Contra connection confounds Senate probe

Press, 20 December 1986, Page 12

Contra connection confounds Senate probe

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The Senate Intelligence Committee has ended closed hearings into the Iran arms sales scandal still in the dark over the diversion of funds to Nicaraguan rebels. “The major fact that is unproven ... and probably won’t be for some substantial point of time, is how much money was diverted from the Iranian arms sale to the contras and which contras,” the committee chairman, David Durenberger, said yesterday.

A former National Security Adviser, Robert McFarlane, yesterday testified to the panel for the second time, standing by his assertion that President Ronald Reagan had approved in advance the first shipment of United States arms to Iran in September, 1985. Senate Intelligence Committee members, including Mr Durenberger and the vice-chairman, Patrick Leahy, indicated that they were inclined to accept Mr McFarlane’s version over that of the White House Chief-of-Staff, Donald Regan, who said the President had not authorised the shipment, and only learned about it later. After Mr McFarlane’s testimony, Mr Durenberger said of Mr Reagan, “I think he was informed of what was going on. With a little bit of reminding, the President would acknowledge that he was informed.”

Israeli officials say they shipped weapons to Iran in 1985 at the request of the United States Government and with its approval. Mr Reagan has said he authorised arms sales to Iran only last January in an effort to improve ties with Iranian moderates, to end the Gulf war and to free American hostages in Lebanon. He has denied authorising the diversion of profits to contra rebels at

a time when Congress had cut off United States funding to them. A democrat Senator, Dennis DeConcini, when asked whether Mr Donald Regan or Mr McFarlane was telling the truth, said it was difficult to believe that the Chief-of-Staff would not know about both the 1985 shipment and the diversion of profits to the contras. “I don’t want to call him a liar. I’m not calling him a liar,” said Mr DeConcini.

But Mr Regan’s testimony was not consistent with the tight control he appeared to exercise as White House Chief-of-Sstaff, with no-one seeing the President without Mr Regan’s approval, he said.

Mr Regan, after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee yesterday, told reporters that when the White House found out about the 1985 arms shipment, it decided not to comment for fear that it would endanger the hostages.

“To the best of my knowledge, he (Mr Reagan) did not approve it. I would put it this way: We put up with it, it had happened, it was water over the dam,” Mr Regan said.

He insisted he knew nothing of the diversion of funds to the contras and said he had no plans to quit, in spite of new reports of pressure for him to do so.

The Attorney General, Edwin Meese, revealed last month that up to SUS3O million ($59 million) in profits from the weapons sale were deposited in Swiss bank accounts for use by the contras.

Senate panel members said yesterday this issue and others would be left to the Watergate-style select committees in the House and Senate which would soon take the lead in the Congressional probes of the scandal. Senators also spoke of a

growing theory that there was a White House atmosphere that would have encouraged LieutenantColonel Oliver North, a central figure in the scandal, to divert profits from the arms sale to contras without explicit authorisation.

Messrs Reagan and Regan, frustrated by the Congressional refusal to aid the contras, may have suggested that White House staff do whatever they could to help the rebels without breaking the law or getting caught, said Mr DeConcini.

Mr Durenberger said: “In an environment like that, a doer like North does.” Colonel North was a top aide in the National Security Council before being fired when the contra connection came to light.

The House Intelligence Committee, also near the end of its probe, is scheduled to take sworn testimony today from Mr Meese.

The Senate panel considered that the Central Intelligence Agency director, William Casey, was a key witness, and had hoped to call him this week, but he was admitted to hospital on Tuesday and had surgery yesterday to remove a cancerous brain tumour.

Mr Durenberger said Mr Reagan and the Republican Senate Leader, Robert Dole, had urged the panel to make its findings public as soon as possible, and he hoped to do so before the Congress convenes on January 6. Colonel North said yesterday that he had no plans to forego his constitutional rights against selfincriinination, which he has cited to avoid testifying.

“I don’t believe the President really wants me to abandon my individual rights under the Constitution,” he said. "People have died face down in the mud all over the world defending those individual rights.”