-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA & Israel�s Mossad
Joel Bainerman �1994
S.P.I. BOOKS/Shapolsky Publishers, Inc.
136 West 22nd St.
New York, NY 10011
ISBN 1-56171-350-3
291 pps. � First Edition �
--[3]�
George Bush, Donald Gregg and Iran-Contra:
What Did They Know?
George Bush would have preferred that all of the policies and covert
operations he initiated remain secret. When they didn't, he and his staff
simply denied their existence, or their involvement in them. To set the
historical record straight, it's important to look at George Bush's entire
repertoire of official responses to all of the scandals which came under the
umbrella of what became commonly known as the "Iran-Contra Affair."
Bush insisted that he was "out of the loop" on all matters relating to
Iran-Contra. He came to understand the "hidden dimensions" of the scandal
only in December 1986 after his National Security Advisor, Donald Gregg,
briefed him. This was nearly a month after Attorney General Edwin Meese
disclosed the diversion of arms sales profits to the Contras. "Not until that
briefing," Bush says, "did I fully appreciate how the initiative was actually
implemented."
What is Bush trying to tell us? That secret, covert operations are going on
and the highest elected officials in the country are not informed of them?
That would indicate either a silent coup, or an extremely poor grasp on
national affairs on the part of the President and Vice President.
Logic would dictate that Bush would have had to know what was going on. He
admitted that he attended a meeting on August 6th, 1985, when former National
Security Advisor Robert McFarlane outlined the deal to trade U.S. arms for
American hostages held by the Iranians. On January 6th, 1986, President
Reagan authorized the sale of TOW missiles to win the release of the American
hostages. The next morning all of the President's advisors gathered in the
Oval Office as Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger expressed their opposition. Schultz told the Tower
Commission that by the end of the meeting it was clear that the President and
the Vice President disagreed with him (Schultz). A few weeks later, National
Security Advisor John Poindexter sent a computer message to North which
acknowledged high-level opposition to his policies, but concluded: "President
and V.P. are solid in taking the position that we have to try."
What was Bush's response to this meeting? "I may have been out of the room at
the time and didn't recall the two Secretaries' strenuous opposition." Bush
claims that if he had heard them he would have "moved to reconsider the whole
project."
By his own response, at the very least Bush knew there was a "project." He
would like the American people to believe that throughout discussion of the
most controversial issues of the Reagan White House's foreign policy agenda
by the President and his top advisors, George was out of the room taking a
leak.
Amiram Nir, advisor on terrorism to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon
Peres, met Bush in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 29th, 1986.
According to notes taken by Craig Fuller, Bush's aide, Nir outlined for Bush
all efforts taken throughout the preceding year "to gain the release of the
hostages, and pointed out that the decision remained as to whether the arms
desired by the Iranians would be delivered in separate shipments or for each
hostage as they are released." "We are dealing with the most radical
elements," Nir told Bush, according to the memorandum published in the Tower
Commission Report; despite Reagan administration officials effort to quash it.
President Bush said that "he couldn't remember much about the briefing, nor
did he fully understand what Nir was saying at the time." (Was, Nir speaking
in Hebrew?) He said, "I didn't know what he was referring to when he was
talking about radicals, nor did I ask."
Why then didn't the VP say to himself, "Hey, if these activities are being
carried out by a foreign government and involve the sale of American-made
weapons to secure the release of U.S. citizens, I need to know all the
details," and then ask Nir for a full explanation of the events?" If he
didn't like what he was hearing, why didn't he demand that the entire
operation be called off? If Bush had no idea what Nir was talking about, why
was he meeting him? What did his advisors, who arranged the meeting with Nir,
brief Bush on, that was going to be discussed, if not arms for hostages?
In another comment Bush responded, "I listened to him [Nir] and there was not
a big exchange in all of this. I did not know all the details. I didn't know
what he was referring to when he was talking about "radicals." Asked why he
didn't raise questions on the initiative, Bush responded by saying he felt
"uncomfortable" at the meeting and thought it was a "listening session"
(Washington Post, October 21st, 1988).
What does that mean? That Bush felt "uncomfortable" speaking to Nir about a
secret effort to release U.S. hostages, or about selling American weapons to
a country that supposedly America hates and considers a terrorist threat.
What does he mean by a "listening session"? Listening to what? Nir's views on
Third World economic development? When did Bush believe it was going to
become a "doing session"?
On the campaign trail in July 1988, Bush said, "Nir presented him with only a
tiny piece of a very complicated puzzle." Does that mean Nir told gave him
details of the arms for hostages deal but George couldn't complete the
"puzzle"?
Bush is asking the American people to believe that the Vice President of the
United States took time out of a busy two-day state visit to meet with
Israel's official counter-terrorism expert, a subject on which Bush headed a
high-level inter-agency group at the White House. But when they speak, he has
no interest in what Nir is saying. He doesn't bother to ask Nir to clarify
his references or thoughts, instead he [j]ust sits and listens, but hasn't a
clue to what Nir is talking about because Bush knows nothing of any efforts
to free hostages. Bush then stands up, shakes his head because he hasn't
understood a word this person has told him, announces that he doesn't want to
hear any more, and walks out of the room.
Did Bush Know of the Operation to Supply the Contras?
Bush's official response to what he knew of the secret effort to supply the
Nicaraguan Contras is more complicated. Here, his National Security Advisor,
Donald Gregg, saves his boss from having to answer any questions by insisting
that Bush didn't know about any of these initiatives. He claims he didn't
tell Bush about any of these activities because "he didn't think it was Vice
Presidential" enough for Bush to know. Thus, Bush never knew.
Is such a contention believable? Is it possible that the Vice President's
chief aide was fully informed of all activities to arm and train the Contras,
but that his boss, the Vice President, wasn't? Why would Gregg want to keep
these important security matters a secret from his boss? Deniability? Did
Bush tell Gregg, "Since Congress won't let us support the Contras, you have
to find a way to keep them supplied with weapons. Do whatever you have to do,
just don't tell me about it so I will be able to claim I didn't know"? If so,
this means that at the very least Bush knew about the existence of these
secret operations and is guilty of violating a congressional ban.
Efforts by the Vice President's Office to supply the Contras begin in the
summer of 1982 when Bush and Casey met and came up with the Black Eagle
Operation, a plan to ship weapons to the Contras through San Antonio, Texas,
to Panama and from there on to El Salvador (Rolling Stone, November 3rd,
1988). According to a retired army covert operative assigned to the
operation, Bush agreed to use his office as a cover while Gregg coordinated
financial and operational details. "Bush and Gregg were the asbestos wall,"
says the retired military man. "You had to burn through them to get to
Casey." (Rolling Stone, November 3rd, 1988).
A memo dated March 17th, 1983, written by Gregg to then-National Security
Advisor Bud McFarlane, describes how former CIA operative Felix Rodriguez,
who served under Donald Gregg in Vietnam, had devised a military plan called
"Pink Team" to launch mobile air strikes with "minimum U. S. participation"
against leftist rebels in Central America. The plan was never implemented,
but Rodriguez was soon after recruited full-time into the effort to resupply
the Contras.
When asked, after he gave sworn testimony to Iran-Contra investigators, why
he had failed to mention this secret memo, Gregg replied, "One, I didn't
think of it. Two, it had nothing to do with the questions being asked of me."
In those same hearings, he testified: "We [Bush and Gregg] never discussed
the Contras. We had no responsibility for it; we had no expertise in it."
Also in 1983 the Vice President's Office dispatched Gustavo Villoldo, former
CIA agent in Honduras and Bay of Pigs veteran, to work as a combat advisor
and to establish an arms supply line to the Contras. According to former
intelligence agents who claim they worked with the VP's office, Villoldo was
one of several individuals recruited by Gregg to work outside normal CIA
channels (The Progressive, May 1987).
In November 1983 the National Security Council (of which Bush was a member)
needed to find more weapons for the Contras. One of North's memos stated that
Bush had been asked to "concur on these [weapons] increases in each previous
case" (Rolling Stone, November 3rd, 1988).
In an eleven-point memo to his boss on September 18th, 1984, entitled
"Funding for the Contras" and made available to Iran-Contra investigators,
Gregg discussed military and political aspects of the Contra war. He told
Bush, "in response to your question, Dewey Clarridge supplied the following
information: A very tough estimate would be that they [the Contras] have
received about $1.5 million [from private sources]. This is based on what we
know of Contra purchases of gasoline, ammunition, etc." (The Progressive, Marc
h 1987).
For ten months in 1985 an operation known as the "Arms Supermarket" supplied
the Contras. It consisted of private arms merchants tied to the CIA, as well
as the intelligence arms of the Honduras military, and was financed in part
with money from the Medellin cocaine cartel (Rolling Slone, November 3rd,
1988).
In April 1988 the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Narcotics,
Terrorism and International Operations, headed by Senator John Kerry, heard
testimony from Richard Brenneke, who worked for the CIA on the project.
Brenneke said that Gregg was the Washington contact for the operation and
that he (Brenneke) made numerous purchases of arms manufactured in the
Eastern Bloc. Brenneke further claimed that Noriega granted transit
privileges for the flights and took his own cut of the profits.
Bush responded to allegations that his office was involved in the operation
by personally accusing Senator Kerry of allowing "slanderous" allegations to
leak from his committee, and insisted that the newsmagazine Newsweek, which
published details of the operation, was printing "garbage." Despite the fact
that Brenneke was not charged with any crime, Bush said, "The guy whom they
are quoting is the guy who is trying to save his own neck (Washington Post, Ma
y 17th, 1988).
Another incident Bush denied involvement in was having offered a quid pro quo
to Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova in return for his help in
training the Contras. A memo written by John Poindex[t]er on February 20th,
1985, reads: "We want the VP [Bush] to discuss these matters with Suazo" (Time
, May 15th, 1989).
Bush paid a visit to Tegucigalpa on March 16th, 1985, and met with President
Roberto Suazo Cordova, promising him that the U.S. would increase military
and economic aid in return for his help in aiding the Contras. Bush assured
the Honduran government that it could expect to be rewarded if it continued
to harbor Contra camps on its territory and supply military goods to the
rebels. This was at the point when Cordova was threatening to close down the
camps and stop all arms shipments.
That quid pro quo was approved the previous month at a meeting of the Special
Interagency Crisis-Planning group Bush headed (Time, April 17, 1989). While
aid began almost immediately after Bush's visit, as did Honduran support for
the Contras, Bush would still contend at a photo session after he had become
President that "the word of the President of the United States, George Bush,
is, There was no quid pro quo. No implication, no quid pro quo, direct or
indirect, from me to the President of Honduras. There has been much needless,
mindless speculation about my word of honor, and I've answered it now,
definitely" (Time, May 15th, 1989). (No, George, you didn't answer it. You
simply denied it.) But if it wasn't a quid pro quo and Bush didn't discuss
Contra business with Suazo Cordova, what was so important that the VP had to
make a personal trip to Honduras? A tourist exchange?
Also in 1985 Gregg sent Felix Rodriguez to El Salvador to aid the Contra
resupply effort. General Paul Gorman, then head of U.S. military forces in
Central, America, wrote a memo to the U.S. ambassador, in El Salvador. In it
he said: "Rodriquez is operating as a private citizen but his
acquaintanceship with the VP is real enough, going back to the latter days of
DCI [Director of Central Intelligence]" (The Progressive, March 1989).
While Gorman knew the purpose behind Rodriquez's presence in EI Salvador,
Gregg claimed he didn't, contending that all he knew was "that Rodriguez was
sent to El Salvador "to deal with insurgency." When asked why Rodriguez would
tell his plans to Gorman but not to Gregg, Gregg replied, "Felix doesn't tell
me everything/he does. I just had never heard of it" (The Progressive, March
1987).
Gregg, however, does admit he met with Felix Rodriguez, but said they never
discussed the Contras. He maintained that Rodriguez didn't mention his work
with the Contras because he knew that "that was not my interest." Gregg is
saying Rodriguez may have been working on an operation to supply the Contras,
but it wasn't on behalf of the Vice President's Office. That it must have
been a private initiative by Rodriguez which was not sanctioned by the U.S.
government; therefore it would not "be in Gregg's interest."
Bush's ties to Rodriguez and Latin American drug lords were confirmed by
Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a financier for the Medellin drug car-tel who is
currently serving a 43-year prison sen-tence and therefore has nothing to
gain by lying. Rodriguez testified before a Senate investigation into ties
between the Contras and drug traffickers. He told the PBS documentary program
Front-line: "Guns, Drugs and the CIA" that he received a request for $10
million from Felix Rodriguez to finance Contra support: "The request for the
con-tribution made a lot more sense because Felix was reporting to George
Bush. If Felix had come to me and said I'm not reporting to anyone else,
let's say, you know, Oliver North, I might have been more skeptical. I
didn't know who Oliver North was and I didn't know his background. But if you
have a CIA, or what you consider to be a CIA-man, coming to you saying, 'I
want to fight this war, we're out of funds, can you help us out? I'm
reporting directly to Bush on it',' I mean it's very real, very believable,
here you have. a CIA guy reporting to his old boss."
For two guys who rose to the highest levels of the political echelons in
the United States, Gregg and Bush sure have bad memories. In Oliver North's
notebooks there is an entry from September 10th, 1985, which discusses a
meet-ing he had with Donald Gregg and the chief of the U.S. military advisory
group in El Salvador,
Colonel James Steele. The three discussed "lo-gistic support" for the
Contras. When asked about the meeting, Gregg simply said: "I don't think that
meeting ever took place" (Newsweek, May 23rd, 1986). A handwritten note
dated No-vember 1985 from George Bush to Oliver North thanked North for his
"dedication and tireless work with the hostage thing and with Central
America." When asked later about the note, Bush said "he didn't recall why he
sent it." (What other reason could Bush have had to send it other than to
thank North for his efforts? Does Bush not remember anything to do with "the
hostage thing" or "Central America"?
What would happen to a doctor who told the jury during a malpractice suit
against him that "he forgot" to tell his patient there would be side effects
to the drug he prescribed for him? Why can a doctor be sued for malpractice
of his profession but a national leader can just say he forgot, and no
further investigation is required?
In a April 1986 meeting on supplying the Contras, Rodriguez complained to
Gregg that North's men were skimming profit from the arms sales. When asked
about this meeting, Gregg said he didn't tell Bush about Rodriguez's
complaints because it wasn't "Vice-Presidental." Gregg's response indicates
that he knew about the operation to arm the Contras, from at least April 1986
onwards. It could also be inferred that Bush knew, but that Gregg didn't want
to inform him of Rodriguez's complaints.
Gregg's aide, Colonel Samuel Watson, wrote two memos before attending a May
1986 meeting with Bush and Gregg which briefed Bush on "the status of the war
in El Salvador and the resupply of the Contras." When asked how it was that
he could deny knowing anything about supplying the, Contras when that meeting
apparently discussed those very topics, Gregg admitted he was "baffled as to
how that agenda item appears.... It was possible that it was a garbled
reference to resupply of copters instead of resupply of Contras," he
explained (UPI, May 13th, 1989).
When Colonel Watson was asked by IranContra investigators about the role of
the Vice President's Office in the Contra effort, he answered: "I've taken it
as assumed that it was my duty that anything to do with Nicaragua or Cen-tral
America that came through the Office of the Vice President was of interest to
us because the Vice President is a principal of the National Se-curity
Council. Dealing with the Contras would be among my responsibilities." Contra
leader Eden Pastora said in a sworn deposition in July 1987 that Bush was in
the "Contra resupply chain of command" (The Nation, January 23rd, 1988).
In August 1986 Gregg had a meeting with Rodriguez at which he was told about
a scheme to "swap weapons for dollars to get aid for the Contras." When asked
about his own hand-written notes on the meeting, Gregg claimed he "didn't
know what that line meant," and that "he didn't tell his boss about the
meeting because it wasn't Vice-Presidential material." (Probably the most
vital national secur[i]ty issue of the day, but Gregg didn't think it was
important enough to disturb the Vice-President over.)
At his confirmation hearing for the office of ambassador to South Korea in
1989, Senator Alan Cranston, then chairman of the Foreign Relations
Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, became fed up with Gregg's
constant denials about the Contra resupply effort, and eventually shouted at
him: "Your career training in establishing secrecy and deniabiIity for covert
operations and your decades-old friendship with Felix Rodriguez apparently
led you to believe that you could serve the national interest by sponsoring a
freelance operation out of the Vice President's. Office" (New York Times, May
13th, 1999).
When Cranston inquired how it could be possible that Gregg didn't know that
Rodriguez was involved with an operation to supply the Contras, Gregg replied
that Oliver North and Rodriguez must have been "conspiring against him." When
North testified at his trial that it was Gregg who introduced him to
Rodriguez, Gregg said North's statements were "just not true" (Los Angeles
Times, May 13th 1989).
Even after Eugene Hasenfus, who was flying arms to the Contras on one of
Secord's C-123 planes, was shot down on October 5th, 1986 over southern
Nicaragua, Gregg said he still didn't tell Bush about the operation.
(Apparently, the Vice President didn't have a minute free on his busy
calendar to deal with such mundane affairs.)
Asked about reports of the downed plane's ties to the VP's office, and that
the first telephone call Hasenfus made was to the Vice President's staff,
Bush said: "It's absolutely, totally untrue. I can deny it unequivocally" (The
Progressive, May 1987). When Newsweek queried him on February 8th, 1988,
about the incident, Bush replied: "I am told that Colonel Watson canvassed
appropriate officials in the U.S. government and was informed that the
missing airplane did not belong to the U.S. government, was not on a U.S.
government operation and that the missing person was not a U.S. government
employee. Based on the definitive statements from responsible officials,
Colonel Watson set aside the fragmentary information Mr. Rodriguez had given
him and took the word of the U.S. officials that there was no U.S. government
connection."
In plain English, Bush is saying that the entire effort to resupply the
Contras was a totally private affair, with no connection to or foreknowledge
by the White House.
When press reports of telephone records from Rodriguez's safe in San Salvador
showed a number of calls to the White House and Gregg's home, on December
15th, 1986, Bush's office acknowledged that Gregg and Rodriquez had discussed
Contra-aid, and that Colonel Watson had been called by Rodriguez and told the
Hasenfus flight was missing a full day before the downing was announced by
the Nicaraguan government" (The Progressive, May 1987). A statement released
by the Vice President's Office said that "Gregg and his staff maintained
periodic communications with Felix Rodriguez, but were never involved in
directing, coordinating, or approving military aid to the Contras in
Nicaragua" (The Progressive, May 1987). The Vice President insisted that
these contacts concerned El Salvador, not the Contras.
When interviewed on the CBS news program 60 Minutes in March 1987, the Vice
President replied that these statements had "stood the test of time." Asked
about media reports of his involvement to supply the Contras, Bush countered:
"There is this insidious suggestion that I was conducting an operation. It's
untrue, unfair, and totally wrong. I met with Max Gomez [Rodriguez's alias]
three times and never discussed Nicaragua with him.... There. was no linkage
to any operation, yet it keeps coming up. There are all kinds of weirdos
coming out of the woodwork on this thing." Bush was asked whether or not
Donald Gregg "lied" when he denied discussing the Contras with Rodriguez.
Bush said no, and that Gregg merely "forgot." "He's not a liar. If I thought
he w[a]s a liar, he wouldn't be working for me," the then-Vice President
added.
When asked if "in retrospect, do you wish Mr. .Gregg had told you about it
[North's role in the resupply effort] in August 1986," Bush remarked: "Yes,
particularly knowing what I know now."
Which means Gregg must be a liar because he didn't tell the Vice President
everything in August 1986, or in April 1986 when Rodriguez complained to him
about the profits being skimmed. Yet Bush wasn't at all angry at his chief
aide for hiding important information from him, and instead of punishing him,
appointed him ambassador to South Korea.
In his autobiography, Looking Forward (1987), Bush denies knowing about
North's "secret operations" before November 1986.
In a 1988 interview with Newsweek, when Bush was asked, "When did you first
learn of North's role in the Contra operation?" he answered, "What I know of
Mr. North's role in the Contra-resupply effort has come from the information
made public during the investigations."
Bush is asking us to believe that he chaired the Task Force on Combating
Terrorism, which served as a springboard for North's activities, and the
Committee on Crisis Pre-Planning and the National Security Planning Group,
but knew nothing of North's activities. He is asking us to believe that
Oliver North ran the entire resupply operation on his own, without the
knowledge of any of his superiors, as a rogue operation, and when brought to
trial merely tried to drag these other men's names and reputations through
the mud without grounds. That he only learned of Oliver North's role in the
entire Contra-resupply effort from information made public during the
investigations. In other words, the Vice President of the United States had
no more knowledge or intelligence about Oliver North's secret agendas and
covert operations than any average American receiving his news from ABC, Time,
Newsweek and and NBC?
In what must be the ultimate hypocrisy, during the election campaign of 1988
Bush said that the whole issue of Iran-Contra was "old news." "You get sick
and tired of saying, I've told the truth."
What became of the Contra connection after Iran-Contra became public? One
covert operation which the Bush White House was in all likelihood behind is
the secret effort to fund the 1990 campaign of Violeta Chamorro and the
National Opposition Union (UNO), the main opposition to the Sandinista
candidate, President Daniel Ortega.
In the eight months before the February 25th, 1990, vote, the CIA managed a
covert operation which sent more than $600,000 to more than a 100 Miami-based
Contra leaders so they could return to Nicaragua (Newsweek, October 21st,
1991). Although Congress approved $9 million to be spent on the Nicaraguan
election, it banned covert CIA financial support for the UNO.
When asked about the payments, Administration officials claimed the payments
were simply expenses for helping 100 or so Contra leaders return home.
However, one White House official acknowledged, "We were spending this money
for them to go back and work in the Chamorro campaign. They knew what they
were supposed to do" (Newsweek, October 21st, 1991).
The payments may have been a continuation of the money supplied to Contra
leaders throughout the 1980s as part of the White House's plan to destabilize
Nicaragua. To do this, the CIA created a Nicaraguan Exile Relocation Program
(NERP), which dispensed the money between July 1989 and February 1990.
Bush and Noriega: How Well Did They Know Each Other?
The extent of George Bush's ties to former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega
are important in order to determine what the President knew of the secret
operation to arm the Contras and whether Contra leaders received money or
helped narcotics traffickers import drugs into the U.S.
Panama General Manuel Noriega's ties to the U.S. intelligence service go back
to 1960, when as a young cadet at the Peruvian military academy he provided
information on leftist students to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
When Bush became head of the CIA in 1976, he thwarted an army investigation
into Noriega's activities, code-named "Canton Song", because he feared it
would further damage an already discredited CIA. Noriega, then Panama's chief
of intelligence, was buying reel-to-reel audiotapes; from the Army's 470th
Military Intelligence Group. When Noriega discovered a U.S. wiretap operation
against Panamanian officials involved in Canal Treaty negotiations, he bought
copies of the tapes for his boss, Omar Torrijos. Instead of prosecuting
Noriega, as the head of the National Security Agency wished, Bush not only
didn't punish either him or the officers, he decided to continue paying
Noriega an annual sum of $110,000 for his work on behalf of the agency
(Frederick Kempe, Divorcing the Dictator, Putnam's, as quoted in Newsweek, Nov
ember 15th, 1990).
Bush met Noriega in Washington in December 1976. He denied it at first, then
acknowledged the meeting took place, but, in what has become somewhat of a
George Bush trademark, remembers nothing of what transpired. Other guests at
the lunch say it was the third meeting between the two since Bush became CIA
director.
Although CIA Director (under Jimmy Carter) Stansfield Turner had taken
Noriega off the payroll of the CIA, by 1981 he was back on.
In December 1983 Bush flew to Panama to meet with Noriega. A Bush
spokesperson claims the meeting was a "privileged" talk (whatever that
means). Bush told reporters: "What I talked to the Panamanians about was
doing what they could to get their banks out of laundering money for the
narcotics traffic" (Washington Post, May 8th, 1988). Fortner U.S. ambassador
to Panama Everett Briggs, who also attended the meeting, said that Bush may
have sought diplomatic support (for the Contras) but never requested military
help. (Of all possible countries, why would the U.S. need to solicit
diplomatic support from Panama?) (Newsweek, January 15th, 1990). Noriega
interpreted this visit as an appeal for help in arming' and training the
Contras.
Jose Blandon, a former Panamanian diplomat who was Noriega's top political
aide, testified before a Senate investigating committee in February 1988. He
says of the same meeting that both Gregg and Bush asked for and got Noriega's
commitment to "help secretly arm, train and finance the Contras, which was to
begin in early 1984." Gregg denied the meeting ever took place (Newsweek, Octo
ber 31st, 1988).
Further proof of Bush's knowledge of Noriega's support for the Contras was
presented at Oliver North's trial in 1989, where it was revealed that a
Southern Front Resistance leader had "received $100,000 from Panamanian
Defense Forces Chief Noriega in July 1984." Bush, it was claimed, received
copies of these documents, which showed Noriega's financial assistance for
the Contras (Newsweek, January 15th 1990).
Bush has always pleaded ignorance about Noriega's drug-dealing activities.
Yet many of the operatives in Black Eagle, one of the Contra resupply
operations Bush and Casey devised in 1982, claim that Noriega played a major
role in the operation by providing his country's airfields and front
companies, as well as allowing Contras to be trained in Panama. In return, he
was given the green light to smuggle cocaine and marijuana into the U.S. on
behalf of the Colombian cocaine cartel. According to one retired covert
operative, one percent of the gross income generated by th[e] drug traffic
was set aside to buy additional weapons for the Contras.
Blandon confirms that the CIA and North used Noriega to funnel guns and money
to the Contras, and Panama as a training base. He also claims that Noriega's
right-hand man, Mike Harari, told him that Casey and Bush were involved in
these operations. "Harari told Noriega in front of me that Bush was very
grateful for the help Noriega was providing," Blandon testified.
An Argentine arms dealer who was brought into the operation by Noriega, Jorge
Krupnik, told Blandon that everything in the operation had the full backing
of Bush and Gregg, including the drug trafficking. Gregg denies meeting
Harari or being involved with him (Newsweek, January 15th, 1990). Noriega
meanwhile gathered a dossier on the role of Bush in the operation, which he
referred to when he told a former aide, Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, "I've
got Bush by the balls," and that he knew things that "could affect the
elections of the U.S."
Although Blandon was very credible, there was an immediate attempt by the CIA
and Defense Department to discredit him, calling him an "untrustworthy
leftist."
"Blandon was the first guy who wasn't a sleazeball who offered evidence
against Noriega," says a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer.
"He was able to corroborate the testimony we'd been getting from convicted
drug dealers, but more important, he was able to put it into a larger
context" (New York, January 15th, 1990).
It's not as if. the administration never realized or discovered what was
happening. They tried to block any investigation which might implicate U.S.
'government officials in any way with Noriega's drug trafficking. Blandon
testified that the White House knew Noriega was involved in drug trafficking
since the early days of the Administration, but because of the support
Noriega gave the Contras, ignored it.
In the spring of 1988, when the General Accounting Office (GAO), the
investigative branch of Congress, opened an investigation, using Panama as a
case study of how drug trafficking by foreign officials influences U.S.
foreign policy decisions, the White House ordered the State De-partment, the
Pentagon, the CIA and the Drug
Enforcement Administration not to cooperate.
According to a UPI report on August 18th, 1988, on the stonewall effort,
"Democrats and investi-gators said the White House order was aimed at
preventing potentially embarrassing discoveries from rocking the presidential
campaign of Repub-lican Vice President George Bush." In August 1988 the White
House said that the Justice Department had decided that "the subject matter
of the request is beyond the GAO's statutory author-ity" (Common Cause, Septem
ber/October 1988).
The report might very well have revealed George Bush's knowledge of the
United States' ties with Noriega. Yet the White House, specifi-cally the
National Security Council (NSC), inter-vened. GAO investigators discovered
that officials of the State Department, Justice Department, Customs Service
and Drug Enforcement Agency were told they couldn't assist the probe until
the NSC agreed (Washington Post, March 12th, 1989). According to a chronology
of one of the GAO investigators, the State and Justice officials were
instructed by the NSC "not to deal with us until [the] NSC had developed
operational guide- lines on what to do and what not to do on this assignment"
(Washington Post, March 21st, 1989).
Nancy Kingsbury, who at that time was a senior official in the GAP's National
Security and International Affairs Divison, commented on the NSC's
coordinating activities, "The NSC would not ordinarily have played that kind
of role" (Washington Post, March 21st, 1989).
The White House effort to protect Noriega may also-been because of the useful
role the Panamanian dictator played in the Reagan-Bush Administration's
Central American foreign policy. One former national security assistant to
President Ronald Reagan claims the U.S. government "conspired" for years to
protect Panamanian General Manuel Noriega and "willfully ignored" evidence of
his narcotics, activities because he had agreed to help the Contras.
Norman Bailey, who served as a director of planning on the National Security
Counsel staff and was a former special assistant to President Reagan for
national security affairs, doesn't believe Reagan Administration officials
when they say they didn't have enough solid evidence of Noriega's narcotics
activities to indict him in February 1988, more than eighteen months before
President Bush sent U.S. troops into Panama to oust and arrest him.
In September 1988, Admiral Daniel Murphy, Bush's top drug aide, declared: "I
never saw any intelligence suggesting General Noriega's involvement in the
drug trade. In fact, we always held up Panama as the model in terms of
cooperation with the United States in the war on drugs" (Convergence, Christic
Institute, Fall - 1991).
Bailey disagrees. Testifying before the House Select Committee on Narcotics
Abuse and Control in March 1988, he said, "Black and white evidence about
Noriega's narcotics activities has been available since at least, the
mid-1970s. It could have been read by any authorized official of the U.S.
government with appropriate security clearances" (Common Cause, September/Octo
ber 1988).
The question is: To what extent was the Reagan-Bush Administration's policy
on drug trafficking influenced by the help they were getting from people like
Noriega?
Senator Kerry says the congressional hearings he chaired showed that
"stopping drug trafficking to the U.S. has been a secondary U.S. foreign
policy objective. It has been sacrificed repeatedly for other political
goals" (Common Cause, September/October 1988).
Francis McNeil, a former senior Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
intelligence and research, told the Senate in April 1988 that "some
government officials looked away when they thought vigorous pursuit of
narcotics trafficking conflicted with national security priorities."
Another question which arises is: Because of the Administration's commitment
to the Contra effort, and due to the ties Contra supporters had with
narcotics traffickers, was the White-House's commitment to keeping dangerous
drugs out of the U.S. compromised?
As Vice President, George Bush headed two main administration initiatives
to coordinate drug investigations: the South Florida Task Force and the
National Narcotics Border Interdiction Sys-tem (NNBIS). Despite their being
created as a
clearinghouse for intelligence, former DEA Ad-ministrator Francis Mullen and
the GAO criticized the two groups for not doing that, but instead
es-tablishing an intelligence network which bypassed DEA contacts and "threate
ned to fragment the narcotics intelligence database."
In 1987 the GAO said of NNBIS: "Seizures are small compared to the amounts of
drugs successfully smuggled into the U.S."
Mullen claimed that these two groups were inflating drug-seizures statistics
and that the public was being misled about the two organizatons' successes.
"If NNBIS continues unchecked it will discredit other federal drug programs
and become the adminstration's Achilles heel for drug law enforcement," he
warned.
Supporting the Contras also blinded other moral fibers of the Reagan-Bush
White House. In 1984, Honduran General Jose Buesco, a supporter of the
Contras, was labeled by the Justice Department as an international terrorist,
and was indicted in connection with a plot to kill President of Honduras
Roberto Suazo Cordova, which was to be financed with profits from cocaine
smuggling.
Senior administration officials, including Oliver North, Assistant Secretary
of State Elliot Abrams, and former National Security Advisor John Poindexter,
tried to get leniency for Buesco due to his role in helping set up Contra
camps on Honduras' border with Nicaragua. When the plot to kill Suazo Cordova
was discovered, Buesco, agreed to come to the U.S. to face charges, but
officials from the Department of Defense and the CIA started asking for
leniency, a full pardon, sentence reduction or deportation. On September
17th, 1986, North sent a message to Poindexter stating that the
administration should help Buesco because if not, "he will break his
longstanding silence about the Nicaraguan resistance and other sensitive
operations."
The Justice Department, particularly Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark
Richard, opposed leniency for Buesco. Richard would later testify to the
Iran-Contra Committee that Abrams insisted "we should do what we can to
accommodate this man." The Justice Department still refused, and Buesco
eventually pleaded guilty to two felony charges in the attempted
assassination plot and was sentenced to two five-year-jail terms.
McNeil believes that it wasn't only Budsco's support for the Contras that
encouraged the Administration to help him, but also what North told
Poindexter in a memo was "songs nobody wants to hear."
Hoping perhaps that George Bush was listening at the time, McNeil told the
Senate subcommittee: "We're certainly going to have to stop giving these
signals that if you have a military or in. telligence relationship with the
U.S., it's a license to commit major crimes in this country."
Conclusion
How did Bush get away with it?
For starters, disinformation became a very powerful and influential tool in
the Reagan years, particularly when it was used against an unknowing public.
A major part of this disinformation effort was to manipulate the public with
the "kick ass" image of the Reagan-Bush White House. With the use of key
phrases such as "counter-terrorism," "anti-terrorism," "the war on
terrorism," and "the Russians are behind all acts of international
terrorism," the Reagan Administration was seen as a group of highly
committed, morally upstanding national leaders and gained the confidence of
the American public. This reservoir of public goodwill the Administration
created stood up well to allegations made against Reagan's or Bush's
knowledge of involvement in Iran-Contra. When Irangate first broke, most
Americans really didn't think the President knew because it was difficult to
conceive of Ronald Reagan lying about anything. With the entire question
being whether Reagan did or did not know of the diversion of profits from
arms sales to Iran to buy arms for the Contras, Bush was let off the hook.
The question of George Bush's guilt in Iran-Contra comes down to two
possibilities: either he knew everything, or, while all the efforts to
resupply the Contras were happening, he was kept in the dark by Gregg and was
absent from all meetings where arms-for-hostages were discussed.
Could it be that Gregg knew everything but kept it from the Vice President?
That despite all the committees which bore the Vice President's name, he
didn't attend the meetings and had no interest in or knowledge of what
policies were implemented there?
Could it be that a lone Lt. Colonel in the Na tional Security Council could
carry out an entire private foreign policy by arming and financing the
Contras without anyone in the White House knowing about it or finding out?
And if so, and the Vice Pr[e]sident or his National Security Advisor didn't
discover these activities, what does that say about their level of competence?
Of course George Bush knew everything. How could he not have known?
In fact, far from being a wimp, George Bush ran the White House. Says former
Army investigator Gene Wheaton: "Ronald Reagan may have been President but
George Bush was in charge. Weinberger and Schultz were no match for a covert
operator like him."
Bush was smart. He figured out that to imple-ment his secret agendas all
he had to do was ar-range it so he was appointed chairman of all the
important White House committees: the President's Task Force on Narcotics,
Terrorism, Deregulation of the Savings and Loans and Air-lines Industry. This
meant he could appoint the key people to work on these inter-agency
com-mittees to establish policy and Bush's covert agendas.
The scary part of all this is that Bush seemed to be invincible. No one could
pin him down and comer him by saying: "Of course you know about these secret
agendas and covert operations. You were there. Stop treating us like a bunch
of imbeciles and explain to us how with these covert operations going on all
around you, you, the Vice President, didn't know about them?"
No one did that. Not Congress. Not the press. Nor any of the presidential
contenders in 1988 and 1992. Like any good covert operator, Bush has a
brilliant cover. About the only thing the American people knew about this
President is that he joggs, fishes, and has a dog.
They called Reagan the Teflon President. Bush has him beat by a mile.
pps. 176-209
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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