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.

“executive

: Se” Wes a

foad o haiag Hizb dete See

Dn