandal broke and Noriega's key patrons fell VOL XXVII, No 3 Nov/DEc 1993 31REPORT ON CORRUPTION from positions of power...

...Seven years after the scandal broke, the Independent Counsel's final report will offer a comprehensive body of evidence on the widespread corruption of politics, policy and power in Washington, D.C...

...8. New York Times, July 1, 1985...

...This, rather than the diversion of funds from one operation to the other, is what made Iran-Contra a major and dangerous scandal...

...foreign policy were compromised by Iran-Contra, the threat to the U.S...

...Without his protectors, Nor- iega was transformed overnight from an anti-Commu- nist collaborator into a drug-trafficking enemy of U.S...

...The Reagan Administration showed even less hesi- tation striking deals with international terrorists...

...4 Far more important, however, is the evi- dence that at the highest levels of the Reagan White House, U.S...

...He has now parlayed national recognition into $20 million in cam- paign contributions to run for office...

...And the President's actions flew in the face of his own macho declarations-typified by his June 1985 statement that "the United States gives terrorists no rewards...

...Oliver North began his testimony as an obscure NSC staffer, and finished as a certified political celebrity...

...policy suffered in a variety of ways when it became known that the Reagan Administration had agreed to sell arms to Iran in return for the release of hostages...

...In the aftermath of the scandal, Congress, the institution most vic- timized by the executive branch's illegal conduct, and a presumed ally of the OIC, undermined its own investigation, as well as Walsh's subsequent prose- cutions...

...7. North's notes on his meeting with Noriega are published in Kornbluh and Byrne, The Iran-Contra Scandal, p. 119...

...officials were willing to cut deals with major drug traffickers...

...At close to 2,000 pages-almost three times the length of Congress' 1987 report-Walsh's long- awaited study is the most definitive record of Iran- Contra...

...Indeed, Walsh's prosecutions produced extraordinary documentation and testimony on schemes of U.S...

...Constitution was even greater...

...Divided into chapters on the nationalsecurity agencies that played key roles in the scandal, the report details the illicit conduct of more than two dozen policymakers and operatives from the CIA, NSC, Pentagon, State Department and, above all, the White House...

...Congress played particularly fast and loose with its own investigation of the scandal, limiting it in both time and range, and failing to follow critical informa- tion on both President Reagan and VicePresident Bush...

...11...

...6 With authorization from Poindexter and Secretary of State George Shultz, North met with Noriega in London on September 22, 1986 to discuss these oper- ations...

...politics, the man who personifies the scandal, and who might well be in prison for shredding evidence, obstructing justice and committing perjury, could become the next Senator from Virginia...

...history...

...At the heart of Iran-Contra-the Reagan Administration's arms-for-hostages deals in the Mid- dle East, and the use of the profits to resupply the Contras in Nicaragua-was an assault on the Constitu- tion through the extensive abuse of presidential power...

...foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere, including human rights, economic develop- ment, and regional stability...

...If Fernandez knowingly and willfully made false statements to the Tower Commission, as we believe he did, he was in violation of the U.S...

...The lax investigation enabled the White House to sustain the massive cover-up that, we now know, may have altered the outcome of the 1988 presidential election [see "A Compromised Election," p. 33...

...This rampant obstruction of justice culminated in the presidential pardons of December 24, 1992...

...9. See Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, p. 39...

...bribery, blackmail and coercion of third countries assisting in the Contra resupply operations-behavior described by Theodore Draper as "an anthology of practices so shady that they could not be revealed without shame...

...As the most in-depth expos of the national-security state ever drafted, the report presents a window of opportunity to significantly reform the Cold War institutions that have been responsible for scandal after scandal over the last half century...

...If and when it is released, Judge Walsh's authorita- tive catalog of the Iran-Contra affair will render the verdict of history...

...foreign policy in Central America...

...2. See Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair with Supplemental, Minority, and Additional Views, November 1987, 100th Cong...

...But neither the actions nor the pay- ments ever took place...

...According to a recently declas- sified computer memorandum from North to Poindex- ter, his boss at the NSC-obtained by the National Security Archive through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit-Noriega proposed that "in exchange for a promise from us to 'help clean up his image' and a commitment to lift our ban on [military] sales to the Panamanian Defense Forces [Noriega would] undertake to 'take care of' the Sandinista lead- ership for us...

...It was declassified pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberty Union's Center for National Security Studies...

...Iran-Contra: A Post-Mortem 1. Quoted from "Foreword," Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne, The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History (New York: The New Press, 1993), p. xi...

...The proposal seems sound to me," North advised, "and I believe we could make the appropriate arrangements with reasonable OPSEC [operational security] and deniability...

...Toward the end of their report, the House and Senate investigating committees took umbrage at the Reagan Administration's efforts to raise from other nations the funds which Congress had explicitly denied...

...4. See the U.S...

...Walsh's report will also provide the most definitive record of the official cover-up of those operations--a whitewash that culminated in President Bush's pardon of Weinberger and others on Christmas Eve, 1992...

...North's personal notebooks-obtained from the OIC by the National Security Archive through another FOIA lawsuit-show that the two men talked about targeting Nicaragua's airport, telephone system and port facilities for destruction...

...The "supplemental, minority and additional views" stretch the report to 690 pages...

...national-security operatives' use of funds from coun- tries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran to finance and field an army, and fight a war without Congressional appropriations or public knowledge, represented the most serious danger of all...

...The Iran-Contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed," Walsh stated in reponse to Bush's actions...

...and above all, the extent of Bush's knowledge and role in the Iran-Contra operations...

...The Secretary of State's designation of Iran as a sponsor of international terrorism in January, 1984 was rendered meaningless...

...8 U.S...

...Much has been written about the overlap of drug smuggling and Con- tra operations on the ground in Central America...

...military assistance to Iran and its neighbors in the region, including Iraq and Afghanistan, may have given Sad- dam Hussein the perception that he had a green light to invade Kuwait, thus precipitating the Gulf War...

...We make no concessions...

...interests in regional peace and security, the corruption and obstruction of justice, covert manipulation of the public debate over key foreign-policy issues, as well as personal graft and larceny...

...That same assistance may have also trained Muslim fundamentalist forces whose members were later tied to this year's World Trade Center bombing...

...The White House had successfully defined Iran-Contra as being simply about the diversion of funds, which the President, of course, denied knowing anything about...

...This CIA inspector general's report is dated April 24, 1987...

...Oliver North, NSC Advisor Admiral John Poindexter, and Central Intelli- gence Agency (CIA) operative Clair George, a far Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne are co-editors of the National Security Archive documents reader, The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History, recently published by the New Press...

...It is captioned "Nicaragua," and dated August 23, 1986 at 3:52 p.m...

...Morever, since the scandal, Congress has taken no substantive steps to protect itself from further assaults on its constitutional turf...

...This clandestine financing operation undermined the powers of Congress as a coequal branch and subvert- ed the Constitution," the authors argued...

...They overlooked quid pro quo arrangements made with third countries that provided material support to the Contras...

...As Congress concluded, "That is the path to dictatorship...

...But perhaps the most dra- matic example of this debasement of U.S...

...national-security operations, depend on the lessons the public and the powersthat-be draw from Walsh's findings...

...entreaties not to sell arms to Iran had ample reason to be incensed...

...The scandal went far beyond the "dis- dain for the law, pervasive dishonesty and inordinate secrecy" identified by the Congressional Iran-Contra committees in 1987.2 Iran-Contra, we now know, encompassed impeachable offenses, including a cal- culated assault by the executive branch on the checks and balances of the U.S...

...As a presidential candidate in 1980, Ronald Reagan got a lot of mileage out of talking tough against terrorism, particularly the Iranian-backed variety...

...Constitution, a conscious undercutting of U.S...

...Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran- Contra Affair, p. 637 12...

...In December, 1986, when a federal-court panel appointed Judge Lawrence Walsh as independent counsel to investigate the Iran-Contra operations, the magnitude of the scandal was not yet apparent...

...Bush's eleventhhour move prevented the January 5, 1993 trial of Caspar Weinberger which would have exposed the cover-up and those, including Bush, who participated in it...

...See Walsh, "Fourth Interim Report to Congress," February 8, 1993, p. 76...

...I told the messenger that such actions [assassina- tions] were forbidden by our law," North reported to Poindexter, and the emissary then offered Noriega's "numerous assets in place in Nicaragua" for major acts of sabotage...

...Washington's Arab allies in the Persian Gulf demanded reassurances of support against the Ayatollah, prompting the United States to take on a potentially dangerous responsibility in the bloody Iran-Iraq War-the reflagging and escorting of Kuwaiti tankers in the Gulf...

...1 The report recom- mended only minor adjustments to the official system of conducting and reporting covert operations...

...We make no deals...

...9 Having recognized the gravity of the threat, howev- er, Congress failed to act on it...

...The majority report is 492 pages long...

...How this complex and controversial affair is understood in years to come, and what impact-if any-it will have on the future conduct of U.S...

...officials...

...On August 23, 1986, two months after the New York Times ran a front-page story, "Panama Strong Man Said to Trade in Drugs, Arms and Illicit Money," Oliver North received a call from Noriega who asked him to meet with an interme- diary to discuss a deal...

...It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office-deliberately abusing the public trust-without consequence...

...1 3 Yet the CIA, with Bush's support, aborted Fernandez' trial on perjury charges by refus- ing to declassify what Walsh called "fictional secrets," including the well-known existence of CIA stations in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador...

...It is clear," the Kerry Committee concluded in its report, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, "that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug-running organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers...

...U.S...

...Indeed, the report is likely to sully individuals as well as political institutions by providing the most comprehensive body of evidence ever published on the widespread corruption of politics, policy and power in Washington, D.C...

...For Every Quid There is a Quo," reads a cryptic note on White House stationery discovered by OIC investigators among Caspar Weinberger's papers...

...5 One of most egregious quid pro quo arrangements was with Panama's military leader, General Manuel Noriega, whose drug-smuggling activities were long known to U.S...

...This withholding of critical evidence, Walsh would later charge, "radically altered the official investigations and possibly fore- stalled timely impeachment proceedings against Pres- ident Reagan and other officials...

...As much as the goals of U.S...

...Similarly, the CIA refused to declassify documents on Middle East operations necessary for Walsh's prosecution of wrongdoing surrounding the sale of arms to Iran and the transfer of profits to the Contra war...

...Kornbluh and Byrne, The Iran-Contra Scandal, p. 378...

...Unfortunate- ly, in the seven years since the Iran-Contra scandal broke, such indignation and courage have been notably absent from the body politic...

...code," states an April 1987 CIA inspector general's report...

...In perhaps the most dramatic measure of the scandal's corruption of U.S...

...5. Theodore Draper, "Revelation of the North Trial", New York Review of Books (August 17, 1989), p. 59 6. This computer memo from North to Poindexter was declassified pursuant to a National Security Archive lawsuit on electronic memoranda generated during the Iran-Contra operations...

...3 The cover-up now extends to an attempt to suppress the report itself...

...After seven years of Congressional inquiries, the diligent investigation of the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC), and the trials of National Security Council (NSC) functionary Lt...

...In their final report, the Iran-Contra committees concluded that the scan- dal "resulted from the failure of individuals to observe the law, not from deficiencies in existing law or in our system of governance...

...the conceal- ment of important evidence such as the personal notes of Caspar Weinberger and George Bush...

...To permit the President and his aides to carry out covert actions by using funds obtained from outside Congress undermines the Framer's belief that 'the purse and the sword must never be in the same hands...

...In the end, nobody could be prosecuted for misconduct relating to the core issue of the scandal-the diversion itself...

...Congressional negligence included a refusal to enforce the 1984 Boland Amendment banning aid to the Contras, the granting of immunity to North and Poindexter over Walsh's bitter objections, and the Senate decision to confirm CIA Deputy Director Robert Gates as CIA director in 1991, after he was almost indicted on charges relating to Iran-Contra...

...Walsh brings to light the hitherto hid- den roles of important players such as CIA Director William Casey, Attorney General Edwin Meese, and VOL XXVII, No 3 Nov/DEc 1993 29 VOL XXVII, No 3 Nov/DEC 1993 29REPORT ON CORRUPTION Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, and dispels any doubt about the complicity of Ronald Reagan and George Bush...

...In the case of the CIA's station chief in Costa Rica, Joseph Fernandez, for example, internal CIA memoranda show that his own agency considered him guilty of lying to the Rea- gan-appointed Tower Commission about the illegal Contra resupply operations...

...To be sure, the Rea- gan/Bush era is now over...

...Now, with the conclusion of Walsh's meticulous investigation and the pending release of his final report, the scandal passes into the annals of U.S...

...12 oth the Reagan and Bush White Houses used the power of the executive office to undermine the judicial branch of government and block prosecutions of key U.S...

...Rather than a major inquiry into the crimes of state, the Congressional hearings became a televised advertisement for the zealotry of the scandal's perpetrators...

...policy priorities concerns the war on drugs...

...interests, subsequently becoming the target of George Bush's cynical military invasion, "Operation Just Cause...

...Meanwhile, Reagan Administration officials were conducting a major cover-up of events which may have changed the course of U.S...

...Sabotaged by political cowardice, committee members decided early on not to pursue evidence of White House criminality all the way into the Oval Office, because, they argued, "the country didn't need another Watergate...

...President Bush cannot escape the appearance that he wished to avoid the public airing of facts about Iran-Contra that would have occurred at trial," Walsh charged in a report to Congress last February...

...Examples abound of how White House efforts to sustain the Contra war undermined other ostensible staples of U.S...

...uglier picture of systemic governmental corruption has emerged...

...Operation Staunch," launched in 1983 to keep other countries from arming Iran in its war with Iraq, lost its moral impetus...

...Foreign governments on the receiving end of U.S...

...he work of the Independent Counsel was made more difficult by the Congressional response to the Iran-Contra operations...

...1st sess., 1987...

...Only a few of these recommendations were actually incorpo- rated into the 1988 Intelligence Oversight Act...

...With his pardon, Walsh stated, Bush had "frustrate[d] the exposure and orderly prosecution of executive branch wrongdoing," and "manifest[ed] an absolute disdain for the rule of law...

...3. Walsh's response to the Bush pardon is reprinted in Kornbluh and Byrne, The Iran-Contra Scandal, p. 377...

...Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran- Contra Affair, p. 433...

...political history...

...Senate, Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy," April 13, 1989, section on the Contras...

...Worst of all, U.S...

...Effec- tive legal and political constraints, and strict government accountability will only become a reality, how- ever, if there is a resurgence of public indignation toward official abuses, and a demonstration of Con- gressional courage to change the system...

...officials...

...But once the string of kidnappings of Americans began in Beirut in March, 1984, the substance behind the rhetoric evapo- rated...

...But from Vietnam to Iraq- gate, these repeated foreign-policy debacles demon- strate that regardless of who occupies the Oval Office, the nationalsecurity system has the capacity to regen- erate the legal, political and moral abuses of the past...

...NACI[A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30REPORT ON CORRUPTION he Reagan Administration's obsession with overthrowing the Sandinistas perverted all other aspects of U.S...

...Predictably, bald presidential abuses of power con- tinued in the aftermath of the scandal...

...The Congressional investigation cast an Orwellian pall over the scandal, turning villains into heroes, and criminality into patriotism...

...If ever the constitutional democracy of the United States is overthrown," argues political "historian Theodore Draper, the Iran-Contra affair has given us "a better idea how this is likely to be done...

...14 The Independent Counsel's exhaustive efforts to apply the law against government corruption commit- ted in the name of national security have largely failed to establish a legal deterrent to such crimes in the future...

...These acts of eco- nomic terrorism, North informed his colleagues, "will cost us about a million.'" 7 After returning from London, North reported that Noriega would "try to take immediate actions against the Sandinistas...

...officials were engaged in a Watergate-style cover-up of their illicit conduct...

...In November, 1987, leaders of the Iran-Contra committees, Senators Daniel Inouye and Warren Rudman, gullibly declared that "the White House pledged to cooperate with this investigation and it did...

...Walsh's report was due to be released this September, but publication has been delayed because of stalling tactics by lawyers for those named in the report-including Ronald Reagan, Oliver North and Donald Gregg-who now argue that Walsh's findings will unfairly besmirch the reputations of their clients...

...The Reagan Administration had requested a special prose- cutor to deflect charges that U.S...