The Iran Gonnection:

violates

By TIM WHEELER

The “Iran Connection” has thrown a
spotlight on the Reagan administration’s
increasing use of covert action in carrying
out U.S. foreign policy. The National Secur-
ity Council (NSC) in the White House has
been exposed as the nerve centre and com-
mand post for clandestine global warfare,
which the administration delicately calls
“secret diplomacy.”

The revelations that President Reagan
authorized the NSC to make secret arms
deliveries to Iran comes on the heels of
disclosure that Reagan’s national security
adviser, Vice Adm. John Poindexter,
orchestrated an NSC “disinformation”
campaign against Libya.

It follows statements by Eugene Hasen-
fus, the cargo handler captured after his
plane was shot down over Nicaragua, that
the contra gun-running operation was supp-
lied and directed by CIA agents under the
command of Vice-President George Bush
and officials of the NSC.

Such covert activities “undermine our
Constitutional system,” warned Henry Steele
Commager, professor of U.S. history at
Amherst College. Taken together, he said,
they could be grounds for preparing articles
of impeachment against Reagan for “high
crimes and misdemeanors.”

The White House hoped that it could
tough out disclosure of the Iran Connec-
tion. White House spokesman Larry
Speakes and communications director
Patrick Buchanan attempted to quash the -
story.

But when the issue would not go away,
the administration abruptly changed course.
On the evening of Nov. 13, Reagan deli-
vered a 12-minute television speech in which
he admitted that he had authorized the
transfer of arms to Iran, but denied it was an
attempt to exchange weapons for U.S. hos-
tages.

He claimed the intention was to “send a

laws

signal” to factions in Iran that the U.S.
favors improved relations. But NATO allies
are citing the hypocrisy of the White House
delivering arms to Iran for use in its war
against Iraq at the very time Reagan was
demanding a trade embargo on the grounds
that Iran is a “terrorist” state.

The Iran Connection began over 18
months ago (Israel says it began as far back
as-1982), when Michael Ledeen, a long-time
CIA agent and a consultant-to the NSC,

was sent to Europe to meet with an expat- -

riate Iranian businessman, Manucher
Ghorbanifar, to discuss an overture to
“moderate” factions in Iran.

Ledeen met with Israeli agents to expand
the connection. It came to a head last Janu-
ary, when President Reagan signed an exec-
utive order authorizing the secret contacts
and lifting the ban on arms deliveries to
Iran. Later, former National Security
Adviser Robert C. McFarlane travelled to
Teheran to meet with Iranian officials.

Reagan claims that the arms delivered to
Iran would “fit into a single cargo plane”
and could not influence the outcome of the
Iran-Iraq war. But the Danish Seamen’s
Union insists that the administration has
used Israel over a long period of time as a
conduit to deliver “many thousands of

tons” of U.S. arms to Iran aboard a Danish.

freighter.

Further, delivering just enough arms to
keep the blood flowing but not enough for
Iran to win would be consistent with a stra-
tegy of “bleeding both sides white,” accord-
ing to Eqbal Ahmen, a professor of
international relations at Hampshire Col-
lege in Amherst, Massachusetts. Ahmed is
one of many who charge that the adminis-
tration’s real aim was to use the fratricidal
war to reassert U.S. military, political and
economic hegemony in the oil-rich Persian
Gulf.

Leaders of the Senate and House have

Continued from page 1

gallery also called for a special prosecu-
tor. His office is conducting a wide rang-
ing investigation of the contras, including
charges that they are smuggling cocaine
into the U.S. and using the funds to
finance the gangster war agaisnt Nicara-
gua.
Kerry said Meese has done nothing
but stonewall on explosive evidence his
office has compiled. He quoted a police
officer who “in the name of national
security was ordered to terminate a drug
investigation.”

As soon as Congress comes back in
January, 1987, a bill must be introduced
to cut off the release of funds to the
contras, Kerry said.

Father Bill Davis, co-director of the
Christic Institute, which has uncovered
much of the evidence that Kerry is using,
said that many of the disclosures about
profits from arms sales to Iran being
diverted to thé contras, “confirm what
we've been charging for six months ...a
shadow government, an ‘international
plumbers group’ has been operating
from the basement of the White House.
It is quite clear that they have been fund-
ing the contras in direct defiance of the
Congressional ban.”

Davis said that their investigation in
support of a law suit against the contras
pending ina U.S. federal court in Miami,

Caper casts new light
on illegal contra aid

“thas revealed a major cocaine smuggling
operation” with the funds used to
finance the contra war.

He said two men, Jorge Ochoa and
Pablo Escobar, both of Colombia,
“together control 80 per cent of the
cocaine traffic. They have been sending
the cocaine on a regular basis through
Costa Rica into Miami under the
umbrella of the contra network. They are
using a secret network of landing strips
and airplanes of questionable ownership
not only to supply the contras but also to
bring drugs back into the United States
on the return trip.”

Davis said a man named John Hull, a
known “CIA asset” has allowed an air-
strip on his ranch in Costa Rica to be
used for this illicit traffic.

CIA agents Paul Klien and Theodore
Shackley, implicated in the drug smug-
gling, are veterans of CIA heroin traf-
ficking during the Vietnam war.

“Vice-president Bush ought to know
all about this,” Davis said. “The same
thing went on in Southeast Asia by the
same players when he was director of the
CIA]

Moves are also underway by members
of the new Congress who will take their
seats in January to block any funding for
the contras, including the unspent por-
tion of the $100 million already
approved.

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 3, 1986

McFARLANE ... visited Iran on secret
arms mission.

promised a full-scale investigation of the
Iran Connection. But many are wondering
how thorough that probe will be. Will Con-
gress pursue the constitutional issues raised
in Reagan’s increasing use of covert action
as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy? Did
he comply with requirements of prior noti-
fication of the House and Senate Intelli-
gence committees? And where did the
money come from to pay for these wide-
ranging covert operations? Who will be
subpoened? Vice Adm. Poindexter? His
predecessor McFarlane? Oliver North, head
of the NSC’s military arm? President Rea-
gan himself? Will they call Vice-President
Bush and ask him about the charge by
Hasenfus that Bush has met several times
with the Cuban exile CIA agents involved in
the contra supply operation from El Salva-
dor?

At the heart of Reagan’s increasing
reliance on clandestine warfare is his trans-
formation of the National Security Council
— an unelected body — from a presiden-
tial advisory body to an operational com-
mand staff for covert action.

The National Security Council was estab-
lished as an advisory body in 1947, at the

_ beginning of the Cold War, by the National

Security Act. The Act also established the
CIA, ostensibly to be supervised by the
NSC. The members of the NSC include the
president, vice-president, the secretaries of
state and defence, the director of the CIA,
and, of course, the NSC director. The direc-
tor is appointed by the president but is not
confirmed by the Senate. He is thus not
subject to oversight by Congress, as are the
secretaries of state and defence, and the
director of the CIA.

Historically, the NSC has been used to
promote the “imperial presidency” and has
undercut the State Department’s authority
in carrying out foreign policy.

Reagan is trying to shield the NSC’s
‘clandestine activities from congressional
investigation by claiming “executive privi-
lege.” But many assert that it should be
subject to the same congressional oversight
as the CIA.

Evidence is growing that over the past six
years the NSC has assembled a network of
secret “‘assets” — mercenaries and agents
who are carrying out counter-revolutionary
activities around the world under the direc-
tion and co-ordination of the NSC.

What has suprised lawmakers is how
closely the White House NSC staff super-
vises these activities on a day-to-day basis.
Lt. Col. North exercised a command role
over the nominally “private” network that
supplied the anti-Nicaraguan contras. He
led a commando team to Turkey’s border

ran the connection
from the White House.

POINDEXTER ...

with Iran in a scheme to free U.S. hostages
and was a planner of the U.S. invasion 0
Grenada and the bombing of Libya. He
also accompanied McFarlane to Teheran:

There are supposed to be curbs on the
gangsterism coming to light in the Iran arms
deal. The final report of the Watergat®
Committee charged that over the years SUC
cessive Republican and Democratic admur
istrations had “‘institutionalized” assas*
inations, chillingly called
actions,” as the ultimate weapon of foreig?
policy intrigue. Congress soon thereafter
enacted a law forbidding the plotting %
execution of assassinations of foreign lead-

ers. Other curbs, including the requirement”

that the House and Senate be informed #
advance of covert actions, were als?
enacted.

Rolling back and destroying democrat?
people’s revolutions while they are $
weak and unconsolidated has emerged a54

top foreign policy goal of the Reaga?

administration.

The “Reagan Doctrine,” as this state te
rorism is widely called, has been practised”
Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiop!
North Yemen, Grenada and Kampuche#
Its implementation in Iran required the 1
establishment of a full-blown covert wat
fare capability. :

A revolutionary upsurge with an antl
U.S. imperialist thrust in 1979 overthrew
the shah of Iran, who had been installed Zi
1953 in a ClA-orchestrated coup direct®
by Kermit Roosevelt. But that revolutio®
has been short-circuited by reaction
Islamic fundamentalist clerics.

In 1985, the Heritage Foundation, 8
right-wing think-tank whose analyses an ‘|
policies have been closely adhered to by the
Reagan administration, published “T 7
date II,” an update of an earlier blueprint.
included advice on the Iran-Iraq wat.

The Reagan administration, the dots
ment stated, should maintain a public Pat
ture of “strict political neutrality” in the
but “quietly give military help to whiche

side is losing ... The U.S. interest conti ne

to be that neither side wins ... In the
term, good relations with Iran remair 6
more important. With a population 0.1,
million and borders on the Soviet ¥". 4
and the Persian Gulf, Iran undeniably F
strategic prize.”

This is what is behind the Read
administration-National Security COU 1a
strategy for Iran and the president’s
tion of laws outlining democratic PY yt
dures for establishing and carryin8
foreign policy. nde!

Tim Wheeler is Washington corresp®
for the People’s Daily World.

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