http://www.consortiumnews.com/121900a.html
Powell's Second Scandal
The middle years of Colin Powell's military career bordered roughly
by the twin debacles of My
Lai and Iran-contra were a time for networking and advancement.
The Army footed the bill for Powell's masters degree in business at
George Washington
University. He won a promotion to lieutenant colonel and a prized White
House fellowship that
put him inside Richard Nixon's White House.
Powell's work with Nixon's Office of Management and Budget brought Powell
to the attention of
senior Nixon aides, Frank Carlucci and Caspar Weinberger, who soon
became Powell's
mentors. The high-powered contacts would prove invaluable to Powell
through the 1970s and
1980s as the personable young officer rose swiftly through the ranks.
When Ronald Reagan swept to victory in 1980, Powell's allies -- Weinberger
and Carlucci --
took over the Defense Department as secretary of defense and deputy
secretary of defense,
respectively. When they arrived at the Pentagon, Powell, then a full
colonel, was there to greet
them.
But before Powell could move to the top echelons of the U.S. military,
he needed to earn his
first general's star. That required a few command assignments in the
field. So, under Carlucci's
sponsorship, Powell received brief assignments at Army bases in Kansas
and Colorado.
By the time Powell returned to the Pentagon in 1983, at the age of 46,
he had a general's star
on his shoulder. In the parlance of the Pentagon, he was a water-walker.
Ground Zero
On June 29, 1983, Colin Powell's spit-polished shoes clicked through
the Outer Ring power
corridors of the Pentagon. Powell was again in the terrain he knew
best, his professional home:
official Washington, what he often called "Ground Zero."
He also was back to his future, once more on the fast track to success.
But Powell had returned to an administration courting danger. Caught
up in an anti-communist
crusade around the world, President Reagan's men were engaged in brush-fire
wars against
what they considered the Soviet Union's surrogates. Reagan's operatives
also were battling
Democrats in Congress whom the White House sometimes viewed as little
more than
Moscow's fellow-travelers.
At the Central Intelligence Agency, the aging director William J. Casey
was pressuring the
Soviet Union on all fronts, through wars that often pitted desperately
poor peasants and rival
tribes against one another. Whether in Angola or Mozambique, in Nicaragua
or Guatemala, in
Lebanon or Afghanistan, Casey was spoiling for fights: to finish off
the Cold War in his lifetime.
While Casey plotted at CIA, the often inattentive Ronald Reagan snapped
to when battlefield
maps were put before him, with pins representing Nicaraguan contras
outmaneuvering other
pins for forces loyal to Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government.
Reagan, the onetime
war-movie actor, and Casey, the onetime World War II spymaster, loved
the game of
international conflict and intrigue.
But many of their fiercest battles were fought in Washington. Liberal
Democrats, led by old
political war-horse, House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, thought
that Reagan and Casey
were overly zealous, maybe even a bit crazy. Democrats, as well as
some Republicans,
suspected, too, that Casey, the mumbling dissembler, was treating Congress
like a fifth
column, like agents of influence slipped behind his lines to disrupt
his operations.
Still, the hub of any American military activity -- whether overt or
covert -- remained the
Pentagon. It was from the Defense Department that the special operations
units were
dispatched, that the military supplies were apportioned, that the most
sensitive electronic
intelligence was collected. All these military responsibilities were
vital to Casey and Reagan, but
came under the jurisdiction of Defense Secretary Weinberger.
To Casey's and Reagan's dismay, the Pentagon brass favored greater caution
when it came to
offending Congress. After all, Congress held the strings to the Pentagon's
bulging purse. Maybe
Casey could blow off a senator or offend a congressman, but the Pentagon
could not detonate
too many bridges to its rear.
The 'Filter'
Onto that political battlefield stepped newly minted Brig. Gen. Colin
Powell, who had been
named military assistant to Secretary Weinberger. It was a position
that made Powell the
gatekeeper for the defense secretary, one of Reagan's closest advisers.
Top Pentagon players quickly learned that Powell was more than Weinberger's
coat holder or
calendar keeper. Powell was the "filter," the guy who saw everything
when it passed into the
Secretary for action and who oversaw everything that needed follow-up
when it came out.
Powell's access to Weinberger's most sensitive information would be
a mixed blessing,
however. Some of the aggressive covert operations ordered by Reagan
and managed by
Casey were spinning out of control. Like a mysterious gravitational
force, the operations were
pulling in the Pentagon, whatever the reservations of the senior generals.
Already, the Democrats were up in arms over military construction in
Honduras, which Reagan
insisted was "temporary," but which looked rather permanent. In El
Salvador, U.S. military
advisers were training a brutal army which was slaughtering political
opponents and unarmed
villagers in a bloody counterinsurgency war. In Costa Rica, the U.S.
embassy's "mil-group" was
a bustle of activity as Washington tried to push neutralist Costa Rica
into the Nicaraguan
conflict.
Around all these initiatives were U.S. military officers and non-commissioned
trainers who were
responsible to Pentagon authority. The officers reported to the Southern
Command in Panama
and "Southcom" reported to the Pentagon, where at the end of the information
flow chart sat the
Secretary of Defense and his "filter," Colin Powell.
Yellow Fruit
This expanding super nova of covert operations began to swallow the
Pentagon a few months
after Powell's return. On Sept. 1, 1983, an Army civilian, William
T. Golden, stumbled onto
billing irregularities at a U.S. intelligence front company in suburban
Annandale, Va., which was
handling secret supplies for Central America.
The supply operation fell under the code name "Yellow Fruit," an ironic
reference to the region's
banana republics. The billing irregularities seemed modest at first,
the doctoring of records to
conceal vacation flights to Europe. But Golden began to suspect that
the corruption went
deeper.
By October 1983, Yellow Fruit had turned thoroughly rotten, and the
Army began a criminal
inquiry. "The more we dig into that," Gen. Maxwell R. Thurman, vice
chief of the U.S. Army, later
told congressional Iran-contra investigators, "the more we find out
that it goes into agencies
using money, procuring all sorts of materiel."
Reacting to the scandal, Thurman implemented new secret accounting procedures
for
supporting CIA activities. "We have tried to do our best to tighten
up our procedures," Thurman
said.
But the muck of the Central American operations was oozing out elsewhere,
too, as Casey
recruited unsavory characters from the region to carry out his bidding.
One of the worst of
these allies was Panama's Gen. Manuel Noriega, whom Casey found useful
funneling money
and supplies to the Nicaraguan contras fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's
leftist Sandinista
government.
In September 1983, Powell traveled with Weinberger on an inspection
tour of Central America.
On that trip, they were accompanied by an eager Marine major from the
National Security
Council staff. His name was Oliver North. "From the moment we were
airborne, he started
worming his way into Weinberger's presence," Powell wrote in My American
Journey.
Powell was even more contemptuous of Noriega, "an unappealing man, with
his pockmarked
face, beady, darting eyes, and arrogant swagger," according to Powell.
Meeting Noriega, Powell
claimed to have "the crawling sense that I was in the presence of evil."
There was also intelligence that Noriega was working with Colombian
drug traffickers. Still,
Powell has made no claim that he sought Noriega's ouster from the U.S.
payroll. "Cold War
politics sometimes made for creepy bedfellows," Powell rationalized.
Powell's retrospective disdain for Noriega also does not square with
the enthusiasm some of
Powell's Pentagon friends expressed for the Panamanian at the time.
Powell's pal, Richard
Armitage, the assistant defense secretary for inter-American affairs,
hosted a Washington
lunch in November 1983, honoring Noriega. "Pentagon officials greeted
Noriega's rise to power
with great satisfaction," noted author John Dinges.
Noriega's visit coincided with another growing political problem for
the Reagan administration,
the refusal of an angry Congress to continue funding the contra war
in Nicaragua. The rebel
force was gaining a reputation for brutality, as stories of rapes,
summary executions and
massacres flowed back to Washington. Led by Speaker O'Neill, the Democratic-controlled
House capped the CIA's contra funding at $24 million in 1983 and then
moved to ban contra aid
altogether.
Lebanon Strife
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Reagan's policies were encountering more
trouble. Reagan had
deployed Marines as peacekeepers in Beirut, but he also authorized
the USS New Jersey to
shell Islamic villages in the Bekaa Valley, an action that killed civilians
and angered the Shiite
Moslems.
On Oct. 23, 1983, Islamic militants struck back, sending a suicide truck
bomber through U.S.
security positions and demolishing a high-rise Marine barracks. A total
of 241 Marines died.
"When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American
'referee' had taken
sides," Powell wrote later, though it was not clear that he ever actively
opposed the ill-fated
intervention in Lebanon.
After the bombing, U.S. Marines were withdrawn to the USS Guam off Lebanon's
coast. But
Casey ordered secret counter-terrorism operations against Islamic radicals.
As retaliation, the
Shiites targeted more Americans. Another bomb destroyed the U.S. Embassy
and killed most
of the CIA station.
Casey dispatched veteran CIA officer William Buckley to fill the void.
But on March 14, 1984,
Buckley was spirited off the streets of Beirut to face torture and
eventually death. The grisly
scenes -- in the Middle East and in Central America -- were set for
the Iran-contra scandal.
Powell's Iran-Contra Role
Back at the Pentagon, Colin Powell might have felt at ease in the familiar
environs. But
Washington was indeed about to become "Ground Zero."
In 1984-85, as the Iran-contra storm clouds built, one-star Gen. Colin
Powell was the “ilter”for
information flowing to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
After the scandal broke in 1986, Powell managed to escape its consequences,
in part, by
claiming that much of what Weinberger knew about the secret deals had
not gone through that
“ilter.”
Powell said he knew next to nothing about unlawful 1985 shipments of
U.S. weapons from
Israel to Iran -- or about illegal third-country financing of the Nicaraguan
contra rebels.
But was the general lying?
The documentary record makes clear that his boss, Weinberger, knew a
great deal -- and the
evidence suggests that so did Powell.
Weinberger was one of the first officials outside the White House to
learn that Reagan had put
the arm on Saudi Arabia to give the contras $1 million a month in 1984,
as Congress was
cutting off the CIA's covert assistance through what was known as the
Boland Amendment.
Handling the contra-funding arrangements was Saudi ambassador Prince
Bandar, a close
friend of both Weinberger and Powell. Bandar and Powell had met in
the 1970s and were
frequent tennis partners in the 1980s.
So it was plausible -- perhaps even likely -- that Bandar would have
discussed the contra
funding with Powell, Weinberger or both. But exactly when Weinberger
learned of the Saudi
contributions and what Powell knew remain unclear to this day.
The Iran-contra trial of Weinberger for alleged obstruction of justice
-- which was set for early
1993 and was expected to include testimony by Powell -- was derailed
by President George
H.W. Bush on Christmas Eve 1992 when he pardoned Weinberger and five
other Iran-contra
defendants.
What is known from the public record, however, is that on June 20, 1984,
Weinberger attended
a State Department meeting about the contra operation. His scribbled
notes cited the need to
"plan for other sources for $." But secrecy would be vital, the defense
secretary understood.
"Keep US fingerprints off," he wrote.
In summer 1984, Gen. John Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
learned from a
foreign visitor about the Saudi money for the contras. Vessey told
Weinberger, who gave
Vessey the impression of surprise. "I reported it to Secretary Weinberger,"
Vessey said in a
deposition. "His reaction was about the same as mine, sort of surprise
first that [Saudi Arabia]
would do it."
In 1985, when the Saudis doubled their annual contra gift from $12 million
to $25 million, Vessey
quickly passed on word to Weinberger again. This time, the record is
clear that the Defense
Secretary understood that the contribution to buy weapons was part
of the larger contra-aid
strategy.
"Jack Vessey in office alone," Weinberger wrote on March 13, 1985. "Bandar
is giving $25
million to Contras -- so all we need is non-lethal aid."
The Iran Initiative
Meanwhile, the White House was maneuvering into dangerous geopolitical
territory, too, in its
policy toward Iran. The Israelis were interested in trading U.S. weapons
to Iran's radical Islamic
government to expand Israel's influence in that important Middle Eastern
country. It was also
believed that Iran might help free American hostages held by Islamic
extremists in Lebanon.
Carrying the water for this strategy within the Reagan administration
was national security
adviser Robert McFarlane. He circulated a draft presidential order
in June 1985, proposing an
overture to supposed Iranian moderates.
The paper passed through Weinberger's "filter," Colin Powell. In his
memoirs, Powell called the
proposal "a stunner" and a grab by McFarlane for "Kissingerian immortality."
After reading the
draft, Weinberger scribbled in the margins, "this is almost too absurd
to comment on."
On June 30, 1985, as the paper was circulating inside the administration,
Reagan declared that
the United States would give no quarter to terrorism. "Let me further
make it plain to the
assassins in Beirut and their accomplices, wherever they may be, that
America will never make
concessions to terrorists," the president said.
But in July 1985, Weinberger, Powell and McFarlane met to discuss details
for doing just that.
Iran wanted 100 anti-tank TOW missiles that would be delivered through
Israel, according to
Weinberger's notes. Reagan gave his approval, but the White House wanted
to keep the
operation a closely held secret. The shipments were to be handled with
"maximum
compartmentalization," the notes said.
On Aug. 20, 1985, the Israelis delivered the first 96 missiles to Iran.
It was a pivotal moment for
the Reagan administration. With that missile shipment, the Reagan administration
stepped over
an important legal line. The transfer violated laws requiring congressional
notification for
trans-shipment of U.S. weapons and prohibiting arms to Iran or any
other nation designated a
terrorist state. Violation of either statute could be a felony.
A Mysterious Meeting
The available evidence from that period suggests that Weinberger and
Powell were very much
in the loop, even though they may have opposed the arms-to-Iran policy.
On Aug. 22, two days
after the first delivery, Israel notified McFarlane of the completed
shipment. From aboard Air
Force One, McFarlane called Weinberger.
When Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington,
McFarlane rushed
to the Pentagon to meet Weinberger and Powell. The 40-minute meeting
started at 7:30 p.m.
That much is known from the Iran-contra public record. But the substance
of the conversation
remains in dispute. McFarlane said that at the meeting with Weinberger
and Powell, he
discussed Reagan's approval of the missile transfer and the need to
replenish Israeli
stockpiles.
If that is true, Weinberger and Powell were in the middle of a criminal
conspiracy. But
Weinberger denied McFarlane's account, and Powell insisted that he
had only a fuzzy memory
of the meeting without a clear recollection of any completed arms shipment.
"My recollection is that Mr. McFarlane described to the Secretary the
so-called Iran Initiative and
he gave to the Secretary a sort of a history of how we got where we
were that particular day
and some of the thinking that gave rise to the possibility of going
forward ... and what the
purposes of such an initiative would be," Powell said in an Iran-contra
deposition two years
later.
Congressional attorney Joseph Saba asked Powell if McFarlane had mentioned
that Israel
already had supplied weapons to Iran. "I don't recall specifically,"
Powell answered. "I just don't
recall." When Saba asked about any notes, Powell responded, "there
were none on our side."
In a later interview with the FBI, Powell said he learned at that meeting
that there "was to be a
transfer of some limited amount of materiel" to Iran. But he did not
budge on his claim of
ignorance about the crucial fact that the first shipment had already
gone and that the Reagan
administration had promised the Israelis replenishment for the shipped
missiles. To have
admitted that would have been to admit being part of a criminal conspiracy.
This claim of only prospective knowledge would be key to Powell's Iran-contra
defense. But it
made little sense for McFarlane to learn of the missile delivery and
the need for replenishment,
then hurry to the Pentagon, only to debate a future policy that, in
reality, was already being
implemented.
Guilty Knowledge
The behavior of Powell and Weinberger in the following days also suggested
that they knew an
arms-for-hostage swap was under way.
According to Weinberger's diary, he and Powell eagerly awaited a release
of an American
hostage in Lebanon, the payoff for the clandestine weapons shipment
to Iran. In early
September 1985, Weinberger dispatched a Pentagon emissary to meet with
Iranians in Europe,
another step that would seem to make little sense if Weinberger and
Powell were indeed in the
dark about the details of the arms-for-hostage operation.
At the same time, McFarlane told Israel that the United States was prepared
to replace 500
Israeli missiles, an assurance that would have required Weinberger's
clearance since the
missiles would be coming from Defense Department stockpiles.
On Sept. 14, 1985, Israel delivered the second shipment, 408 more missiles
to Iran. The next
day, one hostage, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, was released in Beirut. Back
at the Pentagon,
Weinberger penned in his diary a cryptic reference to "a delivery I
have for our prisoners."
But when the Iran-contra scandal broke more than a year later, Weinberger
and Powell would
plead faulty memories about the Weir case, too. Saba asked Powell if
he knew of a linkage
between an arms delivery and Weir's release. "No, I have no recollection
of that," Powell
answered.
After Weir's freedom, the job of replenishing the Israel missiles fell
to White House aide Oliver
North who turned to Powell for logistical assistance.
"My original point of contact was General Colin Powell, who was going
directly to his immediate
superior, Secretary Weinberger," North testified in 1987. But in their
later sworn testimony,
Powell and Weinberger continued to insist that they had no idea that
508 missiles had already
been shipped via Israel to Iran and that Israel was expecting replenishment
of its stockpiles.
Secret Intercept
Powell stuck to that story even as evidence emerged that he and Weinberger
read top-secret
intelligence intercepts in September and October 1985 in which Iranians
described the U.S.
arms delivery.
One of those reports, dated Oct. 2, 1985, and marked with the high-level
classification,
"SECRET SPOKE ORCON," was signed by Lt. Gen. William Odom, the director
of the National
Security Agency.
According to Odom's report, a sensitive electronic intercept had picked
up a phone
conversation a day earlier between two Iranian officials, identified
as "Mr. Asghari" who was in
Europe and "Mohsen Kangarlu" who was in Teheran.
"A large part of the conversation had to do with details on the delivery
of several more
shipments of weapons into Iran," wrote Odom. "Asghari then pressed
Kangarlu to provide a list
of what he wanted the 'other four planes' to bring. ... Kangarlu said
that he already had provided
a list. Asghari said that those items were for the first two planes.
Asghari reminded Kangarlu
that there were Phoenix missiles on the second plane which were not
on the first. ... [Asghari]
said that a flight would be made this week."
In 1987, when congressional Iran-contra investigators asked about the
intercepts and other
evidence of Pentagon knowledge, Powell again pleaded a weak memory.
He repeatedly used
phrases such as "I cannot specifically recall." At one point, Powell
said, "To my recollection, I
don't have a recollection."
When asked if Weinberger kept a diary that might shed more light on
the issue, Powell
responded, "The Secretary, to my knowledge, did not keep a diary. Whatever
notes he kept, I
don't know how he uses them or what he does with them. He does not
have a diary of this ilk,
no." As for his own notebooks, Powell announced that he had destroyed
them.
Greasing the Skids
In the next phase of the evolving Iran operation -- the direct delivery
of U.S. missiles -- Powell
would play an even bigger role.
Indeed, the disastrous policy might never have happened, or might have
stopped much sooner,
except for the work of Colin Powell.
In early 1986, Powell short-circuited the Pentagon covert procurement
system that was put in
place after the Yellow Fruit scandal. Defense procurement officials
said that without Powell's
interference, the system would have alerted the military brass that
thousands of TOW anti-tank
missiles and other sophisticated weaponry were headed to Iran, a terrorist
state.
But Powell used his bureaucratic skills to slip the missiles and the
other hardware out of U.S.
Army inventories.
The story of Powell's maneuvers can be found in a close reading of thousands
of pages from
depositions of Pentagon officials, who pointed to Weinberger's assistant
as the key Iran-contra
action officer within the Defense Department.
Powell insisted that he and Weinberger minimized the Pentagon's role.
Powell said they
delivered the missiles to the CIA under the Economy Act, which regulates
transfers between
government agencies. "We treated the TOW transfer like garbage to be
gotten out of the house
quickly," Powell wrote in My American Journey.
But the Economy Act argument was disingenuous, because the Pentagon
always uses the
Economy Act when it moves weapons to the CIA. Powell's account also
obscured his unusual
actions in arranging the shipments without giving senior officers the
information that Pentagon
procedures required, even on sensitive covert activities.
Weinberger officially handed Powell the job of shipping the missiles
to Iran on Jan. 17, 1986.
That was the day Reagan signed an intelligence "finding," a formal
authorization to pull arms
from U.S. stockpiles and ship them to Iran.
In testimony, Powell dated his first knowledge of the missile transfers
to this moment, an
important distinction because if he had been aware of the earlier shipments
- as much evidence
suggests - he potentially would have been implicated in a felony.
'Executive' Orders
A day after Reagan's "finding," Jan. 18, 1986, Powell instructed Gen.
Max Thurman, then acting
Army chief of staff, to prepare for a transfer of 4,000 TOW anti-tank
missiles but Powell made
no mention of Iran. "I gave him absolutely no indication of the destination
of the missiles," Powell
testified.
Though kept in the dark, Thurman began the process of transferring the
TOWs to the CIA, the
first step of the journey. Powell's orders "bypassed the formal [covert
procedures] on the
ingress line," Thurman acknowledged in later Iran-contra testimony.
"The first shipment is made
without a complete wring-out through all of the procedural steps."
As Powell's strange orders rippled through the top echelon of the Pentagon,
Lt. Gen. Vincent M.
Russo, the assistant deputy chief of staff for logistics, called Powell
to ask about the operation.
Powell immediately circumvented Russo's inquiry. In effect, Powell
pulled rank by arranging for
"executive instructions" commanding Russo to deliver the first 1,000
TOWs, no questions
asked.
"It was a little unusual," commented then Army chief of staff, Gen.
John A. Wickham Jr. "All
personal visit or secure phone call, nothing in writing -- because
normally through the [covert
logistics office] a procedure is established so that records are kept
in a much more formal
process. ... I felt very uneasy about this process. And I also felt
uneasy about the notification
dimension to the Congress."
On Jan. 29, 1986, thanks to Powell's orders, 1,000 U.S. TOWs were loaded
onto pallets at
Redstone Arsenal and transferred to the airfield at Anniston, Ala.
As the shipment progressed,
senior Pentagon officers grew edgier about Powell withholding the destination
and other details.
The logistics personnel also wanted proof that somebody was paying
for the missiles.
Major Christopher Simpson, who was making the flight arrangements, later
told Iran-contra
investigators that Gen. Russo "was very uncomfortable with no paperwork
to support the
mission request. He wasn't going to 'do nothin', as he said, without
seeing some money. ...'no
tickey, no laundry.'"
The money for the first shipment was finally deposited into a CIA account
in Geneva on Feb. 11,
1986. Three days later, Russo released the 1,000 TOWs to the CIA. The
first direct U.S. arms
shipment to Iran was under way, although the Israelis were still acting
as middlemen.
Legal Worries
Inside the Pentagon, concerns grew about Powell's unorthodox arrangements
and the identity
of the missile recipients. Major Simpson told congressional investigators
that he would have
rung alarm bells if he had known the TOWs were headed to Iran.
"In the three years that I had worked there, I had been instructed ...
by the leadership ... never to
do anything illegal, and I would have felt that we were doing something
illegal," Simpson said.
Even without knowing that the missiles were going to Iran, Simpson expressed
concern about
whether the requirement to notify Congress had been met. He got advice
from a Pentagon
lawyer that the 1986 intelligence authorization act, which mandated
a "timely" notice to
Congress on foreign arms transfers, had an "impact on this particular
mission."
Major Simpson asked Gen. Russo, who got another legal opinion from the
Army general
counsel who concurred that Congress must be notified. The issue was
bumped up to
Secretary of the Army John Marsh. Though still blind about the shipment's
destination, the Army
high command was inclined to stop the peculiar operation in its tracks.
At this key moment, Colin Powell intervened again. Simpson said, "General
Powell was asking
General Russo to reassure the secretary of the Army that notification
was being handled, ... that
it had been addressed and it was taken care of." Despite Powell's assurance,
however,
Congress had not been notified.
Army Secretary Marsh shared the skepticism about Powell's operation.
On Feb. 25, Marsh
called a meeting of senior Army officers and ordered Russo to "tell
General Powell of my
concern with regard to adequate notification being given to Congress,"
Russo later testified.
Marsh also instructed Russo to keep a careful chronology of events.
Army chief of staff Wickham went further. He demanded that a memo on
congressional
notification be sent to Powell. "The chief wanted it in writing," stated
Army Lt. Gen. Arthur E.
Brown, who delivered the memo to Powell on March 7, 1986.
'Handle It'
Five days later, Powell handed the memo to President Reagan's national
security adviser John
Poindexter with the advice: "Handle it ... however you plan to do it,"
Powell later testified.
Poindexter's plan for "timely notification" was to tell Congress on
the last day of the Reagan
presidency, Jan. 20, 1989. Poindexter stuck the Pentagon memo into
a White House safe,
along with the secret "finding" on the Iran missile shipments.
While debate over notification bubbled, others in the Pentagon fretted
over the possibly illegal
destination of the missiles. Col. John William McDonald, who oversaw
covert supply, objected
when he learned that key Army officials had no idea where the weapons
were headed.
"One [concern] was inadvertent provision of supplies to the [Nicaraguan]
contras in violation of
the Boland Amendment," which prohibited military shipments to the contras,
McDonald testified.
"The second issue was inadvertent supply to countries that were on
the terrorist list. ... There is
a responsibility to judge the legality of the request."
When McDonald was asked by congressional investigators how he would
have reacted if told
the weapons were going to Iran, he responded, "I would have told General
Thurman ... that I
would believe that the action was illegal and that Iran was clearly
identified as one of the nations
on the terrorist list for whom we could not transfer weapons."
But when McDonald joined other Pentagon officers in appealing to Powell
about the missile
shipment's destination, they again were told not to worry. Powell "reiterated
[that it was] the
responsibility of the recipient" agency, the CIA, to notify Congress,
"and that the Army did not
have the responsibility to do that."
HAWK Shipment
Then, in March 1986, Powell conveyed a second order, this time for 284
HAWK antiaircraft
missile parts and 500 HAWK missiles. This time, Powell’ order set off
alarms not only over
legal questions, but whether the safety of U.S forces might be jeopardized.
The HAWK order would force a drawdown of U.S. supplies to a dangerous
level. Henry Gaffney,
a senior supply official, warned Powell that "you're going to have
to start tearing it out of the
Army's hide."
But the Pentagon again followed Powell's orders. It stripped its shelves
of 15 spare parts for
HAWK missiles that were protecting U.S. forces in Europe and elsewhere
in the world.
"I can only trust that somebody who is a patriot ... and interested
in the survival of this nation ...
made the decision that the national policy objectives were worth the
risk of a temporary
drawdown of readiness," said Lt. Gen. Peter G. Barbules.
If there had been an air attack on U.S. forces in Europe during the
drawdown, the HAWK
missile defense batteries might not have had the necessary spare parts
to counter an enemy
attack.
Implemented by Colin Powell, the Iran initiative had taken priority
over both legal safeguards
inside the Pentagon and over the safety of U.S. soldiers around the
world.
Bartcop.com: More Freedom George II Wants to Stop
http://www.bartcop.com/late.htm
BushWatch:Exposing George II
http://alana.moonvine.org/bw/bush.htm
BuzzFlash.com: News and Comment
http://www.buzzflash.com/
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"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed
and so many professional
athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle
slots in Reserve and
National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class
discrimination strikes
me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created
equal and owe equal
allegience to their country."
--Colin Powell, "My American Journey," p. 148
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