The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0103/01037.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 13KB | 220 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01037}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Chapter 9A   The Iran Arms Sales:  The Beginning}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{ghorbanifar
iran
iranian
cia
intelligence
israel
arms
ledeen
states
united}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter 9A   The Iran Arms Sales:  The Beginning

     In August 1985, the President decided that the United States would allow
arms sales to Iran.  The decision represented a reversal of U.S. policy
against selling arms to Iran and, as it later turned out, against making
concessions for the return of hostages.  Yet it was made so casually that it
was not written down, the President did not recall it 15 months later, and the
Secretaries of State and Defense were not even told of it at the time.

     The President's decision triggered a series of arms transactions with
Iran that continued for 15 months.  At the initial transaction, the Iranians
established a pattern of dealing that never changed:  Iran would agree to get
the hostages freed in return for arms; once the arms arrived, the Iranians
would demand still more weapons; only after another arms shipment would a
single hostage - not a group, as promised - be freed.  But, instead of
breaking off the transactions, the Americans continued to accede to the
Iranian demands.  What follows is the story of how the arms sales began.

The Actors Take Their Places

     Long before the President made his decision, the individuals and
circumstances that propelled the sales were at work in Washington, Jerusalem,
and Tehran.

     Since the fall of 1984, the National Security Council (NSC) staff had
been pressing other Government agencies to develop a plan for opening a
relationship with Iran and moderating that government's anti-American stance.
The State Department and the Defense Department opposed the notion, and while
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was favorably inclined, officials there
said renewed relations hinged on the release of seven U.S. hostages held by
the pro-Iranian Hizballah in Lebanon and on a pledge by Iran to stop terrorist
activities.

     In Jerusalem, officials were eager for better relations with Iran, for
two very pragmatic reasons: commercial and diplomatic.  Israel had friendly
relations with Iran under the Shah.  Despite revolutionary Iran's vow to
destroy Israel, the Israelis regarded Iraq as a greater threat to their
security than Iran.  Israel's goal was to create conditions for the resumption
of commercial and diplomatic relations with a post-Khomeini regime.

     Tehran had its own agenda.  Rhetoric notwithstanding - the United States
was considered "The Great Satan" and Israel a blasphemy - Tehran wanted modern
tanks and high-technology antitank and anti-aircraft missiles to counter
Iraq's Soviet-made fighter planes and modern tanks.  It needed spare parts to
maintain the arsenal of weapons that the Shah had purchased from the United
States.

     The unlikely catalyst for bringing these disparate parties together was
Manucher Ghorbanifar - a resourceful Iranian merchant living in Paris who
understood the intersection of interests and saw how the American hostages
could be used as an incentive for the sale of missiles to Iran.

Ghorbanifar

     Since fleeing Iran in 1979, Ghorbanifar had sought to make a career as a
broker through whom Western governments could develop contact with Iran. By
1984, Ghorbanifar was well known to U.S. intelligence services, and details of
his activities filled a thick file in the CIA's Operations Directorate.  The
CIA viewed Ghorbanifar with particular disfavor, but that did little to
discourage the Iranian from trying to interest U.S. intelligence agencies in
various schemes, all of which would financially benefit him.

     His CIA file describes Ghorbanifar as an Iranian businessman and
self-proclaimed "wheeler dealer" who, prior to the 1979 revolution, had been
the managing director of an Israeli-connected Iranian shipping company.
According to rumors, Ghorbanifar also was an informant for SAVAK, the Shah's
intelligence service, and had a relationship with Israeli intelligence; but
those relationships have never been confirmed.

     Ghorbanifar's business permitted him to travel outside Iran, and,
following the revolution, he chose Paris as his base of operations,
particularly after he and his brothers, Ali and Reza, were implicated in an
abortive July 9, 1980, coup attempt in Iran.  Ghorbanifar apparently developed
his own intelligence network and endeavored to sell his services to various
Western governments.  Ghorbanifar became a CIA reporting source in January
1980.  Described by the Agency as a "rumormonger of occasional usefulness,"
Ghorbanifar lasted as a source only until September 1981, when the Agency
decided he was concerned solely with advancing his financial interests.

     Information generated by Ghorbanifar continued to reach the CIA, however,
both directly and through other intelligence agencies.  In January 1984,
Ghorbanifar contacted U.S. Army Intelligence in West Germany with tales of
"Iranian terrorist organizations, plans, and activities."  In mid-March, a CIA
officer met with Ghorbanifar in Frankfurt to explore the data Ghorbanifar was
offering.  At that meeting, Ghorbanifar indicated he had information on the
kidnapping, in Beirut, of CIA Chief of Station William Buckley.  He identified
an Iranian official (the Second Iranian), who would play a key role in the
arms-for-hostages transactions a year later, as the "individual responsible"
for the kidnapping.  He also described an Iranian plot to assassinate U.S.
Presidential candidates.

     A CIA-administered polygraph examination of Ghorbanifar on this
information indicated he was lying.  Ghorbanifar gave no satisfactory
explanation for the results.  Undeterred, he again approached the CIA in June
1984, this time trying to broker a meeting between the U.S. Government and
another Iranian official (the First Iranian).  The First Iranian was also to
be a key player in the arms-for-hostages transactions of 1985 and 1986.
According to Ghorbanifar, the First Iranian was favorably disposed towards the
United States.

     Again, Ghorbanifar was polygraphed, and again, the examination indicated
he was lying.  This time, the CIA responded by publishing, on July 25, 1984, a
rarely issued "Fabricator Notice," warning Agency personnel and other U.S.
intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Ghorbanifar "should be regarded
as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance."

Ghorbanifar Proposes to Ransom the Hostages

     Ghorbanifar continued to seek a relationship with the U.S. Government.
His first chance came in November 1984 when he met Theodore Shackley, a former
Associate Deputy Director for Operations of the CIA who had retired from the
Agency in 1978.  On behalf of his "risk management" firm, Research Associates,
Inc., Shackley maintained contact with the former head of the Shah's SAVAK
Counterespionage Department VIII, General Manucher Hashemi.  At the suggestion
of Hashemi, Shackley traveled to Hamburg, West Germany, where he met with a
group of Iranians, including Ghorbanifar, the First Iranian and a Dr.
Shahabadi, chief of the Iranian purchasing office in Hamburg and purportedly a
friend of Saudi entrepreneur and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. At one meeting,
on November 20, Ghorbanifar told Shackley that for a price he could arrange
for the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon through his Iranian contacts.
Ghorbanifar said he required a response on the "ransom deal" by December 7.
Ghorbanifar added that he would not work with the CIA because the Agency was
"unreasonable and unprofessional."  Upon his return to the United States,
Shackley sent a memorandum about his meetings with Ghorbanifar to Lt. Gen.
Vernon Walters, Ambassador-at-Large in the State Department and a former
Deputy Director of the CIA.  Walters referred the memorandum to Hugh
Montgome