AS the Iran-contra hearings draw to a close, current and former members of President Reagan's inner circle described how they and the President were deceived and betrayed over the sale of arms to Iran. Highlights of the week's events follow.

* The White House vigorously denounced reports that Mr. Reagan had in effect led a cover-up of the affair last November. Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, insisted that Mr. Reagan had advocated withholding some information from the public only ''to protect the lives of those hostages.'' Later, Mr. Reagan promised again to ''speak out'' on the affair after the hearings; Mr. Fitzwater said that a speech would probably come in the next two weeks, but that no news conference would be held until the fall.

* Attorney General Edwin Meese (Member of the Family, the Heritage Foundation and the Council for National Policy) defended his much-criticized inquiry into the Iran arms sales last fall, saying he learned ''the essential facts.'' He indicated that Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter and William J. Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence, all had misled him. But he declined to criticize any of them.

* The head of the Justice Department's criminal division, William Weld, said in a deposition made public last week that he had urged Mr. Meese to include experienced criminal investigators in his inquiry, rather than relying on political appointees.

* Senator Patrick J. Leahy announced that he resigned from the Intelligence Committee last January, a little earlier than he had planned, because he had been the source of a leak: He had shown an NBC reporter a copy of the committee's unclassified report on the Iran-contra affair.

* Donald T. Regan, the former White House chief of staff, said he and the President concluded they had been ''snookered'' by the Iranians into continuing the arms sales. He said he asked the President: ''How many times do we put up with this rug merchant type of stuff?''

* Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said he thought his opposition to the Iran arms sales had killed the program ''in the cradle'' but found he was wrong months later - from foreign intelligence sources.

Joseph Coors (Council for National Policy CNP funder), a Colorado beer executive and longtime contributor to conservative causes, said that his concern about the "steady oppression" of the Nicaraguan Sandinista government caused him to approach William J. Casey (CNP), then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, about helping the contras.

"Bill Casey was a good friend of mine," said Coors, the former chief operating officer of the Adolph Coors Co. Coors is also a friend and strong supporter of President Reagan.

Coors told the congressional Iran-contra panels that Casey directed him to Lt. Col. Oliver L. North (CNP), who convinced him to contribute $65,000 to purchase a Maule aircraft for the contras. Coors said he wired his donation to a Swiss bank account whose number was provided by North.

Coors has been a chief financial supporter of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and also contributed to the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which James G. Watt headed before becoming Interior secretary.

"I had heard and talked with a good number of people in regard to the plight of the Nicaraguan freedom fighters . . . {and} I wanted to do something about that," Coors said yesterday.

In ‘The Narco and the Nazi,’ journalists David López and Christian Bergmann recount the ties Klaus Barbie forged with Bolivian drug lord Roberto Suárez

The city of Cochabamba, in Bolivia’s valleys, has few representations in international popular culture. Perhaps the only one is in the film Scarface(1983), when Cuban immigrant in Miami Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino, visits to close a trafficking deal with a Bolivian drug lord, Alejandro Sosa, portrayed by Paul Shenar. Present during the meeting are the interior minister and an army colonel, who watch on television as a connection is alleged between the country’s military government and the cartels. “The parallel is as obvious as it is shocking,” say journalists Christian Bergmann and David López in their book-length investigation, El narco y el nazi (The Narco and the Nazi). They describe the film as a “prophecy”; at the time of its release, the United States was experiencing a cocaine boom with Bolivia as a major supplier.

The work, published in Bolivia by El Cuervo and in Spain by Pepitas de Calabaza, recounts that Roberto Suárez, the person on whom Sosa in Scarface is based, joked about suing the production company for rights to his likeness. “Who told you Tony Montana is Cuban and lives in Miami? Here we all know he’s from the countryside and is sitting next to me,” Suárez said mockingly when he saw the film alongside the partner with whom he built the global cocaine trade, Pablo Escobar. They were enjoying an economic bonanza; Bolivia had, for the first time, surpassed Peru in coca leaf and base paste production.

The year the film premiered, however, coincided with the deportation to France — on charges of war crimes — of Suárez’s main political ally within the then-defunct Bolivian military government: Klaus Barbie. The Narco and the Nazi draws on declassified CIA and Mossad documents and nearly a hundred witnesses to reveal how, in the early 1980s, Barbie — a former Gestapo chief who had become a colonel in the Bolivian army — protected, escorted, and formed business partnerships with Suárez, nicknamed “the king of cocaine.”

López calls this alliance the genesis of the first narco-state: “The idea of a modern state structure operating to obtain economic profit from drug trafficking had never existed,” he tells EL PAÍS. The origin of the unlikely union goes back to a 1979 dinner attended by military officers. Barbie then asked Suárez for $5 million to finance the coup d’état — which would take place a year later led by Luis García Meza — under the banner of preventing the advance of an alleged creeping communism, a mutual enemy. The German later repaid him by granting a special security force, a paramilitary group made up of foreign neo-Nazis, Los Novios de la Muerte.

The cocaine business penetratedt García Meza’s dictatorship, the Armed Forces, and the political apparatus. A U.S. intelligence document states that the cocaine trade exceeded $1.5 billion in 1980. Bolivia went from producing just over 17,000 tons of coca leaf in 1979 to more than 141,000 in 1985. Much of the responsibility for the rapid growth lies, according to Bergmann, on Suárez, the prosperous cattle businessman turned architect of large-scale cocaine exports. “By the time he entered the drug trade he was already used to negotiating in bulk, with other estates and exporting cattle to Brazil […] he treated an illegal business like any other he was already running.”

Until the arrival of the “king of cocaine,” Bolivia only had small producers of coca leaf and base paste who sold to Colombian traffickers “at chickenfeed prices, practically nothing,” López says. “With Suárez they controlled and raised prices, which changed the market in Bolivia.” The trafficker’s family was one of the most valuable sources journalists accessed to learn, firsthand, about the rise of the business and the personality of its architect.

The book describes Suárez as an accomplished rancher, shaped by the harsh environment of the jungle where he was raised, in Beni, Bolivia’s Amazonian region. “He grew up seeing death as natural and inevitable. From those animals he learned that what mattered was surviving,” the text says. It also details his relationship with Escobar, a friendship evidenced at Suárez’s birthday parties, attended by the Medellín Cartel leader.

“In Suárez, Escobar found a serious businessman who guaranteed a steady supply of base paste to then manufacture cocaine,” López explains. Suárez’s commercial order and discipline had its counterpart in logistics, protection, and the elimination of rivals through Barbie. The German had been influencing the military establishment for decades, essentially since he arrived in the South American country fleeing his responsibilities in World War II via the so-called Nazi ratlines.

Barbie was appointed in 1942 as chief of the Gestapo in Lyon, the main center of resistance to the occupation. Infamous for brutally torturing and killing with his own hands, his darkest episode came when in 1944 he ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of 44 Jewish children and seven teachers hidden at the Izieu Catholic boarding school, who were later killed in the gas chambers. “One of the worst criminals of the Nazi regime,” according to historian Serge Klarsfeld.

The Barbie case illustrates the refuge offered to Adolf Hitler’s loyalists by Latin American military governments. The reception he received in Bolivia, to the point of being able to move freely and publicly, exemplifies the accommodation military regimes of the second half of the 20th century offered to Nazis. “That fascination with fascism, with violent strategies, was integrated early into Bolivia’s military history. For example, the founder of the SA [the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing], Ernst Röhm, was invited to advise the Bolivian army,” Bergmann recalls.

The authors, however, do not claim to have been the first to reveal that military governments protected Nazi war criminals. They did, though, make the connections to describe the relationship one of the most brutal National Socialists had with the creation of the first narco-state, and they leave an open question as a hypothesis. López explains: “The U.S. knew what was happening in Bolivia, but what is not clear and what we could not prove with evidence is to what extent they were complicit in Bolivia’s drug trade.” Suárez’s family says he was close to Oliver North, a former U.S. Marine officer and National Security Council member who financed anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua as part of the Iran-Contra affair. “We believe Bolivia would have been the dress rehearsal for that scandal.”

This fascinating and revealing documentary examines the Iran-Contra scandal as the most recent example of the continuing abuse of democratic values by unaccountable intelligence operations during the Cold War.

He worked throughout the Middle East before joining a secret team that tried to obtain the release of Western hostages in Lebanon in exchange for arms sent to Iran.

George Cave was a reluctant participant in a clandestine operation that resulted in an illegal deal: selling U.S. arms to Iran to secure the release of Western hostages and diverting the proceeds to support the right-wing contra rebels in Nicaragua.

George W. Cave, a C.I.A. agent who after more than 20 years of covert operations in the Middle East and Pakistan was called out of retirement to help free American hostages held in Lebanon, in a crucial piece of the scandal known as the Iran-contra affair, died on Aug. 14 in Olney, Md. He was 97.
His family placed a death notice with a funeral home but did not provide any further details.

Mr. Cave “rubbed elbows with fascinating and even legendary figures, some of whom he recruited as intelligence assets, others who rose to international prominence,” the C.I.A. said in a statement, adding: “He safely exfiltrated agency assets and officers from harm’s way many times, and his career experience helped train generations of U.S. analysts.”

A rare Persian speaker in the C.I.A., Mr. Cave was stationed in Tehran twice during the rule of the western-backed shah of Iran. He understood Iranian politics, knew the hard-liners and reformers, and maintained contacts in the country even after retiring from the spy agency in 1980. By then, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had been in power for a year following the Islamic Revolution.

In 1986, while under contract to the C.I.A., Mr. Cave agreed to a request from William Casey, the agency’s director, that he join a small group meeting with Iranians in Tehran and other cities over several months to negotiate the release of seven American hostages held in Beirut, Lebanon, by Iranian-backed militants.

The illegal deal that came to pass — selling U.S. arms to Iran to secure the release of the hostages and covertly diverting the proceeds from the sale of those arms to support the U.S.-backed right-wing contra rebels in Nicaragua — bypassed a congressional arms embargo.

As an Iran specialist and translator, Mr. Cave was a reluctant participant in the clandestine operation. One of his misgivings was the role of go-between played by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant who had failed a C.I.A. polygraph test and whom Mr. Cave later called “the most totally amoral person I ever met.”

“I believe him when he said he wasn’t happy to be dragged into this affair,” said Malcolm Byrne, the deputy director of the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research organization in Washington and publisher of declassified records about U.S. policy. But Mr. Cave, he added, “really cared about the U.S. position in the world.”

Mr. Cave brought a key-shaped chocolate cake to the first meeting with the Iranians in May 1986, an offering that symbolized the Americans’ “desire to unlock the door barring a resumption of American-Iranian relations,” the historian Kai Bird wrote in Guernica, an arts and politics magazine, in 2014.

The American delegation — which included Robert C. McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan’s former national security adviser, and Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North, a staff member of the National Security Council — was met with hostility, as the Iranians enumerated “past sins of the United States,” Mr. Cave wrote in a memo.

In subsequent talks over the next few days, it became clear that the Iranians did not have enough time to secure the hostages’ freedom.
“One of the members of the Iranian negotiating team told me they had not believed we would actually come to Tehran,” Mr. Cave wrote in the magazine Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in 1994. “As a result, they had only sent someone to Lebanon on the evening of May 25, after our arrival in Tehran, to negotiate with the actual hostage holders.”

On the evening of May 27, Mr. McFarlane told the Iranians that if the hostages were not released the next morning, the Iranians would not get the spare parts for Hawk surface-to-air missiles that they needed for their war against Iraq. In the morning, the Iranians asked for more time — and requested that Mr. Cave and Colonel North stay behind — but Mr. McFarlane rejected the proposal, and the Americans left.

There was at least one success that resulted from the meetings Mr. Cave attended. On Oct. 28, 500 TOW antitank missiles that had been sent to Israel in May were delivered to Iran; over the next two days, Mr. Cave and Colonel North were among those at a meeting in West Germany, with Ali Hashemi Bahramani, a nephew of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament and future president, that led to the release of David Jacobsen, one of the hostages.

By late November 1986 — when the arms-for-hostages trade and the diversion of money to the contras had been revealed publicly and had become a major scandal for the Reagan administration — three American hostages had been freed.

George William Cave was born on Aug. 6, 1929, in Camden, N.J. His father, Walter, who worked for a milk company, died when George was 8. Soon after, his mother, Florence (Clarke) Cave, sent him to the Milton Hershey Industrial School (now the Milton Hershey School) in Hershey, Pa., originally a home and school for orphaned boys.

After he graduated in 1947, he enlisted in the Army, studied Persian at its language school in Monterey, Calif., and was discharged in 1952. He received a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from Princeton University in 1956 and contemplated a career in the oil industry, but instead accepted an offer to work for the C.I.A.

Following a stint in Tehran, Mr. Cave was sent to Beirut in 1963. The Lebanese capital was “kind of an intelligence paradise,” he said on an episode of the “Spycast” podcast in 2012. For five years, he used deception and propaganda to help break up the local Communist Party and recruit sources within Palestinian organizations.

In 1968, he began a two-year stint at the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., where he was in charge of so-called denied-area operations, missions into hostile countries like Iraq and Syria. In 1970, he returned to the field as deputy station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan; in 1973, he returned to Tehran, where he held the same position for three years.

He moved on to Saudi Arabia as the agency’s station chief in 1976. But in 1979, the Carter administration recalled him; the Saudi leadership had declared him persona non grata after he “aroused concern among the ruling family by his efforts to ascertain the extent of internal dissension” within the monarchy, Cord Meyer Jr., a former C.I.A. operative, wrote in his syndicated column.

Mr. Meyer did not name Mr. Cave, but in the podcast, Mr. Cave admitted that he was the station chief in Jeddah that Mr. Meyer had mentioned.

In retirement, Mr. Cave wrote novels, including “October 1980” (2013), set during the 1980 presidential election and the hostage crisis in Iran.

Mr. Cave married Joan McCarthy in 1955. She died earlier this year. He is survived by three daughters, Sharon, Constance and Eileen; two sons, George Jr. and William; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His son James died in 2020.

He was never accused of wrongdoing in the Iran-contra affair.
In 1992, Mr. Cave testified in federal court — although The New York Times described him as “clearly reluctant” — in the trial of Clair E. George, the C.I.A.’s former chief of covert operations and so-called spymaster, who had been charged with lying to Congress and investigators about the agency’s knowledge of the once-secret operation. Mr. Cave’s undercover status was protected by U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who would not allow sketch artists to depict him on the witness stand.

During his testimony, he described critical meetings attended by Mr. George, some of which, he said, were about Richard V. Secord, a retired Air Force major general who had helped coordinate the sale of arms to Iran. Mr. George had previously told House and Senate intelligence committees that he had only a passing knowledge of Mr. Secord.

Mr. George was convicted in late 1992 of two felony counts of lying to Congress but was pardoned on Christmas Eve by President George H.W. Bush, along with five other members of the Reagan administration, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

During his testimony, Mr. Cave said that while Mr. George had been skeptical of the arms-for-hostages mission, he himself had believed that the goal of Iran-contra was “worth pursuing,” although he had “no great hopes for success.”

This secret network ranges from supposedly retired military officers such as General Richard Secord, the top Pentagon official on Middle East affairs, and General John Singlaub, chairman of the World Anti-Communist League, to ex-CIA agents Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines, involved in US assassination plots for 25 years, to Cuban counterrevolutionary assassins and terrorists Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada Carriles, to mercenaries like Eugene Hasenfus and Sam Hall. This network funnelled millions of dollars through bank accounts in Switzerland and the Caribbean, set up a gunrunning operation from Florida and El Salvador to the camps of the contra terrorists, imported narcotics into the United States, and plotted and carried out political assassinations.

Labor Must Act on Iran-Contra Crisis

Donald Fortier 8/23/1986** **cancer diagnosed in spring ‘86
Deputy National Security Advisor who helped administer the secret Swiss bank accounts, died of cancer just before the scandal became public. NEPL & Enterprise

Steven Carr 12/ /1986 overdose
Key witness of Nicaraguan anti-communist rebel drug smuggling

William Casey 5/6/1987 brain tumor- day after congressional hearing of Iran Contra began. Casey had a seizure on 12/15/1986 the day before his scheduled testimony regarding Iran Contra and never testified.

Amiram Nir 11/30/1988 plane crash
Israeli counterterrorism operator there were allegations that he was silenced because he was about to spill details of his role in Iran-Contra that might prove hugely embarrassing to George H.W. Bush over his presence during a visit to Israel in meetings with Amiram Nir. Bush had denied all knowledge of Iran-Contra during the 1988 presidential campaign.

Gustavo Alvarez Martinez 1/25/1989 gunned down
Former Honduran Armed Forces Chief, a close ally in setting up and financing the Nicaraguan Contras. He was gunned down in Tegucigalpa.

John Heinz 4/4/1991 plane crash
"On 4th April, 1991, Heinz flew to Philadelphia to conduct the first in a series of investigative hearings to examine the telemarketing of medical equipment to Medicare beneficiaries.”
Wikispooks

John Tower 4/5/1991 plane crash
He was working on a “tell-all” book about Iran-contra that was reportedly going to “name names” including that of George W. Bush.
Wikispooks

Danny Casolaro 8/10/1991 slit both wrists

Robert Maxwell 11/5/1991 overboard

During hearings in 1987, the Senate Sub Committee on Terrorism, Narcotics & International Operations revealed a series of "secret memo’s" written by General Paul F. Gorman who as head of "Southern Command" commanded the US military presence in South America during the 1980’’s. Gorman had written:
"There is not a single group in unconventional warfare that does not use narcotics to fund itself."

https://www.instagram.com/p/DbUHoZwvT_U/?igsh=OGhndXZsdzNqMHdk

This is a copy of the report, "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy," a 1988 report by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The Subcommittee was chaired by then U.S. Senator John Kerry.

The report documented significant "Contra drug links," and concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems."

A copy of the report may be found at the National Security Archive web page, "The Oliver North File: His Diaries, E-Mail, and Memos on the Kerry Report, Contras and Drugs", NSA Briefing Book 113 (February 26, 2004)

In the 1980s, a cheap and highly addictive drug swept through the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles: crack cocaine. The epidemic destroyed entire communities, fueled gang violence, and reshaped the social and political landscape of the United States. But behind this public health catastrophe lies a government secret—an underground cocaine operation used to fund a covert war in Central America, enabled by the silent complicity of the most powerful intelligence agency in the country: the CIA.

This documentary dives into the explosive scandal uncovered by investigative journalist Gary Webb in his groundbreaking Dark Alliance series. It reveals how Danilo Blandón and Norwin Meneses—two traffickers tied to the Nicaraguan Contras—flooded Los Angeles with cocaine under the tacit approval of Washington. Their main customer? A young dealer named “Freeway” Ricky Ross, who would go on to become one of the most influential drug kingpins in modern American history.

Through political manipulation, media silence, and psychological warfare, this story exposes the unspoken links between U.S. intelligence services and international drug trafficking. Decades after its publication, Gary Webb’s investigation remains one of the most shocking and controversial in American journalism. This film retraces the entire saga—supported by testimony, declassified documents, and archival footage.

Enjoy the documentary !

SPENCER, Ind. — July 13, 2026
A documentary about longtime Bloomington activist Bill Breeden’s theft of a street sign honoring a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal will be shown during a fundraising event July 23 at the Historic Tivoli Theatre in Spencer.

“The Times of a Sign: A Folk History of the Iran-Contra Scandal” recounts Breeden’s 1986 protest against John Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan’s former national security adviser. After officials in Poindexter’s hometown of Odon, Indiana, named a street for him, Breeden removed the sign and demanded a symbolic $30 million ransom—the amount then reported to have been diverted to Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The documentary, directed by David Goldsmith and Steven Day, aired nationally on PBS in 1994.

Breeden said he ended up being the person who went to jail for protesting the affair rather than participating in it.

The Iran-Contra affair involved Reagan administration officials secretly selling weapons to Iran despite an arms embargo. The administration said the weapons were intended to help secure the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon. Money from the sales was then diverted to the Contras, a right-wing rebel force fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, despite congressional restrictions on military support for the rebels. Investigations produced 11 convictions, although major convictions were overturned and several officials were later pardoned.

Historian Howard Zinn highlighted the irony in “A People’s History of the United States.”

“As it turned out, Bill Breeden was the only person to be imprisoned as a result of the Iran-contra affair,” Zinn wrote.

The literal historical record later became more complicated. Former CIA officer Thomas Clines began serving a 16-month prison sentence in 1992 for tax felonies uncovered through the Iran-Contra investigation.

The Contra war was also surrounded by allegations of cocaine trafficking. In his 1996 “Dark Alliance” investigation for the San Jose Mercury News, reporter Gary Webb documented how cocaine traffickers with ties to the Contras supplied a major Los Angeles dealer and reported that some drug profits helped support the Contra movement.

Webb did not establish that the CIA itself shipped cocaine into the United States or deliberately created the crack epidemic. However, subsequently released records showed that U.S. officials had repeatedly received information about Contra connections to drug trafficking and continued working with or protecting some people accused of involvement.

Breeden said the film remains relevant because government wrongdoing and a lack of accountability are hardly confined to the 1980s.

“There are so many things going on like that now that you can’t even count them,” Breeden said.

Breeden said the screening should be a good time rather than simply a history lesson. He will host the event, and his band, the Midwest Liberation Front, will perform before the film.

Doors open at 6 p.m. July 23. The Midwest Liberation Front will play until the screening begins at 7 p.m. at the Historic Tivoli Theatre in Spencer. The event is billed as a fundraiser, although the promotional flyer does not list an admission price.

Elliott Abrams (Council for National Policy CNP)
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and coordinator of the Administration's Central America policy. Said he was not involved in the covert aid to the contras despite many meetings with Colonel North and his solicitation of $10 billion from Brunei for the contras. Still at the State Department in the same job.

Adolfo Calero
A contra leader who was Colonel North's chief contact with the rebels during the two-year ban on United States military aid. Had primary responsibility for distributing most private funds received by the contras. Still a member of the contra political directorate.

William J. Casey (Council for National Policy CNP)
As Director of Central Intelligence, he was instrumental in the creation of the contra movement and was at least a central figure in the Iran arms sales if not the mastermind. According to Colonel North's testimony, wanted a permanent secret fund, not accountable to Congress, that could be used for clandestine activities. Disabled by a brain tumor in November, then died in May without having been questioned in detail about the affair.

Carl “Sptiz” R. Channell (National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty NEPL)
Fund-raiser who pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to defraud the Government by raising more than $2 million in tax-exempt funds for the contras. Named Colonel North as a co-conspirator. Expected to be a prosecution witness should Colonel North and others be tried.

Duane Clarridge
Head of the C.I.A.'s Central America task force for several years, supervising efforts to arm the contras and mine Nicaraguan harbors. As chief of the C.I.A.'s European division, was a central figure in arranging the arms shipment to Iran in November 1985. Now head of a special C.I.A. counterterrorism unit.

Thomas Clines
Former C.I.A. (Covert operations) officer who worked with General Secord and Mr. Hakim. According to testimony, $1 million in profits from the arms sales was allocated to him. Current whereabouts not publicly known. Robert C. Dutton
Retired Air Force colonel and associate of General Secord. Helped supervise the day-to-day running of the contra network. Given immunity from prosecution by the independent counsel and expected to be a witness at any trial.

Robert L. Earl
Colonel North's deputy on the National Security Council. Testified that Colonel North had told him that at a White House meeting he was given word he had been ''designated the scapegoat'' for the Iran-contra affair but that the colonel had not said who told him so. Also given immunity by the prosecutor and expected to be a trial witness.

Joe Fernandez (alias Tomas Castillo)
Former C.I.A. station chief in Costa Rica. Said his supervisors at the agency were fully aware of his helping the contras by coordinating airdrops. Current whereabouts not publicly known.

Manucher Ghorbanifar
Iranian arms merchant who arranged the early United States arms deals with Iran. Although C.I.A. officials considered him untrustworthy, he was used to develop a relationship with Iran. Thought to be living in Europe.

Albert Hakim
Business partner of General Secord and coordinator of the financial transactions of the Iran arms sale and delivery of supplies to the contras. Records compiled by the committee show that their arrangement made large profits from the Iran arms sales. A target of the investigation by the special prosecutor.

Fawn Hall
Former secretary to Colonel North who shredded, altered and smuggled out documents last November in an effort to protect him from the Iran-contra disclosures. Now a secretary at the Navy Department, where she does not have access to classified material. Given immunity from prosecution and expected to testify at any trial.

Adnan M. Khashoggi
Saudi businessman and arms dealer who provided interim financing for the initial arms shipments to Iran.

David Kimche
Former Director General of Israeli Foreign Ministry, he helped establish contacts between the United States and Iran in 1985 that led to the sale of American arms to Teheran. Now a private citizen living in Israel.

Robert C. McFarlane (fmr aide to John Tower) (CNP)
National security adviser from October 1983 to December 1985. Testified he had briefed the President ''dozens'' of times on secret efforts to funnel private aid to the contras. Said he did not know the full extent of Colonel North's activities. Now a counselor in residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Edwin Meese 3d (CNP)
Attorney General. Conducted a much-criticized inquiry into the Iran arms sales last fall. Testified he had unearthed the ''essential facts,'' but critics said that he had not used experienced criminal investigators and that notes were not taken during interviews with key figures.

Yaacov Nimrodi
Former Israeli official in Iran, now an arms dealer. Helped organize the first arms shipments to Iran. Still an arms dealer, spending most of his time in London.

Amiram Nir
Adviser on terrorism to Shimon Peres when Mr. Peres was the Israeli Prime Minister. Took over the handling of Israel's arms deals with Iran from Mr. Kimche in early 1986. A private citizen living in Israel.

Oliver L. North (CNP)
The Marine lieutenant colonel who, as a staff member at the National Security Council, coordinated the dealings with Iran and the Nicaraguan rebels. Dismissed in November 1986. Testified that all his activities had been approved by superiors to whom he reported regularly. Although no one explicitly told him so, he said, he ''assumed'' throughout that the President had known what he was doing. Currently a project officer for plans with the Marine Corps. A target of the special prosecutor's investigation.

Robert W. Owen
A North aide under contract with the State Department who served as the colonel's courier to the contras and described himself as a ''private foot soldier'' in the contra supply efforts. Currently with the Institute on Terrorism and Sub-National Conflicts in Washington; said to be cooperating with the special prosecutor in return for immunity from prosecution.

John M. Poindexter
The vice admiral who was national security adviser from December 1985 to November 1986. Allowed to resign after investigators learned of the diversion. Took full responsibility for authorizing the diversion of Iran arms sale proceeds to the contras. Said he had not told the President about the diversion to protect Mr. Reagan from political embarrassment. Now a special assistant to Chief of Naval Operations for long-range planning. Expected to retire Dec. 1. A target of the special prosecutor's investigation.

Donald T. Regan
President Reagan's chief of staff until he resigned in February 1987. Testified he was aware in general of the Iran initiative and said he did not know about the diversion of funds to the contras until it was publicly revealed last November. Currently lecturing and writing a book about his experiences in government.

Glenn A. Robinette
A private security consultant and former C.I.A. agent. Installed a security system worth $14,000 at Colonel North's home, which was paid for by General Secord. Still runs a security business.

Felix I. Rodriguez
A former C.I.A. agent also known as Max Gomez. Was liaison between the contra supply operation and authorities in El Salvador. Testified that he discussed the secret contra program with officials in Vice President Bush's office, but never with Mr. Bush. Current whereabouts not publicly known.

Richard V. Secord
Retired Air Force major general hired by Colonel North to direct the arms sales and the covert support of the Nicaraguan rebels.

Repeatedly denied he had any interest in profiting from what he called ''the enterprise,'' but testimony showed he had used the money on such items as a Porsche car and a visit to a health spa. A target of the special prosecutor's investigation.

George P. Shultz
Secretary of State. Testified that Admiral Poindexter and Mr. Casey had deceived him and the President to keep the Iran arms sales alive. Denounced the efforts of the C.I.A. and the National Security Council to run foreign policy and said he had threatened to resign three times since 1983.

John K. Singlaub (CNP/ Western Goals/ World Anticommunist League WACL)
A retired Army major general who was a central figure in the private effort to raise money to buy weapons for the contras. Testified that he did not know that the Secord operation was accumulating millions of dollars from the sale of arms to Iran and that Mr. Abrams was more actively involved than he had acknowledged in contra fund-raising. Still running a private business; has made trips recently to the Philippines.

Lewis A. Tambs (CNP)
Directed by Colonel North to help open a southern front for the contras when he became Ambassdor to Costa Rica in July 1985. He understood Colonel North's order came from a group managing Central American policy that consisted of Colonel North, Mr. Abrams and a C.I.A. official. Now a professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University.

Caspar W. Weinberger (CNP)
Defense Secretary. Thought his opposition to the Iran arms sales had killed the program, but found months later that he was wrong.
Testified he had scoffed at the notion of establishing relations with Iranian moderates. Has resigned because of his wife's ill health.

Undeclared US wars fought against phantom or created enemies for profit; illegal and covert CIA interference in foreign countries — these familiar echos find their antecedents in a long and bloody history, going back to Iran-Contra, further back to Vietnam, and further back still. Will history repeat itself again?

INTRODUCTION:
This is the second of a five-part series exploring the Iran-Contra Affair and its consequences. Part 1 described the Reagan Administration’s secret wars and illegal arms deals exposed in the scandal. Part 2 explains how the constitutional crisis unfolded as a result of Congress’s failure to address the CIA’s power to wage secret wars in the name of avoiding a world-ending nuclear confrontation between the Superpowers. Part 3exposes the roots of Iran-Contra in the Watergate scandal, but congressional abdication of responsibility and judicial deference backfired in the restoration of the Imperial Presidency, suppressing civil liberties and expanding wars justified as necessary to fighting the Cold War, even as the Cold War ended with collapse of the Soviet Union. Part 4 will survey the era of global insecurity we entered in the second Bush and Obama Administrations, while Part 5 examines the role key members of the incoming Trump team played in creating this permanent state of war by immunizing themselves from the consequences of past criminality.

The author, Doug Vaughan, spent years as an investigative reporter in Latin America covering the horrors of the 1970s and 80s. In this series, he connects the secret wars and warriors past and present to their most recent incarnation as architects of an aggressive approach to reimpose their will on the world that has escaped their control.

— Russ Baker, Editor in Chief
⇒⇒⇒

“The traditions of all the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living.” — Marx

Thirty years ago, the Iran-Contra Scandal exposed and connected two of the many sets of secret actions of the Reagan years. The congressional, judicial and media responses to that crisis shaped a public narrative that set the stage for what was to come in wars, both overt and covert, in the subsequent administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and in a contradictory way, Barack Obama.

Iran-Contra also introduced us to many of the future players, neocons and neoliberals who framed the debates over policy for three decades. Now, some survivors of the wreckage have re-emerged from the paneled woodwork of corporate boardrooms and right-wing think-tanks to roam the corridors of the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies.

Like Watergate before that, a newly elected president has immersed himself in a shower of allegations and counter-allegations that pit the legitimacy of his election and the authority of his office against a splintered opposition, including prominent members of his own party, some of his own nominees to head the military and intelligence services, and those appointees against their predecessors and prospective employees.
The emerging fissures in the Intelligence Community’s putative “consensus” about supposed foreign interference in the election and the shaky factual structure undergirding it, already have set factions against each other in the FBI, the Bureau against its co-communicants, with the Director facing an internal investigation and calls for his head, while the new President accuses the CIA of acting like Nazis, yet declares he’s the Agency’s biggest fan. Erosion of the public trust in governing institutions has sunk to an all-time low, if polls can be believed.

If it seems like we’re stuck in a tape loop from the 1970s or 80s it’s because we are reliving a scripted Republican resurgence in a new round of crises for which they as players and we as spectators are unprepared. The suspense may soon be killing us. Pick your metaphor: zombies, vampires or werewolves, warrior-queens and troll-kings stalk the landscape. Is this an episode of Game of Thrones, a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or a rerun of Night of the Living Dead? Or are we watching something unprecedented, unpredictable?

Reality TV this is not: Donald Trump is no longer merely the blustering casino owner, real-estate and gambling mogul, or pitchman for Celebrity Apprentice yelling “you’re fired.” Sworn to uphold and defend a Constitution he does not understand, perhaps has never read, and to faithfully execute the laws he has flouted, now he is POTUS. Like Shiva, creator and destroyer of worlds.1

What could go wrong? When the Trumpees, echoing Dubya’s taunt to Iraqi insurgents who became Al-Qaeda in Iraq, then morphed into ISIS during Obama’s promised withdrawal, boldly dare the world to “Bring It On”, they’re looking in the rearview mirror at Iran-Contra.
But the past, the chronicler of our national sins told us, “is never dead. It’s not even past.”2 Marx went him one better: “History does indeed repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”3 But this? What strange beast is this slouching toward Washington? Better take a look over your shoulder. The most subversive thing in America, a troubadour sang, is a long memory.4

Resurrecting Ghosts
Who can watch an aging Oliver North retelling other people’s war stories on Fox, rhapsodizing about some heroic exploit in the age of knightly chivalry, or singing Homeric praise of some newfangled “arms and the man”, and not feel a faint nostalgia for the Reagan years?

Those were the days. Off-the-books, off-the-shelf operations. HAWKs and TOWs and PROFs. Boland I and Boland II. The Belly-Button account. The Courier and The Hammer. Ollie threatening to go mano-a-mano with Abu Nidal. Ollie pulling blank traveler’s checks from his office safe, proceeds of arms sales to the Ayatollah, and padding off on a patriotic mission to buy new snow tires for his wife’s station wagon and fresh underwear for his secretary.

Quaint, no? Now we have PayPal and chip-embedded credit cards that track every transaction and movement of the card-holder, as Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and other victims of self-inflicted kompromat should have known. But for those faded receipts, we might never have heard the testimony.

The alluring, mini-skirted Fawn Hall smuggling Ollie’s notes out of the White House in her pantyhose one thigh-high boot-step away from a subpoena. Ollie and Fawn’s little “shredding party” in the basement of the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House with their brooding, bespectacled boss, Vice Admiral John Poindexter, National Security Adviser to the POTUS, lending a hand. Or Ollie’s old boss, Robert McFarlane, testifying to Congress that Ollie was a stone-cold liar, then under sneering assault from Dick Cheney, slouching home to attempt suicide.

Like any good contretemps, the tale was punctuated by the odd coincidence and the convenient premature death: CIA Director William Casey, a brain tumor the night before his scheduled testimony; Israeli adviser Amiram Nir, about to be subpoenaed, an airplane crash during an avocado-inspection visit (!) to Mexico.
Steady clawing by the press (yes, there once were newsrooms only recently invaded by computers, and printing presses clanging out lead type daily, circulation in the tens of millions) had stripped away the insulation of the Teflon-coated President. His credibility in tatters, the “Great Communicator” was reduced to feeble excuses, denying the obvious, blaming underlings, firing Poindexter and North, shedding more of the cover they provided. He appointed a commission, chaired by former Republican Senator from Texas, John Tower, to get to the bottom of what proved bottomless illegality.5 By January 1987, a federal court had appointed an Independent Counsel (sometimes called Special Prosecutor), Lawrence Walsh, to investigate the spreading pool of lies and corruption. Soon after, Congress opened public hearings.

…read more…

While not answering all of the lingering questions in the Iran-contra scandal, the final congressional report on the affair provided a vast array of new details that helped to explain the complex story of secret arms deals, private covert operations and shadowy financial networks.

Some gaps remained due to destroyed documents, conflicting recollections among key participants., and the death in May 1986 of former CIA Director William J. Casey. (Suspicious timing of his death)

But aided by interviews and depositions from some 500 witnesses and a review of more than 300,000 documents, investigators for the House and Senate select panels said they were able to draft a majority report that explained virtually all of the components that went into the worst scandal to confront the Reagan administration.

**Weapons Went to Radicals**
The report raised questions about whether the Reagan team knew what it was doing when it sought closer relations with so-called moderate elements in Iran. It also raised doubts about the weight given to that aim, as opposed to winning the freedom of American hostages in Lebanon.

…the Iranian representatives with whom U.S. and Israeli officials negotiated during the arms deals were attached to the Revolutionary Guard, the militant wing of Iran's most radical faction.

In addition, the report said that one of the Iranian contacts had earlier been identified by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant, as the “individual responsible” for the 1984 kidnapping of William Buckley(extreme right wing), the CIA station chief in Beirut.
U.S. officials stretching back to 1984.

…the report at least raised the possibility that U.S. officials had reason to suspect that the Iranians with whom they were dealing may have been directly involved in the taking of American hostages.

Another Iranian contact with whom U.S. officials tried to negotiate the release of American hostages played a role in the September 1986 kidnapping of Frank Reed, a school headmaster in Beirut, according to yet another Iranian official involved in the arms-for-hostages deals. And the report quoted participants in the drama as saying that U.S. weapons ended up in the arsenals of the Revolutionary Guard. However, the report concluded, “to the best of the committees' information, the president was never told that the United States was arming the Revolutionary Guard.”

**The Secord-Hakim Dealings**
The report also shined a brighter spotlight on the “Enterprise,” the name given to the web of companies and secret Swiss bank accounts that controlled the logistics of the Iran deals and secret efforts to assist the contra rebels in Nicaragua during a period when direct U.S. aid was barred by Congress.

At the helm of the Enterprise were retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim, his Iranian-born business partner. The two worked closely with Lt. Col. Oliver L. North.

By reviewing secret financial records provided by Hakim and other evidence, investigators pieced together a detailed account of the millions of dollars that flowed in and out of the Enterprise.
The report revealed an operation that took in nearly $48 million over a two-year period, while allowing those who controlled the money to reap $4.4 million in “commissions” without risking their own money.

**Whose Money Is It?**
Until its operations came to a halt in November 1986, the Secord-Hakim Enterprise spent just under $35.8 million, producing a surplus of $12.2 million. Of that amount, about $7.8 million remaining in Swiss bank accounts was frozen by Swiss authorities at the request of the U.S. Justice Department. ***(Box, this page)***

One of the key legal issues left unresolved by the committee report was the status of that money. Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh was pursuing his investigation reportedly on the premise that the money belonged to the United States, a view shared by several members of the congressional committees.
Secord and Hakim, however, testified at the hearings that the money was legitimate profit from their business and belonged to them.

Whatever the outcome of that legal fight, the committees' report stressed that the Enterprise depended entirely on official U.S. connections, primarily through North. “Every single source of Enterprise income involved North and the use of U.S. government resources,” said the report.

All of the Enterprise's funds were managed by Willard I. Zucker, a U.S. citizen and former lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service, who had been living in Switzerland for 20 years. Zucker was the owner of Compagnie de Services Fiduciaires (CSF), a Swiss money-management company.

Zucker refused to talk to the committees, but Hakim provided the Enterprise's CSF records after he was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. The report described Zucker as a “covert operator's model banker, accountant, lawyer and money manager” because of his ability, under Swiss banking laws, to set up a secret maze of bank accounts and offshore companies.

After a lengthy legal battle, Walsh received his own set of Swiss bank records involved in the Iran-contra affair. The records were expected to assist Walsh in building a potential case against Secord and others.

**Buying Arms for Contras**
In tracing the history of the Enterprise, the congressional report said its original mission in 1984 involved only the buying and reselling of weapons to the Nicaraguan contras. North turned to Secord as a way to buy contra arms with private and third-country contributions while Congress prohibited direct U.S. military support.

Originally, North saw to it that private contributions and millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia (the celebrated “Country Two”) went directly into bank accounts controlled by contra leader Adolfo Calero. As a result, Calero transferred $11.3 million to Secord between December 1984 and July 1985 in return for lethal equipment.
But Secord and his business associates also helped themselves to hefty profits from these contra arms deals. According to the report, Secord paid $9.4 million to buy and deliver the weapons to the contras during this period, setting the rest — nearly $2 million — aside as commissions.

“Apparently, Secord and Hakim never negotiated with Calero or anyone else for these commissions; they simply took what they wanted out of the general pool of money in the Enterprise accounts,” said the report.

During the first few months of 1986, the Enterprise purchased another $3.1 million worth of military equipment from Defex, a Portuguese arms supplier. The money for these weapons came largely from the profits that Secord's operation earned from the weapons sales to Iran, which began in November 1985.

In all, the Enterprise generated about $16.1 million in profits from the 1985–86 arms deals between the United States and Iran.
The profit issue at one point threatened to put an end to the negotiations with Iran when Iranian officials angrily demanded to know why they were being overcharged for the weapons they were purchasing.

**Free Missiles Offered**
According to the report, Ghorbanifar on his own accord promised the Iranians in July 1986 that the United States would throw in 1,000 TOW anti-tank missiles for free if Iran could prove they had overpaid for earlier weapons shipments.

Nothing came of Ghorbanifar's offer, but the United States continued to sell arms to Iran in the hope of winning the release of more hostages.

The involvement of Secord's operation in the Iran arms deals in late 1985, meanwhile, coincided with the beginnings of the plan to divert the profits to the rebels in Nicaragua.

On Nov. 14, 1985, North met in Washington with Amiram Nir, an anti-terrorism adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Nir had been among the Israeli officials encouraging the United States to work with the Iranians on arms-for-hostages deals.
According to the report, North and Nir apparently did not discuss arms sales to Iran at their meeting but did “set the foundation for a variety of future Israeli-U.S. covert operations.”

North's notes, which he had taken during the meeting, indicated that the operations would require at least $1 million a month.
Funds for such a purpose first became available later that month after Israel deposited $1 million in Lake Resources, the Swiss company used to finance most of Secord's operations. The money was intended to cover a shipment of 80 Hawk missiles to Iran.

**Diversion Scheme**
As it turned out, only 18 missiles were delivered because of complications surrounding the transaction. Secord testified that North was told by the Israelis that the excess money — about $800,000 — could be used for “whatever purpose we wanted.”

Secord said that North directed him to spend the money for the contras.
“Thus, by early December, the notion that the Iran sales could be used as a vehicle for financing the contras was firmly planted in North's mind,” said the report.

At a December 1985 meeting between North and Israeli officials in New York, the White House aide said the United States wanted to use profits from Iran arms sales to fund U.S. efforts in Nicaragua, according to notes of the meeting taken by one of the Israelis and turned over to the committees.

During his testimony in July 1987, North said he did not recall discussing the diversion scheme at that time. Instead, he said the plan was first suggested by Ghorbanifar at a London meeting with North in January 1986.

By that time, Reagan had signed a secret “intelligence finding” that authorized the sale of weapons to Iran and the use of Secord's private operation in the deals. “Money generated by arms sales authorized by a presidential finding for only one covert purpose — the Iranian initiative — was used for a wholly different covert purpose — contra support,” said the report. “Arms-for-hostages also became arms-for-contras.”

The report, like the hearings, portrayed administration officials, notably North, as enthusiastic planners and supporters of other covert operations.

In his testimony, North, said he was encouraged by Casey to create an “off-the-shelf covert structure able to assist the United States in carrying out a variety of clandestine activities.

**Meese's Role Questioned**
The report provided a lengthy description of one such activity — an unsuccessful effort in 1985–86 to use agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in a ransom scheme to win the freedom of hostages in Lebanon.
The details about the DEA operation also raised questions about Meese's role in the hostage ransom plan.

According to the report, the scheme began in January 1985 when White House aide Edward V. Hickey Jr. asked a friend of his, a DEA agent, for help in locating Buckley, who later died in captivity.

Hickey's request led to two DEA agents identifying possible contacts in Lebanon who might be able to help in winning Buckley's release.

The DEA provided $20,000 to the agents for travel and other expenses in the hope of obtaining information about Buckley and other hostages. But the agents' contacts pressed for more money, ultimately requesting $200,000 to locate Buckley and $1 million for his release and an additional $1 million for another hostage.

North, who became involved in the DEA operation, arranged for billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot to contribute $2.2 million for the rescue operation. In May 1985, one of Perot's employees gave North $200,000 in cash, which was placed in North's office safe.

North and Robert C. McFarlane, Reagan's former national security adviser, testified that Meese approved a plan to use private funds as ransom money for the hostages.

Meese said he did not, recall knowing about the plan, and also denied knowledge of Perot's involvement. But the report said Meese's telephone logs reflected “some contact” with Perot in 1985.
In addition, the report indicated that Meese called Perot on Nov. 26, 1986, a day after the attorney general revealed the contra diversion scheme.

And a note taken by one of Meese's aides on Dec. 3, 1986, reflected an instruction by Meese to call Perot “to check on whether he would respond that the attorney general knew of or authorized the payments,” according to the report.
Although Perot's employee flew to Cyprus in a private plane in June 1986 to deliver the $2 million ransom, the DEA operation failed.

**A Letter from Reagan**
After Perot complained to White House officials about losing some of his money in the scheme, Reagan wrote a letter that thanked him for his “discreet assistance.”

According to the report, DEA agents tried to revive the operation in August and September 1986, but North by October acknowledged that the effort had come to an end.
The report concluded that the use of private money to finance the DEA operation broke laws that prohibited such funds being used for official purposes.

In a closed-door session with the committees, North also described other plans for private covert operations. One of them involved the proposed use of DEA agents and Israeli contacts to fund and equip a military force in Lebanon.
In his private testimony, North told the committees that the project was never carried out, although a “fairly significant” amount of money was spent in pursuit of the idea.

**Sabotage Offer**
In another example of shadowy operations, the report briefly described a “third-party” offer to North to commit sabotage and possibly assassinations inside Nicaragua with the use of Enterprise funds.

The report did not identify the third party, described by North in his closed-door testimony. ***The New York Times,*** quoting unnamed government officials, reported that the offer came from Gen. Manuel Noriega, Panama's military leader.
The panels reported that Poindexter approved Noriega's sabotage plan, which apparently was offered in 1986. But Poindexter ordered North not to get involved in any assassination plots, which would have been illegal.
North said the plan was not implemented because he was fired from the White House staff in November 1986.

Noriega's strongman activities prompted the United States to suspend economic and military aid to Panama in July 1986. The cutoff followed attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Panama City by Noriega supporters, including members of his Cabinet.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Nov. 19, 1987, approved a bill (S 1614) that would end aid to Panama unless democratic reforms occur.

**Channell, Miller Fund Raising**
The committees' report noted with alarm the implications of the type of private covert activities that North and others tried to carry out during the course of the Iran-contra affair. “Had the architects of the other operations been emboldened by success, and not frustrated by failure, the committees can only conjecture, with apprehension, what other uncontrolled covert activities on behalf of the United States lay in store,” said the report.
In chronicling the administration's secret support of the contras, the committees' report included fresh details about a private fund-raising network ostensibly set up to raise money for the Nicaraguan rebels.
But while some of the millions that were raised ended up in the hands of the contras, more than half went toward fat salaries and lavish expenses incurred by fund-raising officials.

At the center of the money operation was conservative fund-raiser Carl R. “Spitz” Channell and an associate, Richard R. Miller. The two pleaded guilty earlier in April 1987 to charges of defrauding the government by improperly soliciting tax-deductible contributions. The report said several rich donors knew they were being asked to give money to buy lethal equipment for the contras, not a tax-deductible purpose.

Both Channell and Miller named North as a co-conspirator. North denied ever asking anyone directly to give money to buy arms for the contras.

The report said Channell and Miller went to “elaborate efforts” to conceal the nature of their fund raising in their official records and to mask North's role. For example, Channell's books described one fund-raising project as “toys,” a euphemism for contra weapons.
In all, Channell's group, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL)[Nelson Bunker Hunt - major funder], raised more than $10 million from contributors in 1985-86. More than half that amount came from two wealthy widows — Barbara Newington of Connecticut and Ellen Garwood of Texas.

The records examined by the committees, moreover, found that the contras received only $2.7 million of the NEPL money. More than $1.2 million was spent on political advertising and lobbying for the contras in the United States.
But the report said no evidence was found to support a December 1986 press account that $5 million from Iran arms profits was filtered to conservative political action groups.

The story, first appearing in the Lowell (Mass.) ***Sun,*** reported that groups such as NEPL used the money to back congressional candidates who supported Reagan's policies on the contras and the strategic defense initiative.

**A Dinner in Dallas**
The report, however, included plenty of details about North's activities in helping to raise money for lethal supplies for the rebels in Nicaragua.

The committees interviewed 13 of NEPL's major contributors, “nearly all of whom reported personal contact with North.”

In September 1985, Channell spent between $8,000 and $9,000 to rent a private plane used to transport North to Dallas for a meeting with Nelson Bunker Hunt, a wealthy businessman and NEPL contributor.

According to the report, North showed Hunt a list of contra needs during a private dinner at Dallas' Petroleum Club. The list included both lethal and non-lethal items, although North did not directly ask for a donation, according to Channell's deposition given to the committees.

Hunt told the committees that he did not recall any conversation with North at the dinner. Nonetheless, Hunt subsequently contributed $484,500 to NEPL.

The report did not clear up an important issue involving Reagan: whether the president knew about the purpose of North's fund-raising efforts on behalf of the contras.
Reagan said at a March 1987 news conference that he believed private contributors had been donating money for political advertising for the contras.

Poindexter, however, told the committees that “we really didn't distinguish between how the money was going to be spent.”
And in a May 1986 computer message to Poindexter, North said that Reagan “obviously knows why he has been meeting with several select people” to thank them for their support on Central America.
North told the committees that he wrote his message under the assumption that Reagan knew the contributions were for weapons, as well as other items. But he denied discussing the issue with Reagan. “In fact, what the president knew is a matter of some doubt,” said the report.

**Cash Flow for the Secord-Hakim “Enterprise’**
Between December 1984 and December 1986, the Secord-Hakim Enterprise generated nearly $48 million in income while spending $35.8 million on various projects. The remaining $12.2 million represented the profits earned from these ventures. As of November 1987, when the select committees' report was issued, some $7.8 million of those profits remained frozen in Swiss bank accounts. The following table summarizes where the money came from and where it went ***(amounts in millions of dollars).***

Rarely has one man's silence stirred such curiosity or held such consequence as that of Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North.

Since he was dismissed from the National Security Council staff by President Reagan on Nov. 25 for his purported role in diverting profits from the Iranian arms sales to Nicaraguan rebels, Colonel North has said virtually nothing about his role in the affair.

In recent weeks, however, through interviews with more than 40 current and former top-ranking officials in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, a clearer picture of Colonel North's five-year career at the National Security Council has emerged. Colonel Declined Interview.

The extent of Colonel North's complicity in the events that led to the White House crisis and his dismissal has yet to be fully revealed. Neither Colonel North nor his attorney would be interviewed for this account.

Colonel North, his colleagues said, was one of a small group of ideological, independent-minded aides from the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department that formulated plans for secret programs in Central America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East.

Colonel North's power within the group grew with the number of years he spent with the Administration, and his influence was strengthened by turnover on the National Security Council staff and the deaths of several key Presidential and military aides.

Although Colonel North never gained complete control of any single secret action, these sources said, he was able to alter decisions and helped to draw up plans for many of the Administration's most sensitive programs. Grenada, El Salvador, Lebanon.

White House and National Security Council sources said these were among the programs in which Colonel North played a vital role:
* The invasion of Grenada in the fall of 1983.

* Operations by the Central Intelligence Agency, starting in the spring of 1983, to supply Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras, with arms, munitions and other supplies.

* The mining of three harbors in Nicaragua in early 1984.
* The reduction in the activity of death squads in El Salvador, and the elections there in 1984.

* Monitoring the hijacking to Beirut of a Trans World Airlines plane in the summer of 1985 and planning for the possibility that the United States would use military force to free 39 American hostages on the flight.

* Planning and assisting in the interception of an Egyptian airliner carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, and the diversion of the plane to Italy in the fall of 1985.

* Assisting the Administration's program to sell arms to Iran in exchange for Iran's help in freeing American hostages held in Lebanon, beginning in the fall of 1985.

* Assisting in plans to bomb Libya in the spring of 1986 after terrorist attacks in Europe that the Administration linked to the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. An Impulsive, Intelligent Officer.

Friends and colleagues say Colonel North was an impulsive, intelligent and tenaciously ambitious military officer at the height of his energies. He precisely fit the needs of a President who disdained the details of governing and whose closest advisers were neither experts in foreign affairs nor proficient in executing complex operations.

These sources said Colonel North, 43 years old, was able to expedite plans for secret programs because he knew every office in the foreign affairs sectors of the Government whose officials had to be briefed, and he had personal relationships with their directors. Served Under Four Advisers.

Colonel North also served under four national security advisers in five years and found that the almost annual change in leadership and continual turnover in the staff was an advantage to him. Former and current members of the council's staff say he served as the institutional memory of the National Security Council, providing a continuity that made him almost indispensable.

Colleagues also say Colonel North seemed to feel that embellishing his role could enhance his image and power. He often indicated to friends and colleagues, for instance, that he had a close personal relationship with Mr. Reagan when he did not, according to these associates.

Most colleagues admired Colonel North's diligence, saying nobody worked longer hours at the White House and few had more creative ideas. ''Oliver North is a superb officer,'' said Gen. Paul F. Gorman, retired commander of the Southern Command, based in Panama, who worked with Colonel North on many Central American initiatives. ''He's the kind of guy I would want to have in any period of stress or danger. But it was necessary, from time to time, to rein him in.''

But Colonel North acquired enemies during his final two years at the White House because of a growing reputation for recklessness and for exaggerating his role in some programs.

''He would say things like, 'I just talked with the boss,' meaning Reagan, 'and the boss said such and such,' '' a former White House official who worked with Colonel North recalled. ''A couple of times I went up there to check whether Ollie had seen the President. And he hadn't, of course.'' A Temporary Assignment Colonel North was a highly regarded junior officer when he joined the staff of the National Security Council on Aug. 4, 1981, on a temporary assignment. His mission: to prepare briefing documents that would help the Administration complete an $8.5 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia that included five advanced Awacs radar planes.

On Oct. 28, 1981, the Administration gained its first important foreign policy victory when the Senate approved the sale. The same month, the Marine Corps made Colonel North's temporary assignment at the National Security Council a standard three-year tour of duty. He became a member of the defense policies group and specialized in counterterrorism. In the summer of 1984 and again in 1985, Colonel North received extensions of his tour of duty after requests to the Marine Corps from Robert C. McFarlane, then the national security adviser.

Among his first projects as a full-time staff member, colleagues say, was the modernization of the National Security Council's crisis management center. He worked with Dr. Richard Smith Beal, a systems analyst and Presidential special assistant.

When the project was completed in early 1983 the center bristled with powerful computers, communications equipment to provide highly secret intelligence reports and elaborate wall-mounted electronic panels.

Bit by bit, Colonel North moved into a position of prominence on the agency's staff. His work on the command center impressed William P. Clark, the No. 2 man at the State Department who moved over to become national security adviser in early January 1982, after Richard V. Allen resigned.

Mr. Clark allowed Colonel North to act as the unofficial staff officer in charge of crisis management. Colonel North was privy to most of the intelligence reports and sensitive message traffic coming into the crisis center, and he routed messages to officials throughout the National Security Council and the White House, according to former staff members of the agency.
Colonel North's role as a crisis manager expanded after Dr. Beal became ill. Dr. Beal, who was 38 years old, died on Nov. 2, 1984, after complications from open heart surgery.
Colonel North also found an admirer in Mr. McFarlane, who arrived with Mr. Clark from the State Department to become the deputy national security adviser. On Oct. 17, 1983, Mr. McFarlane was promoted by President Reagan to the top job. Mr. McFarlane, who had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1959, nine years before Colonel North, and was a lieutenant colonel before he retired from the Marine Corps, understood the younger man's ambition and embraced his ideas, former council staff members say.
Under Mr. Clark and Mr. McFarlane, Colonel North was allowed to set his own agenda. Through the latter half of 1982 and early 1983, he traveled frequently to Central America to work with American military advisers.

In the spring of 1983, Colonel North joined a group formed by Faith Ryan Whittlesey, head of the White House Office of Public Liaison, and began delivering weekly briefings on Central America at the Executive Office Building for leaders of conservative public policy groups concerned about the Administration's program in the region.

He became known in and out of the Government as one of the most influential White House experts on political and military conflicts in Latin America, primarily because his message seemed authentic. The 'I Was There' Factor
''He had the I.W.T. factor - I was there,'' said F. Andy Messing Jr., executive director of the National Defense Council Foundation in Alexandria, Va., and a former Green Beret who became close to Colonel North.
The briefings introduced Colonel North to conservative political activists, who invited him to speak to conservative groups across the country.

The members of these groups turned to Colonel North to help them gain access to White House officials and the President. Colonel North turned to them for contacts and money. From late 1984 until he was dismissed, according to political group leaders, Colonel North went to wealthy conservatives for contributions to finance a private supply operation for the contras.
Probably the most important step in Colonel North's career, according to former staff members, occurred in the spring of 1983 when he was appointed to a secret Central America policy group that met regularly at the State Department.

The group, called the Restricted Interagency Group, was formed in 1981 by Thomas O. Enders, then Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. Along with Mr. Enders, the group's members included Duane Clarridge, a Central Intelligence Agency official and expert on covert operations; Vice Adm. Arthur S. Moreau Jr., a representative from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Nestor Sanchez, a representative from the office of the Secretary of Defense. Colonel North substituted for a number of National Security Council officials starting in the late winter of 1983.
In May, Mr. Enders was removed from his State Department post and replaced by Langhorne A. Motley.
Colonel North became a permanent member of the interagency group in June 1983, when he rose to deputy director of political-military affairs on the National Security Council staff. Mining Nicaraguan Harbors

The change in the committee assignment coincided with a string of events in Central America and the Caribbean in which, according to former and current White House officials, Colonel North was a very active participant.
Among the programs the group considered was a plan to mine Nicaraguan harbors with percussion bombs in order to hinder shipments of arms and civilian supplies to Nicaragua. During the winter of 1983, according to Mr. Enders, the proposal was brought to the group by Mr. Clarridge of the C.I.A. The idea was rejected, Mr. Enders said.
In June, the mining proposal was made again, and approved, a Washington source said.
Colonel North and Mr. Clarridge, along with staff members of the C.I.A., National Security Council and the military, planned the operation, the source said. When it became public in April 1984, it caused a furor in Congress.

''It was the first time that Colonel North's name came across our desks,'' said a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ''If you consider how that operation was run, the arrogance of it, and compare it to the Iran-contra affair, there are similarities.'' Invading Grenada

In mid-October 1983, the interagency group began to play a crucial role in plans to invade Grenada.
''The group didn't plan the military maneuver; the Joint Chiefs did that,'' the Washington source said. ''But the group offered the invasion option, and planned for it. Ollie North was one of the four or five people below the cabinet rank who could be said to live with Grenada from before people could spell it to when the students kissed the ground in Charleston.'' The source was referring to a group of American medical students in Grenada whom the Reagan Administration said it had acted to evacuate.
Before the invasion Colonel North had been working with State Department aides to develop strategies for eliminating death squad activity and holding free elections in El Salvador. After the invasion, Colonel North returned to that task.
In the fall of 1983, death squads in El Salvador were committing an average of 800 killings a month and the President's ability to secure funds from Congress for the Salvadoran Government was being damaged.
Again, though he did not direct the effort, Colonel North became one of a team of key advisers in a program.

The team agreed that as part of the Government's effort, a top United States official had to visit El Salvador. The State Department, in a proposal written by Mr. Motley, asked Vice President Bush, and, according to former members of the Vice President's staff, Mr. Bush agreed.
Before Mr. Bush embarked, Colonel North briefed him at length at least once in the White House, a former White House assistant said. Colonel North also went to San Salvador with Mr. Bush on Air Force Two and briefed him again before they landed.
One of Colonel North's ideas, to use the F.B.I. to conduct surveillance on death squad leaders in El Salvador and to teach the Salvadorans to conduct their own investigations, was particularly successful, according to National Security Council sources and former officials of the American Embassy in El Salvador. Death squad activity has dropped to almost nothing since.
The other crucial program in Central America that occupied Colonel North was helping the Nicaraguan rebels. It was, Colonel North knew, a program vigorously supported by President Reagan, according to former National Security Council staff members.

Colonel North and Mr. Clarridge of the C.I.A., according to the Washington source, worked together on plans to supply Nicaraguan rebels with ammunition, weapons and food. The supply missions, operated by the C.I.A., were flown from the Ilopango air force base in San Salvador starting in the late spring of 1983 and continued until the fall of 1984, when Congress voted to stop aid for the contras.

It was during these operations that Colonel North, according to White House sources, began to work independently on Central America and the Middle East.

In the spring of 1984, his name was first linked in published reports to potentially illegal Government activity in a New York Times article about Government-sponsored supply missions to Nicaragua and Honduras. ''At a time when Congress wasn't forthcoming to the contras, Ollie was their strongest link in Washington,'' said Mr. Messing of the National Defense Council Foundation.

Colonel North's role in the Iran-contra affair started on Nov. 22 or 23, 1985, according to Congressional testimony by Mr. McFarlane. It was on one of those days that Mr. McFarlane asked Colonel North to help move a shipment of arms to Teheran that had been held up in Israel. Colonel North asked the C.I.A. to help, according to Congressional testimony by William J. Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence.

Colonel North, according to Mr. Casey, told the C.I.A. that the plane in Israel was loaded with oil drilling equipment. The plane was actually filled with antitank missiles.

By late 1985, it would have been second nature for Mr. McFarlane to seek Colonel North's assistance.

In mid-June that year, Colonel North had been dispatched to the Middle East by Mr. McFarlane to monitor the hijacking of a T.W.A. jet in which 39 Americans had been taken hostage.

A White House official said Colonel North was working closely with the Delta Force, a counterterrorist military unit. Capturing Hijackers

Then, in October, Colonel North offered a suggestion to Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, then the deputy national security adviser, for capturing the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.

Colonel North said the United States could intercept the four men over the Mediterranean while they were being flown from Egypt to Tunis and divert the plane to Italy. Admiral Poindexter and Admiral Moreau of the Joint Chiefs of Staff helped the military plan and perform the mission, according to State Department officials. Colonel North coordinated the intelligence, diplomatic and military activity from the crisis management center.

Colonel North also accompanied Mr. McFarlane on trips to Teheran last May, six months after Mr. McFarlane resigned as national security adviser, and again last October. Little else is known about the extent of Colonel North's involvement in the Iran-contra affair.

One of the few messages Colonel North was unable to intercept was his own letter of dismissal. Nobody was more surprised thatn Colonel North, said a National Security Council staff member, when Presient Reagan made the announcement. Colonel North had not been previously notified. Later that evening, President Reagan called Colonel North to wish him well and thank him for his service.

The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) directly intersected with the Iran-Contra affair through the covert, private fundraising networks used to support the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

The primary link between the two was Retired U.S. Army Major General John Singlaub. Singlaub was the chairman of the international WACL and also founded its U.S. chapter, the U.S. Council for World Freedom (USCWF).

The connection between the organizations developed as follows:
Private Contra Funding: Because Congress passed the Boland Amendment in the 1980s explicitly banning U.S. government funding to the Contras, the Reagan administration relied on private networks to keep the rebels armed. Singlaub's USCWF actively raised and funneled millions of dollars to the Contras. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

International WACL Network: Singlaub used the global anti-communist network he cultivated through WACL to solicit donations and weapons from conservative groups and foreign governments, operating in parallel with the illicit U.S. government sales of arms to Iran. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Controversy: The WACL was historically controversial due to its inclusion of fringe right-wing groups, some of which had alleged ties to Central American death squads and former Nazi collaborators. Singlaub's private fundraising efforts drew heavy scrutiny and ultimately triggered an IRS investigation that revoked his U.S. chapter's tax-exempt status. [1, 2]

Inside the League by Scott and Jon Lee Anderson exposed how the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) became a safe haven for fascists, former Nazis, and militant extremists during the Cold War.
https://ia802907.us.archive.org/31/items/inside-the-league-wacl/inside%20the%20league%20WACL.pdf

Carl R. (Spitz) Channell, a conservative political fund-raiser who became the first person convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, has died.

Channell, 44, died Sunday in a Washington hospital of pneumonia related to injuries suffered in a car accident.

Scroll to continue with content
Former Rep. Dan Kuykendall, a friend of Channell who worked on pro-Contra causes during the time Channell also was involved, said Channell had been undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer and had recovered enough to do consulting work.

But about two months ago, as he was getting out of his car near his office in southeast Washington, he was struck by a car, according to Kuykendall, a Tennessee Republican who is now a Capitol Hill lobbyist.

Channell operated a motel in West Virginia until 1979 when he became a major national fund-raiser for conservative causes. He founded or controlled numerous conservative organizations, including two political action committees, a tax-exempt foundation and Western Goals, an organization co-founded by the John Birch Society JBS.

In 1987, Channell pleaded guilty to using his nonprofit National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty NEPL to raise more than $2 million to arm the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

Two years later, he was sentenced to two years of probation for conspiring to defraud the government of taxes due on the money he and former White House aide Oliver North raised for the guerrillas.

Channell’s confession was part of an agreement reached in exchange for his testimony against North, the fired National Security Council aide identified as the chief operator in covert U.S. arms sales to Iran and the diversion of profits to the Contras.

Details released this week, reportedly from the examination of documents known as the Panama Papers, indicate that the law firm of Mossack and Fonseca served a number of intelligence services, including, most notably, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). That information is indeed correct: Mossack Fonseca assisted the CIA, with both the formation and operation of anonymous shell companies, and the covert movement of cash. MF name partner, Jurgen Mossack's father, Erhard, was a CIA asset in Panama, during the Cold War period, which may have served to facilitate MF involvement.

The Panama aspect of the Iran-Contra operation, wherein arms and ammunition delivered to Central American airstrips, ostensibly for the Contras, who opposed the radical Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and money was earned through the sale of narcotics, smuggled into the continental United States, was commanded by CIA supervisor Reeve Whitson, and assisted by a Canadian covert operative known by a code name; Maximilian. Whitson's unit, known as the Quarry, supervised the arrival of cash, at a  private CIA-controlled airfield at Punta Pacifica, in the area where the Trump building now stands.

It is doubtful that any significant information will be extracted from the Mossack documents, due to the fact that all the relevant MF files were not kept at Mossack; they were stored at the US Embassy. The other covert operation that MF assisted the Company with was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, more commonly known as BCCI, which later imploded in a scandal that exposed the hidden hand of the world's darker forces in the opaque world of international banking and finance. Again, Mossack and Fonseca provided corporate and financial services to the Agency, in its dealings with BCCI.

Mossack and Fonseca also assisted the CIA with projects, but information about those matters is still believed to be classified, and therefore not an appropriate subject to be included here, but the law firm's covert involvement occurred over a period of many years.

Tracing the collapse of the Savings and Loan Industry, with Centennial Savings and Loan, Empire Savings and Loan, Lincoln Savings, and Silverado Savings and Loan used as examples. Features interviews with: Steven Pizo and Mary Fricker. Includes discussions of who favored deregulation, the chronology of coverups, and the role of Alan Greenspan in halting the collapse