SECRET MESSAGE ADDED PRESSURE TO FREE HOSTAGES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605100006-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: December 14, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605100006-7
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LvASI:I~TGTON POST
14 Decemirer 1986
Secret 1~'lessage Added Pressure to Free Hosta es
g
By Walter -Pin ?c s
Wa~hinqum Pmt Stall Wrrtcr
In the summer of 1984, a secret emissary ar-
rived at the State Department carrying a video-
taped message from three American hostages in
Lebanon. On the tape, the three men-Jeremy
Levin, William Buckley and the Rev. Benjamin
Weir-pleaded for the U.S. government to help
win their release by urging the government of
Kuwait to free 17 Moslem terrorists imprisoned
for blowing up French and U.S. embassies there.
The videotaped message, which was not pub-
licly revealed, brought a new sense of urgency to
efforts under way in the U.S. government to free
the American hostages. The result was a series
of extraordinary events over the next 30 month;
that led the Reagan administration to counter-
mand U.S. policy by shipping arms to lran and
then divert some of the profits from those sales
to grid the Nicaraguan rebels known as contras-
an intersection of events that threatens the final
two years of the Reagan presidency.
Testimony before congressional committees
investigating the Iran-contra scandal helped put
together many pieces to this puzzle last week,
especially on the question of how the arms trans-
actions with [ran took place and who was part of
what has become an ever larger cast of charac-
tors.
Birt if anything, the mystery over what hap-
pened to the money-including whether any of it
reached the contras-has deepened since Attor-
ney C,eneral F,dwin iVleese III announced Nov. 25
that some of it had been siphoned off to aid the
rebels.
fay the tune the videotape arrived at the State
Department in mid-1984, President Reagan had
authorized the Central Intelligence Agency un-
der a bro