SIDESHOW AT THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600190002-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 47
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 15, 2005
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: May 10, 1987
• Content Type: NSPR

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WASHINGTON POST
10 May 1987
Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta
Sideshow at the CIA.
The Reagan administration persists in secret. The CIA must at all costs pre-
its support qJ, the Nicaraguan contras' serve "plausible deniability" of its role.
foredoomed effort to overthrow the The first corollary of this rule was
Sandinista regime, while ignoring the that no American personnel would be
CIA's pathetically botched effort to help linked to the arms supply. The dims-
the anti-Soviet freedom fighters in Af- trous effects of this lack of American
ghanistan. control have been wholesale waste and
Our investigation of the agency's cav- corruption at every stage in the weap-
alier irresponsibility suggests that the ons pipeline, with the result that the
Afghan military supply program is re- freedom fighters actually receive, by our
garded at Langley as merely the Latest estimate, no more than 40 percent of
chapter in a 150-year-old sideshow the military supplies Congress has paid
dubbed "The Great Game." That was for.
the name first applied to the British- The second corollary was that no
Russian struggle for control of Central American weapons could be provided to
Asia by a British captain in 1842. In fact, the mujaheddin-a ridiculous mandate
the determined, indigenous guerrilla that forced the CIA to buy inefficient
movement in Afghanistan offers the best and/or antique Soviet-made weapons
opportunity in decades to thwart Soviet from Egypt, Israel and China.
expansionism and possibly force a humil- The CIA insisted in secret testimony
iating Kremlin withdrawal. to Congress that the Pakistanis would
A recent visit to the fabled Khyber not allow U.S. arms to be shipped to the
Pass by Date Van Atta offered evidence Afghan rebels, because it would embar-
that times haven't changed much in that rasa the Islamabad government.
isolated corner of the Earth. The Khy- This argument was known, in CIA
ber remains the most important passage shorthand, as the "Eveready Line," be-
between the plains of the Indian subcon. cause CIA briefers insisted that "the
tinent and the uplands of Central Asia. Pakistanis don't even want Eveready
From a border outpost overlooking batteries going to the mujaheddim"
the Khyber, Van Atta saw the gaily The official most ready with the Ever-
decorated buses and trucks that shuttle eady Line was John McMahon, No. 2
trade goods--including drugs-along man at the CIA until early ast year. He
the winding road cut into the rock cliffs. was contradicted in closed testimony by 4
Occasional stone tablets and caims pay Vernon Walters, a former CIA bigwig I
tribute to British regiments and banal- o iii now ambassador to the United
ions that fought and died in long-forgot- Nations, and Fred 1146, defense underse-
ten skirmishes of the Great Game. cr Both for policy.
Both Walters and Ikle had discussed
A reminder of the Great Game's the matter directly with the Pakistanis,
geopolitical significance is the papier- who said they were perfectly willing to
mache "playboard"-a large outdoor accept U.S. arms for the Afghans. The
relief map of the area with hilltops and Pakistanis told Rep. Charles Wilson (I)-
villages labeled in English. It was pro- Tex.) the same thing. But McMahon
duced for a recent visit by Jimmy Car- continued to lead CIA resistance to the
ter. The same border vantage point, dispatch of U.S. arms to the Afghans.
incidentally, was where Carter's national McMahon's resignation from the CIA
security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in March 1986 was partly the result of a
had himself photographed aiming a gun lobbying campaign by the Federation for
at the Soviet-controlled Afghan village in American Afghan Action, which gener-
the distance. ated 10,000 letters to President Reagan
It was during the Carter adminis- objecting to McMahon's policy.
tration, following the Soviet invasion of Unfortunately, others at the CIA have
December 1979, that the CIA laid down taken up where McMahon left off. For
a foolish rule for its revival of the Great reasons yet unexplained, they refuse to
Game. The rule decreed that American play the Great Game to win.
aid to the Afghan rebels must be kept ?1987, used Fcaturo Syndicate, lue.
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ON PAGE -,~~
WASHINGTON TIMES
5 Rav 1987
Few ivffl con
cede need
for counterin
tellsgence
By Bill Gertz
E WASHINGTON TIMES
Lack of government cooperation in
countering spies and preventing serious
breaches in internal security remains one of
the most divisive issues facing the admin-
istration today, according to current and for-
mer U.S. intelligence officials.
"In counterintelligence, the administration
is totally and completely fragmented," one of-
ficial said. "That's because in any bu-
reaucracy, counterintelligence looks at fail-
ures, and nobody wants that:"
Several intelligence officials, speaking on
condition of anonymity, agreed that co-
operation among U.S. diplomatic and intel-
ligence agencies on sharing "positive intel-
ligence" - satellite photos, agent information
and analyses - has been one of the major
strengths of the administration.
But counterintelligence failures in the past
10 years have occurred in every agency of
government charged with protecting U.S. se-
crets, they said.
Security breakdowns have plagued the U.S.
government since the 1970s, when wholesale
reductions were made ~ in the capacity of
American intelligence agencies to ferret out
spies, according to the officials.
The problem has been highlighted by the
recent Moscow embassy scandal involving
two U.S. Marine security guards charged with
allowing Soviet agents inside secret sections
of the building, including communications,
defense and intelligence areas.
At the State Department, many Foreign
Service officers believe the "diplomatic cul-
ture" leads diplomats to regard security as
incompatible with traditional diplomacy, one
White House official said.
"But the fact is you can't conduct success-
ful diplomacy without security," the official
said. "How can we carry out arms control
negotiations if the Soviets are reading our
cables and bugging our embassy?"
The official credited the decades of suc-
cessful diplomacy carried out by former So-
viet Ambassador to Washington Anatoly
Dobrynin, now a senior Communist Party of-
ficial, to the tight security maintained by the
Soviet Embassy in Washington.
By comparison, Arthur Hartman, former
U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, assailed
by the officials as a major opponent of White
House security policies until he left Moscow
earlier this year, told one White House aide in
es
common
1983: "1 don't care if the KGB is listening.' denominator is used to assign blame for intel-
Another example of State Department op- ligence failures:'
position to NSC counterespionage programs 79 Geor e Ca - rv r, a former CIA official, be-
happened during the November expulsion of lieves such recent problems as the Moscow
the 80 Soviet spies, described by U.S. officials embassy case grew out of intergovernment
conflicts dating to the early 1970s, when secu-
rity officials clashed with government offi-
cials more concerned about civil liberties
than hostile spying.
as the most senior Soviet intelligence officers
stationed abroad.
Officials said the expelled Soviet agents
covered a wide spectrum, including
operatives active in disinformation, elec-
tronic eavesdropping, military intelligence
and theft of high technology.
However, according to one official, the
State Department deleted the names of sev-
eral Soviet spies on the FBI's original expul-
sion list, and replaced them with others, in
order to allow certain agents to remain in the
United States as a gesture of good will.
Secretary of State George Shultz told re-
porters during negotiations in New York with
Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevard-
nadze that some of She spies had been "use-
ful" to the Soviet foreign minister.
Security officials noted that breakdowns
were not limited to the State Department. Ev-
ery U.S. government agency charged with
using and protecting national security infor-
mation suffered a major intelligence failure
because of the modest counterspy program
over the past 10 years, they said.
Other recent cases include security
breaches in the one of the most secret coun-
cils of the CIA - the Soviet operations direc-
torate - by Edward Lee Howard, the first
agency employee to defect to Moscow.
The John Walker espionage ring that sold
secret Navy communications codes to the So-
viets for decades has been described as one
of the worst security failures in history. A
National Security Agency signals intelligence
failure, caused by former NSA employee Ron-
ald Pelton, convicted of spying for the Soviets
last year, led to the compromise of a secret
electronic eavesdropping operation against
Moscow in Asia.
According to intelligence officials, few cor-
rective measures have been taken as a result
of the spy scandals.
Analyses about how the penetrations oc-
curred and how future cases can be averted
are limited to internal agency studies. The
officials said bureaucratic divisions prevent
any single government agency from taking a
comprehensive look at security failures or the
damage caused by them.
"There has never been a damage assess-
ment beyond what the bureaucracies call 'the
point of failure' [of an espionage leak]," said
one White House official. "The failures are
not pursued. NSA won't tell CIA what it's do-
ing and the CIA won't tell the FBI what it's
doing. The result is that the low
t
As a result, he said, CIA counterintelli-
gence was "dismantled" during the late 1970s
by officials opposed to tough security and
counterespionage programs.
While the Reagan administration has
talked tough about pushing counterintelli-
gence reforms, senior policymakers so far
have been unable to muster the will and re-
sources needed to restore effective counter-
spy functions, he said.
"It's a lot easier to break an egg than to put
it back together," Mr. Carver said in a recent
interview
"The dominant culture in the State Depart-
ment says you basically achieve ends by ac-
commodation," Mr. Carver said. "People out-
side the Foreign Service clan, like the FBI or
the CIA, are regarded as interlopers who have
to be repelled."
As for espionage, many at the State Depart-
ment regard it as "a fact of life;' Mr. Carver
said.
Other officials go further, asserting that
since both sides spy on each other, counter-
intelligence may be harmful to collection ac-
tivities.
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger re-
jected this view in a recent speech. "This
argument ignores the enormous difference
between the nature of each side's intelligence
activities, which reflect the fundamental dif-
ferences that separate our two systems;' he
said.
"For example, given our democratic gov-
ernment of checks and balances, our intel-
ligence activities could never approach the
scale of the 'anything goes' Soviet operation,
and properly so;' Mr. Weinberger said.
Officials said Reagan administration in-
fighting over counterespionage policy peaked
in 1982, when a presidential directive was
signed ordering a governmentwide review of
counterintelligence programs.
The directive triggered a confrontation be-
tween then-National Security Adviser Wil-
liam Clark and Adm. Bobby -Ray Inman,#
deputy CIA director at the time, who opposed
the directive so strongly that he resigned
rather than carry out the review, officials
said.
Adm. Inman later was hired- by the State
Department to conduct a study which found
major deficiencies in U.S. embassy security
against terrorist and espionage threats.
John McMahon Adm. Inman's successor,
also clas a wit t t e National Security Coun-
cil over counterintelligence programs, ac-
cording to the officials. The officials said Mr.
McMahon, who resigned last year, resisted
and eventually blocked a White House plan to
strengthen CIA capabilities against Soviet
spying abroad.
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 PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
12 April 1987
FBI chief faults Iran-contra deal
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By Aaron Epstein
Inquirer Wushinglon Bureau
WASHINGTON - In little-noticed parts of In congressional testimony,
his courteous, nonconfrontational Senate tes- Webster doubted the legality of
timony last week, FBI Director William H. three key aspects of the
Webster questioned the legality of critical administration's operations.
aspects of the Reagan administration's secret
operations in Iran and Central America.
He challenged the administration's failure
to authorize the first arms sale to Iran in written finding," the committee reported in
writing, its attempt to approve CIA involve- January.
ment retroactively, and its carefully orches- At Wednesday's hearing, Webster was
trated effort to keep Congress from learning asked by Sen. Sam Nunn (D., Ga.) whether
what was going on. such presidential authorizations, or findings,
Webster, who was a respected federal judge might he made orally.
in St. Louis before moving to his FBI post They should be in writing, Webster replied,
more than nine years ago, made three impor- so there would be a formal explanation of
tant legal points about the Iran-contra scan- presidential action. And even if there were
dal during a Senate Intelligence Committee no time to put the authorization in writing
hearing Wednesday on his nomination as CIA beforehand, it should be put in writing
director. within a short time, Webster said.
First, he indirectly challenged the view of Second, there was a legal question of
his boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, whether the President could authorize secret
that President Reagan acted properly by au-' CIA operations that had already taken place.
thorizing orally - and not in writing - the The question came up in early December
first secret shipment of TOW missiles to Iran 14 1985, when John McMahon the number-two
in August and September 1985. official at the C fear hat the agency
Under the law, such secret operations must had aided a weapons shipment to Iran one
be authorized by the president in a form month earlier.
called a "finding." McMahon wrote at.the time that he "went
The Senate committee reported in January through the overhead, pointing out that
that former national security adviser Robert there was no way we could become involved
C. McFarlane had recalled discussing the in any implementation of this mission with-
legality of oral findings at a meeting with out a finding."
Meese on Nov. 21, 1986. IVI So McMahon told Stanley Sporkin, then CIA
"Meese told him [McFarlane] that he be. counsel, to draft a finding acme at authoriz-
lieved an oral, informal presidential decision ing the CIA's activities "retroactively." Spor-
or determination to be no less valid that a A kin did so. CIA Director William J. Casey sent
the draft to the White House. But the Presi-
dent's special review board, headed by for-
mer Sen. John Tower, reported in February
that Reagan "appears not to have signed this
finding" - which, if true, may make the CIA
operation illegal.
Asked by Nunn whether he agreed with
Sporkin that findings could cover past activi-
ties, Webster replied firmly that Congress did
not intend to allow that. Retroactive authori-
zation was "damage control, nothing less,"
Webster said.
In a third dissent to the handling of the
Iran-contra affair, Webster suggested that the
administration had ignored its legal respon-
sibility to inform the House and Senate Intel-
ligence Committees about covert operations
abroad, either beforehand or "in a timely
fashion." The purpose of the law was to allow
the committees to take action to modify or
halt operations it considered ill-advised or
wrong.
Throughout the Iran-contra affair, the
President, Casey and other top presidential
advisers chose not to notify Congress about
the Iran arms deals at all.
Sen. David L. Boren (D., Okla.), chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wanted
to know what Webster would have done had
he been in Casey's position.
Webster replied that if he were assured
that the Intelligence Committees could keep
the operations secret, "I would have insisted
on notification )of Congress), or I would not
have been able to stay.
"Any project that cannot survive congres-
sional notification is suspect from the begin.
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29
On Language
BY WILLIAM SAFIRE
Bravo Zulu!
C /^~ HAIN THAT YOUNG
(`?/ man to a computer,"
said John Tower, "and
feed, him baloney sand-
wiches." Thus did the chair-
man of the Reagan-appointed
board to investigate Iran-con-
tra arms dealings assign the
task of writing "Appendix B"
to Nicholas Rostow, a staff
member borrowed from the
State Department who had
academic training in diplo-
matic history.
The result was the most
stunning reverse appendec-
tomy in government report-
writing in years. (A reverse
appendectomy puts an in-
flamed appendix in.) Mr.
Rostow's riveting narrative,
piecing together the some-
times contradictory evidence
in a dramatic fashion, was
not the portion of the report
printed in most newspapers,
but is the guts of the paper-
back book - The Tower
Commission Report - that
became an overnight best
seller.
Lexicographers and lin-
guists found that section to be
of special interest because its
selections from interoffice
computer memos revealed,
in raw form, the arcane lingo
of the military bureaucrats
on the National Security
Council staff. We have at last
available for scholarly analy-
sis the down-home patois of
our home-grown patsies.
"Bravo Zulu on Jenco's re-
lease," wrote former national
security adviser Robert C.
McFarlane to Vice Adm.
John M. Poindexter, after an
arms shipment obtained the
release of an American held
hostage in Lebanon. Colonel
McFarlane used that same
expression, Bravo Zulu, at
the end of a message to Lieut.
Col. Oliver L. North, a fellow
Naval Academy ring-knock-
er. Some reporters immedi-
ately suspected South Af-
rican involvement in the deal-
ings.
In Navy signal code, Bravo
stands for B and Zulu for Z.
Merriam-Webster dates the
use of these terms from the
North Atlantic Treaty Organ-
ization phonetic alphabet
back to circa 1962 and 1952,
respectively. When the two
signals are put together as
B-Z, or spoken or written out
as Bravo Zulu, the message
means "job well done."
Why? Why do the letters
B-Z not mean "I'm busy, Ti-
tanic, try another ship"? No-
body I reached at the Naval
Academy or the Naval Insti-
tute at Annapolis had the an-
swer, though commendably
nobody there refused to an-
swer on constitutional
grounds. Somewhat defen-
sively, one old-salt librarian
suggested the letters B-Z
were used by signal com-
municators to mean "well
done" for the same reason CB
operators use 10-4 for "great"
or "so long" - that is, for no
reason at all.
Five unusual verb phrases
also studded the appendix:
stand down, promise paper,
went through the overhead,
be teed up and stay off the
skyline. This has caused ter-
rible headaches at the K.G.B.
decoding station in Dzerzhin-
sky Square. In the spirit of in-
ternational amity, these ex-
planations:
"I was advised to do noth-
ing and basically to stand
down," testified Howard
Teicher, then the National Se-
curity Council's Middle East-
ern specialist. That same ex-
pression, using the past par-
ticiple of stand, was repeated
to me in this connection by
Secretary of State George P.
Shultz: "They told me the
whole thing was 'stood
down.' "
The earliest use of stand
down dates back to 1681, as a
clause in a trial transcript di-
recting a witness to leave the
box after giving evidence:
"You say well, stand down."
In the 19th century, the infini-
tive phrase to stand down
gained a nautical sense of "to
sail with the wind or tide." In
the 1890's, it became a sports
term meaning "to withdraw
from a race or game." In
World War I, it became the
opposite of the order stand to,
an ellipsis for "stand to one's
arms," or come on duty.
"Stand down is the order
countermanding stand to,"
wrote Edward Samuel Far-
row in his 1918 Dictionary of
Military Terms. This sense of
coming off military duty was
transferred to "closing down
an operation" by military
men working in the diplo-
matic area during the past
decade.
"If pressed for action you
can credibly promise paper
within the next few days,"
wrote the late Donald R.
Fortier, deputy to Colonel
McFarlane. This is the first
appearance anywhere of this
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locution. Closest is the 1976
comment in The Economist
of London that "the Tory gov-
ernment, facing defeat, had
to promise a white paper on
the subject to quell the muti-
neers." In the sense used in
the N.S.C. memo, paper is a
memorandum or other docu-
mentation to back up a posi-
tion; the infinitive phrase to
promise paper, I assume
from the context, means "to
promise a report in writing"
to a senior who is worried
about all these words flying
around on the phone.
When informed of the n-
tral Intelligence Aaency'in-
volvement in any earl ,shin
mint of arms to Iran. 111111-
Deputy Director John N.
Mc Ma a on wrote a sel
tecting memo for his file say-
ing that he "went through the
Verne a__ poiniin~ s}lt_ at
there was no way we could
ec~ ome_in oly a,,, put
a finding."
Overhead, in this context,
seems to be an intensified
term for roof; the overhead
has long meant "sky, firma-
ment," and someone who
goes through it is far angrier
than the fiddler who stops
after penetrating the roof.
This sense may be influenced
by computerese, which de-
fines a high-overhead func-
tion as "one that places heavy
demands on a computer,"
using overhead in an ex-
tended sense of "cost of doing
business." (Observe the dou-
ble meaning in "Larry Tisch
has gone through the over-
head.")
Now to be teed up. Was
President Reagan informed
by his aides of the risk inher-
ent in a secret operation that,
if it leaked, would be inter-
preted as a swap of arms for
hostages? "The President
was told," Donald T. Regan,
then the White House chief of
staff, told the Tower Com-
mission, "but by no means
was it really teed up for him
of what the downside risk
would be here-as far as
American public opinion was
concerned."
The infinitive phrase to tee
up is from golf, more recently
from football: "to place a ball
on a tee, a device for setting it
in place above the ground, to
be hit or kicked." In the pas-
sive voice used by Mr. Regan,
the phrase means "be spelled
out, as if to a child or some-
one unfamiliar with the lan-
guage; be explained so that
understanding is easy."
This is not to be confused
with to tee off, which in golf
means "to begin," and by ex-
tension, "to hit the ball or
problem a long way on the
first shot." However, the pas-
sive to be teed off does not
mean "to have begun," but
"to be very angry." If you are
asked to use both phrases in a
single sentence, try: "When
President Reagan discovered
the risk had not been prop-
erly teed up, he was teed off."
The nervous investor read-
ing Donald Regan's teed-up
sentence will be attracted by
the former Merrill Lynch
chairman's use of downside
risk. This is a phrase prob-
ably first used in The Wall
Street Journal on Sept. 10,
1953, according to Sol Stein-
metz of Barnhart Books. The
paper warned, "There is a
downside risk in common
stocks at this juncture...."
Downside, first spotted in
1948, is based on the flip side
of upside, which appeared in
the 14th century's upside
down.
One of the great grabbers
of the Prof system (an I.B.M.
acronym for Professional Of-
fice System, turned into a
verb as in "Prof it to me") is
the McFarlanism to stay off
the skyline. In a memo from
Oliver North to John Poin-
dexter, the Marine Colonel
reported to the Admiral that
the Israeli contact, Amiram
Nir, was being told not to
make his presence known:
"Nir has been told to stay off
the skyline on this issue."
Use a computer to catch a
computer: a fast check of
Nexis, the computerized li-
brary of the past decade's
media output, reveals only
one other use of this phrase
by anyone in the reported
world. Bud McFarlane told
Richard Halloran, a reporter
for The New York Times, in
September of 1985 that the re-
cently released Rev. Benja-
min F. Weir had been asked
not to make major public ap-
pearances lest the other hos-
tage-takers in Lebanon inten-
sify their competition. "That
had been discussed with Mr.
Weir, Mr. McFarlane said,"
wrote Halloran, "and he had
agreed to 'stay off the sky-
line' until the chances for the
release of the others could be
clarified."
More drama permeates
this phrase than the synony-
mous "remain out of sight" or
"lie low" or even "keep a low
profile." Stay off the skyline
is not merely alliterative, but
evokes a poetic image of pub-
licity breaking over the
spires of a great city. "In-
stead of the literal skyline,
the outline of tall objects
against the sky," suggests Sol
Steinmetz, "it's possible that
this expression refers to a
'skyline chart,' showing rela-
tive sizes on a graph."
In a coming article, more
mining of this mother lode:
C.I.A. annuitant, disgruntle-
ment, buy onto, wiring dia-
gram, pallet, grosso modo.
Until then, stay off the sky-
line. (Bravo Zulu, Bud!) ^
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it._,.1 .
WASHINGTON POST
23 March 1987
Bush Is Mystery Man of Iran '-A-E-
air
Little 1.5 Known of His Role During Reagan's Gravest Crisis
By David Hoffman
W.ishiuI ton Post Staff Writer
At a crucial White House meeting
about the secret Iran initiative on
Dec. 7, 1985, President Reagan and
his top advisers debated whether to
continue, sending missiles to Iran
and discussed the prospect for re-
lease of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.
Vice President Bush did not at-
tend the meeting, He was at the
Army-Navy football game in Phil-
adelphia.
Almost eight months later, while
touring the Middle East, Bush was
,7
told by Amiran Nir, a counterter-
rorism adviser to then-Israeli Prime
Minister Shimon Peres, that the
United States was dealing with rad-
ical factions in Iran and selling mis-
siles while seeking freedom for the
U.S. hostages.
Bush had only one known reac-
tion to this. He directed that a
memo about the meeting be sent to
the National Security Council.
These two events illustrate one
of the most enduring puzzles of the
Iran-contra affair: What happened
to George Bush? In all the reports
and documents that have been
made public so far, Bush comes
across as a mystery man. More
than any other major figure in the
administration, little is known about
what he said and what he did during
the gravest crisis of the Reagan
presidency.
Bush was absent from many key
meetings, apparently because oth-
ers in the White House sought to
exclude him. At the same time, he
attended some of the most vital de-
liberations, but there is little or no
evidence that he was an active par-
ticipant. While Secretary of De-
fense Caspar W. Weinberger and
Secretary of State George P. Shultz
voiced objections to the Iran
scheme, Bush often remained silent, according to state-
ments by others who were there.
Former secretary of state Edmund S. Muskie, a
member of the Tower commission board that investi-
gated the affair, said:
"As far as the vice president is concerned, in the sto-
ry that we developed, largely with the help of people's
recollections, the vice president is noteworthy more for
his absence than his involvement in this whole unfolding
tragedy-and it is a tragedy."
Bush's role has come under increasing scrutiny be-
cause he is preparing to launch a campaign for the pres-
idency. Bush hopes to base his campaign on the legacy
of the Reagan years and his own long experience in
high-ranking government positions, including director
of central intelligence. His political advisers have pri-
vately described Bush's experience as a "stature advan-
tage" over his rivals.
But the picture of Bush in the reports made public so
far is not that of an experienced policymaker who fore-
saw the pitfalls and flashpoints of the Iran initiative.
Rather. Bush appears to have quietly supported many
of Reagan's decisions to go ahead with the sale of weap-
ons to Iran. By these accounts, Bush did not attempt to
cool the president's ardor for winning release of the
American hostages in Lebanon. Nor did Bush spot the
dangers in the president's tendency to delegate large
amounts of authority to subordinates.
Nowhere in the evidence so far is there a single point
at which Bush attempted to stop the Iran effort, as did
former national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane.
Bush has said he had reservations about "certain as-
pects" of the Iran initiative. According to the Tower
board report, Bush expressed concern about how the
United States was "in the grip of the Israelis" during the
effort. One well-informed source said this had been a
concern Bush expressed from the early stages.
There is no record that Bush had other "reserva-
tions" about the Lan arms sales at the time they were
going on. After the initiative became public, he ex-
pressed concern about the way it was handled outside
of normal White House procedures, and he has said it
was wrong to trade arms for hostages, Like Reagan,
Bush was reluctant to acknowledge that the adminis-
tration had made such a trade.
The full story of the Iran-contra affair is not yet
known, and the congressional investigations as well as
the independent counsel's probe may eventually add
new details about Bush's role in the Iran initiative.
Bush has created much of the mystery about his role,
as he has about his other activities during the Reagan
years. The vice president has long made it a practice
not to disclose the advice he gives the president, and he
has refused to say what he told Reagan in their private
conversations about the Iran effort.
"What I do have is the ability to walk into the Oval
Office without asking anybody about it and give him my
view," Bush said at a news conference last week in Flor-
ida. "He knows that I'm not going to go out and say,
'Well, I disagreed with the president on this, or I told
him he ought to do this, but he wouldn't do it.' So when
he agrees, he knows I'm going to be supportive, and
when he disagrees, he knows I'm going to be support-
ive. I don't think the vice president ought to be adding
Approved For Release 2005/12/&tgAtd~RfP&s>L9i01i1q~9G~0611~ey0Brr3nQ."
 Reagan, however, opened the door slightly on Bush's
advice last weekAipp prvr idrFl W R16I en26OS"4 /14 :
a reporter asked if
At the end of the session
ference
,
.
Bush had objected to the Iran initiative. Reagan paused
and said firmly, "No." On Friday he revised his account,
telling a spokesman that Bush had expressed reserva-
tions, while supporting the policy.
Aside from his advice to the president, questions
have also been raised about activities of the vice pres-
ident's national security adviser, Donald P. Gregg, in
helping a secret resupply operation for the Nicaraguan
contras at a time when Congress had not resumed aid
to them.
Gre88 Pla ey d a ke role in placing a friend and for-
mer CIA operative,_ Felix. Rodr uez. as an advis r to
the El Salvadoran air force at the Il pongo -military
b a s e w ere the contra resuppmissions were origi-
nating. Gregg initially said ehad riot talkecF t oc -
riguez about the contra resupply effort, only about the
leftist insurizency in I Salvador.
But Gregg later acknowledged he had convened two
meetings in his office last August on financial problems
in the resupply missions, spurred by concerns raised by
Rodriguez about the effort.
Bush has said he was not informed of Gregg's ac-
tions, and he has staunchly defended Gregg, saying his
aide "forgot" about the meetings rather than lied about
them to reporters. When asked if he was disturbed that
he had not been told of the Gregg meeting, Bush said,
"Not in the least bit troubled."
However, other associates of the vice president say
they believe Gregg's activities have been politically
damaging to Bush, and some were particularly dis-
turbed when Bush defended Gregg recently on the CBS
News program "60 Minutes." Asked about the differ-
ence between forgetting and lying, Bush said, "Well,
maybe it's the same. I don't know. But I don't see it as a
major federal case, frankly."
Throughout the Reagan years, Bush has sought to
have a more detailed grasp of complex foreign policy
and national security issues than the president. L; very
day, the vice president is given -a special intelligence
briefing from the CIA which is more extensive than
Reagan's.
The evidence developed so far shows that the Iran
initiative was developed outside the formal decision-
making process set up to handle foreign policy for the
president. The focus of this process is supposed to be
the eight-member National Security Council, which is
made up of the president and vice president, secre-
taries of state and defense, director of central intelli-
gence, attorney general, White House chief of staff and
Treasury secretary. The paper work and debate are
supposed to flow through the council, giving the pres-
ident exposure to the views of all his advisers.
However, as the Tower board documented, the staff
of the NSC ran the Iran initiative, and decided to ex-
clude some principal members of the council from key
meetings and paperwork. For example, then-national
security adviser John M. Poindexter said in a computer
message before McFarlane went to Iran that "I don't
want a meeting with RR, Shultz and Weinberger." At
other times, Bush was excluded, and Treasury Secre-
tary James A. Baker III appears to have been left out of
almost all the discussions.
No explanation has been given for why some officials
were excluded. Bush would have had the authority to
demand to be included in any meetings, aides say. But,
they add, he may also have not been told about them.
"You can make the case he didn't engage the issue,"
Last December, the then-chairman of the Senate Se-
CI !1Vfi rn , g tv ~u sn a pr ey rb iefing on the panel's
findings. According to one source, Bush was surprised
at the amount of information he had not known about.
Afterward, Bush asked a staff member whether he had
been "systematically" excluded by others in the White
House.
Bush learned of the Iran initiative from his daily con-
tacts with Reagan at about the time it was launched in
1985, sources said. The president's schedule showed
that Bush attended at least one of the key meetings in
early August 1986, at which the wisdom of the initia-
tive was debated, but Bush's views are not recorded.
By December, after the first shipments to Iran
through Israel and the release of the Rev. Benjamin
Weir, McFarlane was urging that the initiative be
closed down, and an important White House meeting
was scheduled for Dec. 7, before McFarlane went to
London.
Shultz, Weinberger, McFarlane, Poindexter, chief of
staff Donal T. egan an epu y ir-e or john N.
1TcNt~Fion