The Beat-the-Rap Sheet: What they did, what they got
The Beat-the-Rap Sheet: What they did, what they got It now appears that none of the government actors in the Iran-contra scandal will be significantly punished for his crimes. Consider the...
...According to the documentary record, both men supported the armsforhostages deals with Iran and both solicited third-country support for the contras...
...He was sentenced on July 7, 1989, to what would become a standard punishment for Iran-contra defendants (two years’ probation) plus a $50 fee...
...The Beat-the-Rap Sheet: What they did, what they got It now appears that none of the government actors in the Iran-contra scandal will be significantly punished for his crimes...
...In addition, Lake Resources, one of the main companies in the “Enterprise,” of which Hakim was principal shareholder, pleaded guilty to theft of government property in connection with the diversion of the Iran arms-sales profits to the contras...
...But neither man penned Nixon-like directives to his subordinates, leaving a convenient gap in the historical record...
...Poindexter has appealed and, given the outcome of North’s case, appears likely to win a reversal of his convictions on a similar technicality...
...Richard R. Miller: Channell’s co-defendant, Miller entered a guilty plea on May 6, 1987, and on July 6, 1989, received a sentence of two years’ probation, 120 hours of community service, and a $50 fee...
...Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision...
...His sentence, delivered on December 13, 1990, included $40,000 in fines, a $200 special assessment, and the full cost of prosecution...
...Joseph Fernandez: On November 24, 1989, this former CIA station chief in Costa Rica had his four-count case of making false statements to official investigators thrown out after Attorney General Richard Thornburgh refused to allow classified information needed for his defense to be used in open court...
...Walsh hoped to obviate a difficult trial against a high-level official who had tried to kill himself, apparently as penance for his misdeeds, and use the deal to turn McFarlane into a witness against North...
...No sentencing date has been set...
...Alan D. Fiers: On July 9, 1991, the former chief of the CIA’S Central America Task Force pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain to two misdemeanor charges involving withholding information from Congress...
...He has appealed the conviction...
...He pleaded guilty on November 8, 1989, and on January 24, 1990, received a sentence of two years’ probation and a $50 fee...
...The two biggest fish to get away in the Iran-contra affair were Ronald Reagan and George Bush...
...Carl “Spitz” Channell: The fist person brought to justice in the affair, Channell pleaded guilty on April 29, 1987, to a single charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States by improperly using a tax-exempt organization to buy arms for the contras...
...But although the senator predicted “slammer time” for Abrams, he is unlikely to spend a day behind bars...
...Thus, in exchange for a sentence against McFarlane of two years’ probation, a $20,000 fine, and 200 hours of community service, Walsh succeeded only in getting his most important case blown out of the water...
...On September 6, 1990, the Fourth U.S...
...Elliott Abrams: On October 7, 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress...
...According to the record, some 40 top- and mid-level officials, including George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger and decisionmakers from every agency in the national security bureaucracy, share responsibility for various facets of the Iran-contra affair, Most escaped legal action, in part because of the decision by investigators to focus on the relatively narrow diversion issue, instead of broader questions of deceiving and evading the will of Congress...
...What has happened to those who actually stood in the dock...
...McFarlane proved a virtual apologist for North on the stand...
...Walsh warned that this action “created an unacceptable enclave [the CIA] that is free from the rule of law...
...Ironically, for these tax offenses Clines faces the longest prison term-16 months-of any Iran-contra defendant to date...
...Hakim’s sentence, handed down on February 1, 1990, was two years’ probation and a $5,000 fine...
...Instead, when Abrams is sentenced on November 15 for two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress, he will most probably join former NSC Adviser Robert McFarlane as another Reagan administration official who pled guilty to deceiving Congress and received only a manageable fine, probation, and a sentence of community service...
...Albert Hakim: Secord’s financial partner, Hakim pleaded gdty on November 21, 1989, to supplementing North’s salary, a misdemeanor...
...Richard V. Secord: North’s principal agent in the field, Secord struck a deal with Walsh reducing his original multiconnt indictments to a single felony charge of making false statements to Congress...
...He was found guilty on September 18, 1990...
...Thomas G. Clines: Although deeply involved with Secord in efforts to arm the contras, Clines ultimately faced four felony charges, not for those activities themselves, but for filing false income tax returns...
...Still, so far a dozen individuals have faced criminal prosecution as a result of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh’s ongoing probe, and more indictments are possible...
...The following is a status report, based largely on information from the independent counsel’s office, on the criminal defendants-some former government officials, some private citizens-in the Iran-contra scandal: GOVERNMENT *Robert C. McFarlane: Pleaded guilty on March 11, 1988, to four misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress, after a plea-bargain agreement with Walsh...
...he was allowed to keep $1.7 million of the illicit proceeds...
...Consider the recent plea bargain of former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams...
...Clair E. George: Based on information obtained from Fiers, Walsh indicted George on September 6, 1991...
...Instead, both engaged in a sort of Book-of-the-Month Club decisionmaking process: Their assistants regularly presented a catalog of deceptions and deals-and the president and vice president simply never returned the rejection card...
...Then, at North’s post-trial hearing on whether his congressional testimony had tainted his mal, McFarlane may have singlehandedly cost Walsh’s office the case...
...P.K., M. B., T. B...
...Lake Resources was dissolved...
...John M. Poindexter: After a jury found him guilty of five felony counts, including conspiracy and obstruction of Congress, McFarlane’s successor as national security adviser was sentenced on June 11, 1990, to five concurrent six-month prison terms and a $250 court fee...
...Here is a man whose testimony before Congress in 1986 on illicitly raising money for the contras reeked of perjury-“I’ve heard [your testimony] and I want to puke,” Senator Thomas Eagleton told Abrams at the time...
...The former head of covert operations at the CIA faces 10 counts of perjury, false statements, and obstruction, to which he pleaded not guilty on September 12...
...But according to Jeffrey Toobin, a former attorney in Walsh’s office, the deal was one of the independent counsel’s worst blunders...
...he had omitted his income from the arms deals, along with other financial information...
Vol. 23 • November 1991 • No. 11
