Senator cites North alone for contra connection

Press, 18 December 1986, Page 11

Senator cites North alone for contra connection

NZPA-Reuter Washington

A key Senate investigator has blamed the former White House aide, Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, for diverting Iran arms sale profits to Nicaraguan rebels, and said he believed that President Ronald Reagan and the former National Security Adviser, Admiral John Poindexter, did not authorise the scheme.

The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, David Durenberger, said yesterday that he came to those conclusions after a day in which his panel questioned the White House Chief-of-Staff, Donald Regan, for nearly five hours, and the Secretary of State, George Shultz, for more than three hours.

Mr Durenberger also said he would ask the panel today to formally respond to Mr Reagan’s request that Colonel North, and Admiral Poindexter be granted limited immunity in exchange for their testimony. “It is clear after today where we had the testimony of the Secretary of State and the person closest to the President of the United States (Mr Regan) that whoever pulled it off did it without proper ...

authority and that person is, by all other evidence, Ollie North,” Mr Durenberger said. The Minnesota Republican said he was also convinced “that the President of the United States had nothing to do with the authorisation” to divert profits to contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan Government.

Mr Durenberger said he concluded that while Mr Reagan “clearly wanted the contras supported that in no way did he want that support to come from illegimate or illegal means.”

Admiral Poindexter “didn’t pull off the scam. That’s Ollie North’s work,” said Mr Durenberger. But despite those conclusions, he and other senators said there were a number of questions about the scandal still to be answered.

They include whether the contras really did profit from the Iran arms deal as the Attorney General, Edwin Meese, has revealed, and how the first shipment of weapons to Iran via Israel in 1985 came about.

Senator William Cohen said there was “a fundamental conflict” in what Mr Regan and a former National Security Adviser, Robert McFarlane, told the committee about whether Mr Reagan authorised the 1985 shipment before or after it was sent.

“We are still very much in doubt about who first originated the idea and who implemented it,” he said.

Mr Regan said the President initially rejected the idea of selling weapons, but Israel shipped the arms anyway and the sales then became United States policy, committee sources revealed.

Mr McFarlane told the panel under oath two weeks ago that he authorised the Israelis to send weapons after re-

ceiving oral approval from Mr Reagan.

Mr Cohen said Mr Donald Regan testified that Colonel North never met alone with the President, thus apparently ruling out the chance that Mr Reagan could have secretly told Colonel North to funnel Iran profits to the rebels. In other developments yesterday.— © Senate leaders appointed a special 11-mem-ber Watergate-style committee to supercede other Senate probes into the scandal. House leaders planned to name their select committee today. Lawmakers said their widening investigation could carry on for some time.

© Officials confirmed that the United States had been supplying intelligence to Iraq, and Mr Shultz said a reduction of Iran’s military capabilities might help end the Gulf war.

© Howard Teicher, a senior National Security Council aide for political and military affairs, resigned and later testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee — adding little to what was already known, according to one senator.

The committee is expected to question the Secretary of Defence, Caspar Weinberger, today, and also possibly Mr Meese.

Mr Reagan sought limited immunity for Colonel North and Admiral Poindexter because the two have so far refused to go before Congress, citing their Fifth Amendment constitutional

right against self-incrimi-nation. Admiral Poindexter resigned and Colonel North was fired last month after the Iran arms sale scandal broke, precipitating the greatest crisis of Mr Reagan’s six-year-old presidency. Mr Durenberger, who earlier said most of his committee opposed granting immunity, said he would “see whether or not any of the minds that strongly opposed it might have changed in light of the President’s representation.” Most Democratic senators have argued that it is premature to grant immunity, which could interfere with bringing criminal charges against principals in the scandal.

Mr Regan, who has strongly resisted pressure to step down, described the closed-door hearing yesterday as “an open, frank discussion — not heated in any way.” “I didn’t duck any questions, I didn’t take the Fifth Amendment, I didn’t invoke executive privilege,” he said.

Asked if he had done anything wrong in the affair, Mr Regan declared: “Absolutely not. I’ve done nothing wrong.” Senators in both parties praised Mr Regan’s candour and co-operation, but a Democrat, Dennis DeConcini, doubted that a Chief-of-Staff reputed to control the White House tightly could be ignorant of the scheme to divert funds to the contras. “It was an unbelievable story told in a believable manner,” he said.