PROBERS SEEK MORE INFORMATION ON FEDERALLY FINANCED YOUTH GROUP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200810002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 21, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200810002-8
ASJULIAILU PRL55
21 March 1987
PROBERS SEEK MORE INFORMATION ON FEDERALLY FINANCED YOUTH GROUP
By JOAN MOWER
WASHINGTON
Congressional investigators, their interest piqued by the Tower commission
report, want to learn more about a federally financed youth group that was STAT
involved in a conference for young people in Jamaica nearly two years ago.
A special House committee investigating the Iran-Contra case is curious about
the now-defunct U.S. International Youth Year Commission, panel spokesman Bob
Havel said.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee also is seeking information about the
commission and the event it helped arrange, a three-day international youth
conference that attracted about 1,100 people from 100 countries to Kingston,
Jamaica, in April 1985. The Reagan administration paid about half the cost of
the $2 million event.
The youth issue surfaced after a flow chart was found in the safe of Lt. Col.
Oliver North, who was fired from his job at the National Security Council for
his role in apparently diverting money from arms sales to Iran to the Contra
rebels in Nicaragua.
The chart, whose author is unknown, apparently shows links between the
private network helping the Contra rebels and domestic groups. One box labeled
"Intl Youth Comm." is attached by a dotted line to another box labeled "FDN,"
the acronym for a Contra group. A cross was drawn through the FDN box.
Havel said the special House panel has no evidence tying the group that
helped coordinate the Jamaica conference to the document in North's safe, but
investigators have guessed there might be a link because they "can't find
anything else."Meanwhile, William Treanor, director American Youth Work Center,
a group that helps young people, wrote the independent counsel in the
Iran-Contra affair last week asking him to look into the U.S. government's role
in setting up the commission and paying for the youth conference.
Gail Alexander, a spokeswoman for Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel in
the Iran-Contra case, said Friday the office would have no comment on whether
it is pursuing Treanor's request.
In his letter, Treanor, a former consultant to a Senate committee on juvenile
justice, wrote, "I have reason to believe that federal funds, intended by
Congress to aid in the American observance of the U.N. 1985 International Youth
Year, were in fact used ... to fund various 'Contra' organizations."Treanor, who
sought unsuccessfully to coordinate U.S. activities for International Youth
Year, wrote that he was particularly concerned about the role of Roy Godson in
the 1985 Jamaica conference.
Godson, a Georgetown University professor and a specialist on Soviet
disinformation, is also director of the?Nationa National-Strategy I fn nrmation Center
Inc., a non-profit, private group founded more than 20 years ago by former CIA
Director William Ca
The NSIC receives government money to disseminate information about military
and non-military threats to democratic nations, its literature says. STAT
STAT
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 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200810002-8
Some of the U.S. money that NSIC got in the early 1980s came from the U.S.
Youth Council from which the U.S. International Youth Year Commission sprung.
Congress later ordered the two groups to separate.
Godson, a one-time government consultant on youth issues, refused in a
telephone interview to discuss what role he played at the Jamaica conference,
which was arranged as a counterpoint to a Soviet youth festival in moscow in
1985.
But he said he "didn't see any involvement" between youth activities and the
Contras. Godson also declined to say whether he had served as 3 Consultant to
the NSC, as Treanor claimed in his letter.
"I don't want to get into my personal situation," Godson said.
Liz Murphy, the White House press duty officer, said Saturday a list of NSC
consultants was not immediately available.
Floyd Brown, former executive director of the U.S. International Youth Year
Commission, said his group had no connection with the Contras or with North.
Brown was one of the young American conservatives who walked out of the
Jamaica conference, claiming the Godson helped to set up an international
secretariat that excluded conservatives and promoted trade unionists.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200810002-8