TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/092192/09219913.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 3.7 KB | 79 lines

                                                                                THE U.S. CAMPAIGN, Page 24

What Did Bush Know?


    Whenever George Bush is asked about his role in the
Iran-contra affair, his standard reply is that he has said all
there is to say. In fact, Bush has said little on the subject
-- and much of what he has said is not true. A newly released
memo by former Secretary of State George Shultz directly
disputes a key Bush claim: that he had no idea Shultz and former
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger had bitterly opposed arms
deals with Iran. "It's on the record," says the 1987 memo, which
recaps an angry telephone call Weinberger made to Shultz after
Bush told the Washington Post he had been in the dark about
this. "Why did he say that?" the Shultz memo asked. Last week
Bill Clinton challenged reporters to examine Bush's
truthfulness about Iran-contra as carefully as they had probed
Clinton's statements about the draft.

    Bush's fullest public account of his role appears in his
1987 autobiography, Looking Forward, in which he claims to have
been "excluded from key meetings" on the Iran operation. He
later told a TV interviewer that he would have opposed the deal
if he had known "what was going on." But the fact is that Bush
attended key meetings at which the Iran arms deal was discussed
and authorized. He was briefed by National Security Adviser John
Poindexter on the finding that authorized covert aid to Iran.
There was even discussion in the White House about sending Bush
to meet the Iranians personally.

    Bush also claims in Looking Forward that he didn't know
that Shultz and Weinberger "had serious doubts" about the Iran
deal; otherwise, he says, he might have opposed it. But here is
what Shultz told the Tower commission about the crucial January
1986 meeting at which he and Weinberger made their last stand
against the operation: "I expressed myself as forcefully as I
could . . . Everybody was well aware of my views." Bush, Reagan,
William Casey and Poindexter "all had one opinion, and I had a
different one," Shultz said.

    Bush has said he thought arms were being sold to Iranian
"moderates." But Amiram Nir, Israel's point man for the arms
sales, told him in July 1986 that the U.S. and Israel were
dealing with "the most radical elements" in Iran. Bush told the
Tower commission that he had discussed counterterrorism in
general terms with Nir but that there had been no talk about
arms sales to Iran. The commission later published a memo on the
Bush-Nir conversation, written by a Bush aide who was present,
showing that the Israeli had indeed given Bush a detailed
briefing on the Tehran arms deal.

    Though there is no evidence that Bush knew that proceeds
from the arms sales were being funneled to the contras, his
claim that he didn't know other U.S. funds and personnel were
being illegally used to support the contras is not plausible.
A key operative in this supply network, Felix Rodriguez, was
sent to Central America with the backing of Bush's office.
Documents released in the trial of Lieut. Colonel Oliver North,
moreover, show that the U.S. government offered Honduras
increased economic, military and covert support in exchange for
Honduran military aid to the contras. This quid-pro-quo
arrangement, whose existence Bush explicitly denied in 1989,
violated the congressional ban on indirect U.S. military
assistance to the rebels. Documents obtained by TIME show that
Reagan approved the deal and that a copy of the memo authorizing
it went to Bush. Bush "concurred" in the stepped-up CIA funding
that was part of the deal. And he personally gave the President
of Honduras the good news about U.S. aid.

    Reported by Jay Peterzell/Washington