CIA COVERT ACTION TO CONTINUE IN IRAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560016-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: November 23, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560016-2
WASHINGTON POST
23 November 1986
CIA Covert Action
To Continue in Iran
. after Arms .Gales,
Influence Sought
By Bob Woodward
Wn.hgUm Pn.t st,at Wr t, r
President Reagan has left in
place a sensitive CIA covert oper-
ation designed to increase U.S. in-
fluence in Iran despite his decision
not to sell more arms to the Iran-
ians.
Several sources in the adminis-
tration and on Capitol Hill said last
week that this ongoing operation is
diplomatically risky and is likely to
aggravate turf struggles within the
administration.
But the president and some of his
senior White House staff see the
continuing covert Iran operation as
a bold initiative that has yielded
positive results-the release of
three American hostages-and has
a chance to achieve other foreign
policy aims, according to official
sources.
The covert action authorized by
Reagan's Jan. 17 secret intelligence
"finding" allows the Central Intel-
ligence Agency to interfere in the
affairs of a foreign government.
The operation is an extension of
one initiated by Israel, and accord-
ing to senior Reagan administration
officials, it is designed to gather in-
telligence and shape the behavior of
the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and his successor.
As administration officials have
said, the covert operation is not a
paramilitary support plan and is not
intended to seek the overthrow of
Khomeini. The administration
want,, to keep the program as se-
cret as possible-one reason the
White House has left in force the
covert finding that allows it to keep
more details of the policy out of
public and congressional view.
"The agency has got its hooks
into some people in Iran and is em-
barked on a pipe dream that they
can kick open the door to Tehran,"
said one middle-level administration
source knowledgeable about Iran
and opposed to the operation.
A source said Khomeini has not
been able to determine the identi-
ties of the U.S. contacts in his gov-
ernment or has for some reason
sanctioned their dealing with the
United States. Two U.S. sources
raised the possibility that the Iran-
ians have engaged in an elaborate
"sting" operation to obtain arms and
embarrass the United States.
The president said Wednesday
night in his televised news confer-
ence, "We are hopeful that we're
going to be able to continue our
meetings with these people, these
individuals."
Secretary of State George P.
Shultz and other senior State De-
partment officials have opposed the
project not only because of the arms
sales but because the covert oper-
ation gives the CIA and the Nation-
al Security Council in the White
House primary roles in attempting
to manage and develop new U.S.
foreign policies toward Iran, the
sources said.
Informed sources described the
CIA's director, William J. Casey, as
a strong supporter of the covert
plan.
Covert operations, even those in-
volving paramilitary action such as
CIA support to the contras oppos-
ing the Sandinista government in
Nicaragua, are traditionally man-
aged by interagency groups chaired
by a senior State Department of-
ficial. But the [ran project was run
by the White House and the CIA.
One well-placed source said part
of the controversy over the secret
Iran policy is a turf battle, but an-
other source familiar with Shultz's
thinking said the secretary of state
simply wants to regain authority
over this interagency machinery
and what he thinks should be large-
ly a diplomatic initiative to Iran, not
an intelligence operation.
Intelligence agencies have played
roles in the Iran project since its in-
ception, although the CIA's active
involvement began only last Janu-
ary-after the operation became
too complicated to he run entirely
out of the White House, according
to a knowledgeable source.
The first contact setting the pro-
ject in motion was in late July 1985,
between Robert C. ,McFarlane,
then the president's national secu-
rity adviser, and David Kimche,
then director general of the Israeli
Foreign Ministry, according to U.S.
sources.
Kiniche, a 30-year veteran of Is-
rael's Mossad intelligence service
and a former Most deputy direc-
tor, has been a key tigure in devel-
oping Israel's antiterrorism policy
over the years, according to in-
formed U.S. and Israeli sources.
The Mossad's technique against
Palestinian terrorists has always
been to penetrate the groups with
agents. And sources said that one of
Kimche's favorite expressions was,
"In order to catch a fish, you have
to think like a fish."
But after the Iranian revolution, a
new wave of terrorist attacks and
bombings by Shiite fundamentalists
loyal to and supported by the Kho-
meini government presented both
Israel and the U.S. intelligence
agencies with a new problem of
gathering intelligence. In the words
of one source, "We had to learn to
think like different fish."
The 1983 terrorist attacks
against U.S. installations in Beirut,
including the devastating bombing
of the Marine barracks that killed
241 U.S. servicemen, highlighted
the problem.
Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence
agencies developed information that
the Iranian government was a chief
supporter of the terrorist groups
responsible. For example, Iranian
diplomatic communications were
used to order terrorists in Lebanon
to conduct some operations, accord-
ing to informed sources.
U.S. and Israeli sources said that
by 1985 the Mossad had developed
a high-level source in the Khomeini
government through channels that
had been opened with secret Israeli
arms shipments to Iran.
In the July 1985 meeting with
McFarlane, Kimche effectively
passed along an Israeli intelligence
asset to the United States, accord-
ing to one source.
It was "natural" that this contact
eventually be taken up by the CIA,
the source said, especially when
Shultz and Defense Secretary Cas-
par W. Weinberger voiced opposi-
tion to a new opening to Iran that
would include arms shipments.
The New York Times yesterday
quoted an unidentified senior Israeli
official who described the intelli.
gence asset Israel had cultivated in
Tehran in these terms: "We are
talking about a source among the
most senior ayatollahs. It would
have been criminal for us not to fol-
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 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807560016-2
terrific intelligence through this
channel . . . . We were at the heart
of the government. There was no
Western government that had ac-
cess to the kind of information we
had.
"Through these contacts, we
learned a great deal about what was
going on in the ruling circles. It be-
came clear to us that there were
different groups, some less zealous
than others."
Covert CIA relationships with
senior officials in foreign govern-
ments have been among the most
sensitive and controversial in the
U.S. government. Diplomats often
oppose them. For example, for 20
years the CIA had a secret relation-
ship with King Hussein of Jordan
and paid him millions of dollars. Un-
til the operation was disclosed pub-
licly in 1977 and discontinued by
President Jimmy Carter, the CIA
station chief in Amman had more in-
fluence and access to the Jordanian
head of state than did the U.S. am-
bassador.
The Jan. 17 order was issued un-
der the 1980 Intelligence Oversight
Act, which requires the president to
"find" that a new covert action is
"important to the national security of
the United States." Thus this formal
written presidential approval for co-
vert action is called a "finding."
A source said that CIA Director
Casey and his general counsel were
involved in drafting the finding.
Poindexter has said publicly that
the only copy of the finding was
kept in his White [louse safe.
According to sources, Poindexter
thinks that a new generation of
Iranian officials, so-called "moder-
ates," have less of a phobia about
the West than some of the elders
who staged the Iranian revolution,
and believe that the greatest threat
to the Iranian revolution is posed
not by the United States but by the
Soviet Union, which shares a
1,100-mile border with Iran.
One official said, "All you have to
do is point out to them what's hap-
pened to Afghanistan, which is also
on the Soviet border. These mod-
erates in Iran know ... that the So-
viets are a threat." The Soviets in-
vaded Afghanistan in 1979 and have
kept about 100,000 regular troops
there in a continuing war against
the Afghan resistance.
Sources said that one'of the goals
the president listed in the secret in-
telligence order he signed Jan. 17
was to prevent the Soviets from ob-
taining a foothold or increased in-
fluence in Iran.
troversial arms shipments to Iran
not only helped win the release of
American hostages but were a
means of rewarding and giving lev-
erage to key Iranians who are the
high-level U.S. connections into the
Iranian government.
The sources said these U.S. con-
nections are the "individuals" and
"people" Reagan mentioned but did
not identify in his news conference
Wednesday. The president said the
arms sales were to give "prestige
and muscle" to "the people that we
were doing business with."
Normally, CIA sources or con-
tacts in foreign governments are
paid with money, intelligence assist-
ance or physical protection, but the
Iranian contacts wanted arms, the
sources said.
"In the Middle Fast, whether we
like it or not, arms are a currency,
in the broad sense of the word," Po-
indexter said in an interview last
week with USA Today.
A senior official said: "We had to
establish our bona fides. And we
frankly didn't trust them, didn't
trust Iran, didn't trust the channels
we were dealing with. They didn't
trust us. There was no mutual
trust. We're the Great Satan. So
how do you establish your bona
fides? Do you try powdered milk?
Do you try bandages? That's some-
thing they can get at the local drug
store. You have to try arms."
Administration officials argue
that Reagan did not see the Iran
policy as a modification of his strong
stand against terrorism and coun-
tries that support it.
Said one well-placed official;
"Reagan believes in his heart that
we didn't deal with terrorists in
Iran but dealt with those channels
that are moderate, and moderate is
a term that is relevant to Iran"-a
contention that some experts on
Iran have disputed.
Administration officials listed
these positive developments as
fruits of the [ran initiative:
^ The Iranian government has not
sponsored a terrorist act against
Americans or U.S. interests since
secret Reagan administration con-
tacts began in 1985.
The three Americans kidnaped in
Beirut this September and October
had all converted to Islam and were
either longtime residents of Beirut
or had married Arab women. "It's
not as if they're picking off Amer-
ican tourists or American govern-
ment people like they have in the
past," said one official, who claimed
that the kidnaping of Joseph James
Cicippio, Frank Reed and Edward
Austin Tracy were not necessarily
anti-American acts.
^ Iran has issued government
statements against terrorism.
^ Three American hostages in Bei-
rut were released-the Rev. Ben-
jamin Weir on Sept. 14, 1985, the
Rev. Lawrence M. Jenco on July 26
and David P. Jacobsen on Nov. 2.
^ Iran assisted in obtaining the re-
lease of several of the hostages of
TWA flight 847 in June 1985; Teh-
ran also refused to provide landing
rights for the Pan Am jet hijacked in
Karachi, Pakistan, this September.
Staff researcher Barbara Feinman
contributed to this report.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807560016-2