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| Video:
Cover up - The Iran-Contra affair part
1 (8 min 43 sec) part 2 (12 min 05
sec) (.wmv format) |
George Bush Jr. has appointed numerous felons and others from
the Iran Contra scandal to prominent positions in his current
administration. He has suspiciously appointed Iran-contra insider, Lee Hamilton, to
head the 9-11 investigation after a failed attempt to appoint wanted war
criminal Henry Kissinger. His advisors in Latin American affairs are none other
than Otto reich and Roger Noriega. Both implicated in Iran-contra and
behind the recent coup in Haiti. Some people may not really be all that clued in on
what happened during the Iran-Contra scandal. So I decided to put together this
timely graphic in effort to explain what happened and why his dealings with
these people, at a time when government honesty is so crucial, should be held
under close scrutiny. |
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|
| The
Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History |
|
| 1980 |
Oct. -According to unproven
allegations, the Reagan-Bush campaign makes secret pact with Iran to delay
release of the Embassy hostages until after the November election, in
return for future covert arms sales. This theory is known as the 'October
surprise.' |
| 1981 |
Jan 20 -- Hostages held in the American Embassy in
Iran released. Reagan takes oath of office. |
| 1985 |
July -- An Israeli official
suggests a deal with Iran to then-national security adviser Robert
McFarlane, saying the transfer of arms could lead to release of Americans
being held hostage in Lebanon. McFarlane brings the message to President
Reagan.
|
| Aug. 30 -- The first planeload of U.S.-made weapons is sent from
Israel to Tehran. Two weeks later the first American Hostage is released.
|
| Dec. 5 -- Reagan secretly signs a presidential 'finding,' or
authorization, describing the operation with Iran as an arms-for-hostages
deal. |
| 1986 |
Jan. 17 -- Reagan signs a finding authorizing CIA
participation in the sales and ordering the process kept secret from
Congress.
|
| April -- Then-White House aide Oliver North writes a memo
outlining plans to use $12 million in profits from Iran arms sales for
Contra aid.
|
| Nov. 5 -- Bush records in his diary "On the news at this
time is the question of the hostages ... I'm one of the few people that
know fully the details ... it is not a subject we can talk about
...."
|
| Nov 13 -- Bush's diary: "I remember Watergate. I remember
the way things oozed out. It is important to be level, to be honest, to be
direct. We are not saying anything."
|
| Nov. 25 -- Attorney General Edwin Meese III discloses to the
public that $10 million to $30 million in arms-sale profits were diverted
to the Contras. Bush's diary: "The administration in disarray --
foreign policy in disarray -- cover-up -- who knew what when?..." |
| 1987 |
Jan 1 -- Bush's diary "These
so-called findings on Iran -- I'll be honest -- I don't remember any of
them, and I don't believe that they were even signed by the president,
frankly. But sometimes there are meetings over in the White House with
Shultz, NSC guy [McFarlane? -ed], Casey and Weinberger, and they make some
decisions that the president signs off on. ... And the facts are that the
Vice President is not in the decision making loop."
|
| May 11 -- McFarlane testifies to Congress that Reagan instructed
his staff in 1984 to find ways around the congressional ban on U.S.
military aid to the Contras. |
| 1989 |
Jan -- Just before Reagan leaves office, the White
House computer is purged of data, which is backed-up to tape. About
two-dozen tapes mysteriously disappear once the aides have finished.
|
| July 25 -- U.S. District Judge Harold Greene dismisses theft and
wire fraud charges against Poindexter. Poindexter remains charged with
conspiracy, two counts of obstructing Congress and two counts of making
false statements. |
| 1990 |
Feb. 5 -- Greene orders Reagan to
give a unusual videotaped testimony and immediately turn over 33 excerpts
from his diaries. The former president invokes constitutionally questionable doctrine of executive privilege, made famous by Richard
Milhous Nixon. On the videotape he says he never had "any
inkling" that his aides were arming the Contras.
|
| April 7 -- Poindexter is convicted of all five charges. |
| 1991 |
Feb. 28 -- Poindexter appeals all five convictions.
|
| June 16 -- Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger is
indicted on five felony counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and
making false statements.
|
| Aug. 26 -- Because of a hung jury, U.S. District Judge Royce
Lamberth declares a mistrial in the case of CIA officer Clair George,
accused of concealing from Congress his knowledge of the Iran-Contra
affair.
|
| Nov. 26 -- Duane Clarridge, ex-head of the CIA's Western
European Division, is indicted for allegedly lying about his knowledge of
Iran-Contra. |
| 1992 |
Dec. 9 -- George is convicted of
lying to Congress about the affair in 1986. He becomes the highest-ranking
CIA spook yet convicted of felonies committed in the name of duty.
|
| Dec. 24 -- President Bush grants pardons to Weinberger, former
assistant secretary of State Elliott Abrams, Clarridge, Fiers, George and
McFarlane. |
| Today:
a half-dozen alumni of
that episode have found prominent jobs in the Bush administration. |
 |
The most recent is former National Security
Adviser John Poindexter, 65. Poindexter was convicted in 1990 on five
felony charges of conspiracy, making false statements to Congress and
obstructing congressional inquiries. This man is in charge of the
"total information awareness" citizen tracking database. He
was also head of "Operation Phoenix" in Indo-China where
kidnapping and torture were commonplace. Learn more about him Here |
 |
Another former Iran-Contra defendant is
Elliott Abrams. He now serves as Bush's special White House assistant
for democracy and human rights. An assistant secretary of state under
Reagan, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress,
then was pardoned by the first President Bush. |
 |
Otto Reich, the State Department's top
official for Latin America. From 1983 to 1986, Reich led a State
Department office accused of a covert domestic-propaganda effort against
Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. |
|
Other characters from Iran-Contra given
jobs by Bush: |
 |
--Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
Questions linger over the former Defense Department official's 1986
contacts with Israel on the Iran arms sales. |
| Editor's note: I recently spoke with a relative of his
and the verdict we came to regarding Mr. Armitage is that he's actually
a really decent guy and quite possibly an unwitting liberal, but don't
tell him that. |
 |
--U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte. His service
in the 1980s as ambassador to Honduras, which the U.S.-supported Contra
rebels used as a base, has drawn criticism. |
 |
--Budget Director Mitch Daniels. As Reagan's
political director in 1986 and 1987, Daniels helped oversee a White
House damage-control effort. |
|
A specter of the Iran-Contra affair is haunting
Washington. Even some of the people and countries are the same. And the
methods - particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed
individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with
official policy - are definitely the same |
| |
| The most
glaringly obvious crime would be the American funded and trained coup in
Haiti. |
| When Aristide was kidnapped and held captive,
the rebels held aloft American Flags, not Haitian flags. Two Iran-contra
felons have been linked to this illegal coup of a democratically elected
government: Otto
Reich was appointed by GW Bush assistant secretary of state for western
hemisphere affairs and John Negroponte was appointed US ambassador to
the United Nations A more detailed explanation of what occurred in
Haiti can be found here.
|
| Iran-Contra alumnus
Michael Ledeen (and close Perle associate) has renewed ties with his old
acquaintance, Manichur Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant who became
the key link between the NSC's Oliver North, the operational head of
Iran-Contra, and the so-called "moderates" in the Islamic
Republic. |
To what end? It appears that certain elements in the
Pentagon leadership, specifically Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Douglas Feith, are trying to sabotage sensitive talks between Tehran and
the State Department on cooperation over al-Qaeda and other pressing
issues affecting Afghanistan and Iraq.
They think that Ledeen's old friend Ghorbanifar can help, according to
Newsday, which reported that two of Feith's senior aides -
without notice to the other agencies - have held several meetings with
the Iranian, whom the CIA has long considered "an intelligence
fabricator and nuisance".
|
| US aircraft and special operations
force intercepted and destroyed a residential compound and two small
convoys that were heading from Iraq into Syria in mid-June, killing as
many as 80 civilians. They then subdued and arrested five Syrian guards
across the border, taking them back to Iraq, where they were held and
interrogated over the strong objections of the State Department for five
days. |
| For what purpose? The Pentagon says that it thought
senior Saddam officials were trying to make a run for it on a smuggling
route. But an expose last month by The New Yorker suggested that the
raid and arrests may have been part of a deliberate effort to inflame
tensions with Damascus and thus put an end to remarkably close
cooperation between Syria, the CIA and the State Department in the
campaign against al-Qaeda.
|
| Certain
"high-level circles within the administration" were reported
by the right-wing Washington Times to be hoping to persuade
Chinese military officers to co-sponsor a coup with their North Korean
counterparts against leader Kim Jong-il. |
While it is not clear the proposals have been acted on
concretely, the Times noted that the Pentagon leadership disagrees
strongly with the State Department's efforts to engage Kim in talks to
persuade him to abandon his nuclear-weapons program in exchange for a
non-aggression pledge.
Just before Korea agreed to resume talks recently, Under Secretary of
State John Bolton, widely considered to be much closer to the Pentagon
hawks than his superiors at the State Department, delivered a blistering
attack on Kim in what was seen by analysts as a deliberate provocation.
|
| Anonymous
"senior administration officials" informed a prominent
conservative columnist of a covert CIA operative (whose name he then
published) jeopardizing her career and possibly exposing numerous
ongoing covert actions and agents who worked with her. |
To what end? The agent is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a
retired career foreign service officer who publicly exposed Bush's
now-infamous assertion that Iraq had tried to buy uranium yellowcake in
Africa as a fabrication.
While some analysts have said the disclosure of his wife's identity, a
felony under US law, was an attempt at retaliation, he charged this
week that the move "was clearly designed to intimidate others from
coming forward" to tell what they know about the administration's
manipulation of intelligence.
|
|
Now let's take a look at who Bush
appointed to head the 9-11 investigation after the failed attempt to
have Henry Kissinger do the deed: |
| "......former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairman of
the House select committee investigating the Iran-contra affair, was
shown ample evidence against Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but he
did not probe their wrongdoing. Why did Hamilton choose not
to investigate? In a late 1980s interview aired on PBS 'Frontline,'
Hamilton said that he did not think it would have been 'good for the
country' to put the public through another impeachment trial. In Lee
Hamilton's view, it was better to keep the public in the dark than to
bring to light another Watergate, with all the implied ramifications.
When Hamilton was chairman of the House committee investigating
Iran-contra, he took the word of senior Reagan administration officials
when they claimed Bush and Reagan were 'out of the loop.' Independent
counsel Lawrence Walsh and White House records later proved that Reagan
and Bush had been very much in the loop. If Hamilton had looked into the
matter instead of accepting the Reagan administration's word, the
congressional investigation would have shown the public the truth.
Hamilton later said he should not have believed the Reagan officials.
However, today, George W. Bush is considering appointing Hamilton UN
ambassador." |
sources:
Wrestling for the
Truth of 9/11
new dealings
with the same people
Convicted
felons responsible for thousands of deaths are calling the shots at the White
House
Lee
Hamilton
more on Iran Contra
Lost History:
Reagan-Bush Crime Syndicate
DARPA,
PNAC and the Perfect Killing Machine
A Bigger, Badder
Sequel to Iran-Contra
|
