Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0106/01066.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01066}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Chapter 19C  Casey and Poindexter Prepare for Congress}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{november
casey
poindexter
cooper
shipment
testimony
cia
north
casey's
meeting}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter 19C  Casey and Poindexter Prepare for Congress

     On November 21, Casey was scheduled to testify before the House and
Senate Intelligence Committees, and Poindexter was to brief delegations of the
same Committees.  On November 20, a meeting was held in Poindexter's office to
review a CIA draft of Casey's proposed testimony and coordinate it with
Poindexter's upcoming briefing.  In attendance were Casey, Attorney General
Meese, Poindexter, North, Cooper, Thompson, and Robert Gates of the CIA.  The
CIA brought a proposed insert dealing with the November 1985 HAWK shipment.
It said that the CIA had been told the shipment was oil drilling equipment.
During discussion of the insert, North suggested changing it to say that "no
one in the U.S. Government" knew at the time that the November 1985 shipment
contained arms.  According to Cooper, North also stated at the meeting that
the United States had to force Iran to return the 18 HAWKs that Israel had
delivered in November, after learning a few months after-the-fact that arms
had been shipped.  Both Meese and North made handwritten notes of North's
points on the draft insert.  North's version was accepted.

     The meeting lasted approximately 2 hours.  Attorney General Meese had to
leave early to make a speech that evening at West Point.  After the meeting
ended, Cooper was asked to come to White House Counsel Wallison's office.  He
went there with NSC general counsel Thompson.  Wallison, Counsel to the
President, strenuously objected to not having been included in the
just-concluded meeting.

     During this session in Wallison's office, State Department Legal Adviser
Abraham Sofaer telephoned Wallison, and indicated that there was a problem
with Casey's proposed testimony.  At Cooper's suggestion, Wallison returned
Sofaer's call on a secure line.  Sofaer advised Wallison that Secretary Shultz
recalled a conversation with McFarlane in November 1985, in which McFarlane
made specific reference to the shipment of HAWK missiles from Israel to Iran.
Sofaer testified that he had also spoken with Deputy Attorney General Arnold
Burns earlier in the day to apprise him of the discrepancy between Casey's
draft testimony and Secretary Shultz's recollection.  Burns told Sofaer that
Attorney General Meese had been advised of this problem, and was aware of
facts that would explain everything.  [Sofaer Dep. at 38-41.  Burns barely
recalls the conversation, and Attorney General Meese has no recollection of
talking to Burns about Sofaer's call.  Meese Test., Hearings, 100-9, 7/28/87,
at 221; Meese Dep., 7/8/87, at 70; Burns Int., 7/7/87.]

     Wallison advised Cooper and Thompson of Sofaer's report.  Cooper then
asked Thompson to contact North and McFarlane to get the facts straight.
Cooper reminded Thompson of North's statement at the meeting earlier in the
day that no one in the U.S. Government knew that the November 1985 shipment
contained arms.  Thompson agreed to contact North and McFarlane.

     Cooper then returned to his office, spoke by telephone to Sofaer, and
asked if Secretary Shultz was certain of his November 1985 conversation with
McFarlane.  Sofaer replied that the State Department had a contemporaneous
note written by Secretary Shultz's Executive Assistant, Charles Hill, of a
conversation between McFarlane and Shultz on November 18, 1985, which
contained the word "HAWKS."  Sofaer told Cooper that if Casey's testimony were
given in its current form, "he [Sofaer] would leave the Government," to which
Cooper replied, "We may all have to."

     Cooper then telephoned Thompson, who said that North and McFarlane each
stuck by his earlier story, that they had no contemporaneous knowledge that
arms were shipped to Iran in November 1985.  Cooper did not know who was right
or wrong.  Moreover, Sofaer told Cooper that if Casey testified that no one in
the U.S. Government knew of the weapons shipment, Undersecretary Armacost
would have to testify otherwise.

     Cooper then placed a secure call to Attorney General Meese at West Point,
and the two agreed that the problem language should be deleted from Casey's
proposed testimony.  Attorney General Meese agreed also with Cooper's
suggestion that he return immediately to Washington and take responsibility
for "getting his arms around this . . ."

     Cooper next spoke directly to Poindexter (who already had heard from
Thompson), and Poindexter agreed that they would have to refrain from making
the incorrect statement.  Poindexter said he had attempted to discuss the
issue with Casey, but that Casey was half-asleep when Poindexter called.
Accordingly, Cooper called CIA General Counsel David Doherty to advise him
that the problem statement should be deleted.  Doherty told Cooper that he
already had changed Casey's testimony in that regard.

     In his public testimony, North conceded that the oil drilling equipment
cover story agreed to at the meeting on November 20, 1986, was false.  He
played down his role in preparing Casey's testimony, however, and claimed that
he acted promptly in a later private meeting with Casey to correct it.  He
testified that he corrected the proposed testimony even though "there are a
lot of heroes walking around that have claimed credit" for causing the
correction.

     Cooper's testimony conflicts with North's.  According to Cooper, it was
North who pushed strongly for the oil drilling equipment cover story and the
claim that "no one in the U.S. Government" knew that missiles rather than oil
drilling equipment were being shipped in November 1985.  A one-page draft
insert in North's handwriting corroborates Cooper's testimony.  So does the
fact that the oil drilling equipment cover story was inserted into the NSC
staff's chronology by North at 1:00 p.m. on November 20 shortly before the
meeting with Casey.  Moreover, whatever efforts North made later to "correct"
Casey's testimony, Casey told the oil drilling cover story to both
Congressional Intelligence Committees the next day, modified so as to make it
literally true but completely misleading.

     The record makes clear that North, Poindexter, Casey, and others were
engaged in a deliberate attempt to falsify the facts concerning the November
1985 HAWKs shipment.  This point was illustrated in Donald Regan's testimony
to the Committees.  Regan testified that, although he was Chief of Staff, he
was never consulted about the President's knowledge of the November 1985
shipment during the frantic effort to prepare a statement for Casey's
testimony and Poindexter's Congressional briefing on what the U.S. Government
knew.  When asked at the hearing about the assertion that the U.S. Government
believed that the November shipment contained oil drilling equipment - Regan
dubbed that claim, "the cover story."

Poindexter, Casey, and the Intelligence Committees:  November 21

     November 21 was the day that Casey and Poindexter appeared before the
Intelligence Committees of Congress - the event for which they had attempted
to coordinate their statements on November 20.  Their efforts continued on
Friday morning, November 21, beset by the fact that their plan to present a
well-orchestrated "cover story" about the November 1985 HAWK shipment had
broken down.

     At approximately 8:00 a.m., Cooper arrived at the CIA to ensure that the
disputed language regarding the November HAWK shipment had been deleted from
Casey's Congressional testimony.  Cooper met with Casey.  Casey accepted the
revisions without comment.  After the meeting, CIA Associate General Counsel
Jameson whispered to Cooper that during the November 1985 shipment, one of the
pilots had radioed to the ground that the cargo was weapons.

     Poindexter was the first to brief members of the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees.  He related the cover story, not the actual facts.
According to the memorandums of that meeting, Poindexter maintained that:

     - The United States only learned of the August-September 1985 TOW
shipments after the fact, whereupon the President expressed both his
displeasure at the arms transfer and his appreciation for the subsequent
release of hostage Benjamin Weir.

     - The United States did not learn until January 1986 that Israel had
transferred 18 HAWK missiles to Iran in November 1985, and the United States
persuaded the Iranians to return the missiles to Israel in February 1986.

     - He (Poindexter) had learned only the day before that there may have
been prior U.S. knowledge concerning the November 1985 shipment.

     - Finally, Poindexter promised the Senate Intelligence Committee that he
would check into the facts and report back.

     Poindexter attempted to explain away his false statements by claiming
during the hearings that he had forgotten all about the November 1985 arms
shipment at the time of this Congressional briefing.  But Poindexter had been
personally involved in this extraordinary shipment of HAWK missiles to Iran.
North had written PROF notes and memorandums to Poindexter both before and
after the November 1985 shipment explaining the problems in arranging it as
well as the reason the Iranians had immediately rejected the HAWKs.  Moreover,
according to his testimony, on the first day that Poindexter served as
National Security Adviser, December 5, 1985, he had obtained the President's
signature on a Finding specifically designed to authorize, retroactively, and
without notification to Congress, the U.S. Government's assistance with the
November shipment and the attempted hostage trade - a Finding Poindexter
destroyed only hours after he promised the Congressional Committees he would
check into the facts and report back.

     Casey testified next as part of a panel including Undersecretary of State
Armacost and Assistant Secretary of Defense Armitage.  In his opening
statement, Casey testified that the CIA was asked in November 1985 to
recommend a proprietary to transport "bulky cargo."  The crew was told, he
said, that the cargo consisted of spare parts for the oil drilling fields in
Tehran.  The phrase "no one in the U.S. Government found out that our airline
had landed HAWK missiles into Iran until mid-January" had been deleted from
his opening statement.  But Casey gave no indication that the CIA and NSC
staff knew that the shipment was arms, not oil drilling equipment.

     Under questioning by Senate Committee Members, Casey, like Poindexter,
reverted to the cover story:

     SENATOR LEAHY:  . . .  On November 25th a plane owned by a CIA
proprietary . . . delivered 18 HAWK missiles from Israel to Iran.  I discussed
this at some length with Admiral Poindexter this morning.  You referred to it
here.  The Admiral did not have many details on it.  I think he said that he
learned of this only yesterday, this shipment by a CIA proprietary of these
HAWK missiles.  Now, did the CIA know what was on that aircraft, the November
25th '85 aircraft?

     MR. CASEY:  There is some question about that.  I was told yesterday the
CIA didn't know it until later on.

     SENATOR LEAHY:  Did not know until later on?

     MR. CASEY:  Did not know until later on.  Did not know until the Iranians
told them some time in January by way of complaining about the inadequacy of
whatever was delivered.

     SENATOR LEAHY:  But my concern is that the NSC says now that they didn't
know what was going on and that it just found out that the CIA sent that
flight over, and they are trying to figure out why nobody knew what was on it,
and now the CIA says well, we did this because the NSC requested it, and we
didn't know exactly what they wanted.  Do you understand why somebody raised
the questions wondering whether there was just plausible deniability being set
up here.

     MR. CASEY:  Hadn't thought about it.  I hadn't thought about it.

     SENATOR LEAHY:  The question I ask, and I would hope that the Agency
will give me a very full, clear, specific answer, is did they know at the
time, and if they didn't know at the time, why not?

     MR. CASEY:  Well, I have inquired into that myself, and have been told,
and as far as I can find out, the Agency did not know what it was handling at
the time.  Now, I am still going to inquire further into that."

     Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Casey's
testimony concerning the November HAWK shipment was similarly misleading.
When asked if the Israelis had made any shipments to Iran requiring advance
notification or permission, Casey referred only to the August-September 1985
TOW shipments.

     Casey went out of his way on three occasions during his House Committee
testimony to say that the NSC staff was "guiding and active in the private
provision of weapons to the Contras."