Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0104/01043.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01043}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Chapter 11A  Clearing Hurdles:  The President Approves A New Plan}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{north
poindexter
december
arms
tows
hostages
iran
plan
armitage
israeli}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter 11A  Clearing Hurdles:  The President Approves A New Plan

     The difficulties with the November 1985 HAWK shipment and the failure to
secure the release of more hostages did not end the arms-to-Iran initiative.
Having already traveled down the path of bargaining for the hostages' lives,
the President and his NSC staff were reluctant to turn back.  North quickly
began to plan another arms deal, and the President signed the Finding that
Stanley Sporkin prepared immediately after the HAWK shipment.  North claimed
repeatedly in December that reversing course would cause the radical captors
to kill the hostages.

     North had another motivation for continuing the arms deals.  As he
explained to Israeli officials in early December, he wanted to divert profits
to benefit the Contras he was supporting in Nicaragua.

     In December 1985 and January 1986, the Secretaries of State and Defense
argued aggressively to the President against trying to trade arms for
hostages.  Among other things, they asserted that this initiative was illegal
and contrary to longstanding U.S. public policy against providing arms to
terrorist states and bargaining with terrorists.

     Secretary Weinberger and Secretary Shultz' arguments, together with a
first-hand assessment by McFarlane that the Iranian intermediary was the "most
despicable man" he had ever encountered, caused the initiative to lose
momentum in December.  However, in early January the Israelis approached
Poindexter - who had replaced McFarlane as National Security Adviser - with a
new plan that Poindexter and North quickly embraced.  The President decided to
go forward.  He signed an expanded Finding and directed that the covert
activity not be reported to Congress.

     Unlike the 1985 transactions, the President decided that the weapons for
Iran would now come directly from U.S. stocks.  The NSC staff took charge of
the initiative, relegating the Israelis to a secondary role. Secord was
designated as the agent of the U.S. Government in the future transactions.
This created the opportunity to generate profits on the arms sales that the
Enterprise could use for its other covert projects - including support of the
Contras.

The Players Change

     John Poindexter - soon to be elevated to National Security Adviser - and
Oliver North met on November 27, 1985, to devise a new plan.  Poindexter
directed North to have Richard Secord or Israeli official David Kimche deliver
a message to soothe the Iranians' feeling of having been cheated because the
HAWKs delivered three days earlier did not meet their expectation.  North and
Poindexter also discussed a "change of team" on the operation.  North's notes
of the meeting indicate that the United States was prepared to deliver 120
items (probably a new version of HAWKs) in exchange for all the hostages after
the first delivery and a commitment by Iran of no future terrorism.

     The change in team included removing Michael Ledeen, the NSC terrorism
consultant, as an intermediary.  When Ledeen gave Poindexter the message that
the Iranians felt cheated, Poindexter told him, "We're going to take you off
this thing for awhile because we need somebody with more technical expertise."
This was the last time Ledeen spoke to Poindexter on the Iran initiative,
"since from the time [Poindexter] became National Security Adviser, [Ledeen]
was unable to get an appointment with him."

     In late November, Secord, Iranian go-between Ghorbanifar, Kimche, and
Israeli arms dealers Al Schwimmer and Yaacov Nimrodi met in Paris. According
to notes North took when Secord briefed him on the meeting, Ghorbanifar was
"angry," apparently because the Iranians wanted "something to deal w[ith]
Soviet Recon[naisance]" - such as Phoenix or Harpoon missiles - rather than
the HAWKs that were delivered.  Ghorbanifar advanced a set of proposals that
"blatantly" called for the swapping of arms for hostages. The first proposal,
as later related to North by Secord, provided for a phased exchange of 3200
TOW missiles for hostages:

     600 TOWs = 1 release

     H + 6 hrs later = 2000 TOWs = 3 release

     H + 23 hrs = 600 TOWs = 1 release

     The other options were variations in which other armaments - such as
Maverick air-to-surface missiles, Dragon surface-to-surface missiles,
Improved-HAWK missiles, spares for F-4 air planes, ground artillery, and bombs
- would be substituted for some or all of the TOWs.  Ghorbanifar's proposal
also contemplated arms deliveries beyond the initial swap.  The Paris group
agreed to meet with U.S. representatives in London on December 6 to pursue
these proposals.

North Looks for Weapons

      During the first few days of December, North had separate meetings with
Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard L. Armitage and Israeli Ministry of
Defense officials.  The purpose of these sessions was to establish liaison
between the Pentagon and the Israelis and to identify methods of obtaining
weapons to ship to the Iranians or to replenish Israeli stocks following
Israeli shipments.  One of the Israeli officials met Armitage at the Pentagon
on December 2.  Armitage testified that he could not recall whether he met
with the official or what they discussed. Armitage testified that he warned
North of resistance to the plan within the Defense Department, noting that
Secretary Weinberger would be "appalled" if he knew North was dealing with
Iranians.  Nonetheless, after this meeting, Armitage asked Dr. Henry Gaffney,
Director of Plans, Defense Security Assistance Agency (DSAA), to prepare a
paper on I-HAWKs and I-TOWs and directed Glenn A. Rudd, Deputy Director of
DSAA, to prepare a paper on the legal methods for transferring TOW and HAWK
missiles to Iran.

     Rudd's two-page paper, entitled "Possibility for Leaks," discussed legal
methods of selling HAWKs and TOWs to Iran and outlined the inherent risks of
Congressional disclosure or discovery by the security assistance community.
Rudd concluded there was no way to transfer the weapons, whether directly to
Iran or through Israel to Iran, under the Arms Export Control Act without
notifying Congress; nor, he said, was there any way to prevent the security
assistance community of bureaucrats, diplomats, and arms manufacturers and
dealers from learning of the transfers.

     When he received Rudd's paper, Armitage instructed Rudd to treat the
matter as very confidential and destroy all drafts.  Armitage kept the sole
copy in his personal office safe.  When Armitage briefed Weinberger prior to a
December 7, 1985, meeting at the White House, they reviewed "all the arguments
that I [Armitage] had laid out, plus the legal arguments which I had mentioned
in passing, and that he had absorbed.  [Weinberger did not recall such
a meeting, but did not dispute that it had occurred.  Weinberger Test.,
Hearings, 100-10, at 97.  In any event, at the White House meeting on December
7, he was well-prepared to attack the plan on a variety of legal and policy
grounds.]

North Lays Out A Plan

     On December 4, North wrote a PROF message to Poindexter setting out the
current situation and proposing a new arms-for-hostages transaction.  He
described the "extraordinary distrust" the Iranians developed because
Schwimmer and Ledeen had promised that the missiles shipped in November could
fly high enough to stop Soviet reconnaissance flights.  He said, "None of us
[Kimche, Meron, Secord] have any illusions about the cast of characters we are
dealing with on the other side.  They are a primitive, unsophisticated group
who are extraordinarily distrustful of the West in general and the Israelis/
U.S. in particular."

     While acknowledging "a high degree of risk" in continuing the operation,
North emphasized, "we are now so far down the road that stopping what has been
started could have even more serious repercussions."  He exhorted Poindexter
to press on in a way that suggested the United States was already subject to
Iranian extortion:

If we do not at least make one more try at this point, we stand a good chance
of condemning some or all [of the hostages] to death and a renewed wave of
Islamic Jihad terrorism.  While the risks of proceeding are significant, the
risks of not trying one last time are even greater.

     North outlined the proposal slated for the upcoming meeting in London. He
said the "package" would comprise deliveries from Israel of "50 I HAWKs w/PIP
(product improvement package) and 3300 basic TOWs" and reported that the
Iranians had already deposited $41 million to pay for these items and that
this sum was "now under our control."  The schedule that North laid out made
plain that this would be an unadulterated swap of arms for hostages:

     H-hr:  1 707 w/300 TOWs = 1 Amcit

     H + 10hrs: 1 707 (same A/C) w/300 TOWs = 1 Amcit

     H + 16hrs:  1 747 w/50 HAWKs & 400 TOWS = 2 Amcits

     H + 20hrs: 1 707 w/300 TOWs = 1 Amcit

     H + 24hrs:  1 747 w/2000 TOWs = French Hostage

As it had been previously, the schedule was set up so that the Americans had
to deliver weapons before the Iranians would produce any hostages.

     North also reported to Poindexter that "replenishing Israeli stocks is
probably the most delicate issue."  He proposed that the Israelis purchase
replacements with cash, rather than with Foreign Military Sales credits.
However, he ignored the legal question about third-country transfers under the
Arms Export Control Act.  Lastly, North told Poindexter that besides
themselves, only National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and Duane
Clarridge of the CIA had a complete understanding of the full plan. Clarridge
has denied that he and North discussed this plan, and said that the appearance
of his name in North's PROF message is probably due to North's "tendency to
use my name with McFarlane and Poindexter because if I said it was a good
idea, then they tended to think it was a good idea."  The following day, North
put the proposal into an unsigned, unaddressed memorandum.  This memorandum
made clear that all 3,300 TOWs and all 50 Improved HAWK missiles would come
from Israel's "prepositioned war reserve."  North's memorandum proposed not
only that Congress not be notified about the operation and replenishment, but
also that there be a cover story to explain why Israel needed to buy weapons:

The Israelis have identified a means of transferring the Iranian provided
funds to an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) account, which will be used for
purchasing items not necessarily covered by FMS.  They will have to purchase
the replenishment items from the U.S. in FMS transaction from U.S. stocks.
Both the number of weapons and the size of the cash transfer could draw
attention.  If a single transaction is more than $14.9 M, we would normally
have to notify Congress.  The Israelis are prepared to justify the large
quantity and urgency based on damage caused to the equipment in storage.

Although the Finding CIA Counsel Stanley Sporkin drafted in November
contemplated delayed Congressional notification, North's proposal represented
an entirely different approach:  structuring the transaction so as to evade
Congressional reporting altogether.

     As North was putting together his plan for a new arms-for-hostages deal,
the CIA stood by to provide support for more flights into Iran.  In the days
after the HAWK shipment, Clarridge and CIA stations in Countries 16 and 18
exchanged numerous cables relating to clearances for anticipated flights from
Israel to Iran transiting at Country 18 and overflying Country 16.  On
November 27, Clarridge told the stations that the "operation is still on but
we have encountered delays" and that "whatever was supposed to happen after
the first sortie did not happen and we are regrouping."  On December 3, he
reported to them:  "We are still regrouping.  Key meetings of principals will
take place this weekend with earliest possible aircraft deployments sometime
mid to late week of December 8."  Clarridge left the United States on other
business in early December.  However, before leaving he told his deputy to
expect another flight to Iran on a project being run by the NSC for which the
CIA would be asked to obtain clearances.