Good evening. Tonight, a Deadline News Special Report: The Iran/Contras Investigation: Weeks One and Two: Just What in Sanity’s Name Went On Anyway? I’m your host, Rex Veneer.
As the joint hearings of the Senate and House select committees got underway, a major question about the scandal was: what did the President know and when did he know it? In his weekly radio address, President Ronald Reagan tried to answer this question: “Well, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t even know what I did know. If I did know what I didn’t know, I would have forgotten it. If I did forget what I did know, or even if I did forget what I didn’t know, I certainly wouldn’t remember it now. You know?”
The first witness, Major General Richard Secord, outlined the fundraising efforts on behalf of the Nicaraguan Contras, including the diversion of funds from the sale of arms to Iran. Ten million dollars, for instance, was donated to the cause by the Sultan of Brunei, but was deposited in the wrong Swiss bank account because two digits of the number had been transposed. “Ten million dollars is mad money to the Sultan,” one Congressman commented during a recess, “and, to give it to this group of bunglers, he must have been mad!”
In all $30 million was raised, some if which actually reached the Contras. Some of the money, however, went to the American Drug Enforcement Agency to use to get hostages safely out of Lebanon. When asked if he thought that was the proper role for the DEA, Secord claimed he believed the agents were going to carry on the operation in their spare time.
Secord, who insisted that he “thought I was carrying out the President’s policy,” of aid to the Contras, felt he and other covert operators had been “betrayed, abandoned and left to defend ourselves” by Attorney General Edwin Meese’s disclosure of the affair. He suggested that whatever money remained from the arms sale, possibly as much as $8 million, should be donated to the William J. Casey Fund, which supplied money to the Contras in the name of the late CIA Director.
And, here, I thought the Fund was set up to help underprivileged kids learn how to subvert the democratic process at home and abroad.
The President, in his radio address, had this to say about the first week of testimony: “Well, the Boland Amendment (forbidding any US intelligence agency from aiding the Contras) was unconstitutional because the President is responsible for determining foreign policy, not Congress. And, if it was constitutional, it was so poorly worded that its intent was unclear. And, even if its intent was clear, it didn’t apply to the National Security Council, which isn’t an intelligence agency. And, even if the National Security Council was engaged in covert intelligence operations, the Boland Amendment didn’t apply to me. But, in case it did apply to me, I didn’t contravene it.”
It was nice of the President to give us a choice of plausible denials, wasn’t it?
Most of the second week of the hearings was devoted to former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who corroborated much of Secord’s testimony. He described Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North’s “shredding party” (thrown in Meese’s honour), which, although it was strictly BYOD (Bring Your Own Documents), kept the neighbours awake long into the night. According to McFarlane, North was “a man of immense devotion to the preservation of life.” That may be; however, North was obviously somewhat less devoted to the preservation of potentially valuable evidence in a Congressional investigation.
Reminded that, in an earlier investigation, he had claimed that North had not raised any money for the Contras, McFarlane claimed that he had been “too categorical” in his denial. As if this weren’t enough to make William Safire cringe, when confronted with a chronology of events which he had doctored, McFarlane suggested that he had used “tortured language.” But, in a rare display of bravado, he defiantly insisted that torturing language was not covered by the Geneva Convention.
During McFarlane’s testimony, it was revealed that the day after King Fahd visited Reagan in the White House, the Saudi Arabian government increased its million dollar a month contribution to the Contras to $2 million a month. In all, the Contras received $32 million from this one source. Soon after, the United States sold $250 million worth of arms, including 400 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Saudi Arabia.
In response, Reagan denied discussing the Contras with King Fahd. Two hours later, the White House issued a clarification stating that, although the Contras had been discussed, Reagan had said nothing. The next day, the White House issued a correction of the clarification stating that, while Reagan had expressed pleasure that Saudi Arabia would send more money to the Contras, he had made no deal. We’ve been told not to expect a retraction of the correction of the clarification, but Deadline News has discovered that all of the White House VDTs are on around the clock battle alert.
Robert Owen, who had been a courier between Colonel North and the Contras, took the stand towards the end of the week, but, by that time, most of the public had lost interest in the affair.
As the hearings wound down, Carl “Spitz” Channel pleaded guilty to charges of fraud for using the tax-exempt National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty to solicit funds for the Contras, with the aid of Colonel North. For a donation of $200,000 or more, they boasted that a person could get an audience with the President (although they could not guarantee that he would not be napping at the time). For a donation of $100,000, they let a person sit in the President’s chair when he wasn’t in the Oval Office. For a donation of $25,000, a person would receive a transcript of a televised Presidential address of the donator’s choosing and, for a $10 donation, you would get an autographed picture of the President and a button that read “No more Bonzos.” The money used to buy the arms was kept in a fund labeled “Toys,” proving once again that the weaker the boys, the more expensive are their toys.
It was also revealed that some of the weapons North supplied to the Contras came from Poland and China, a classic example of robbing Carl to kill Vladimir.
So, can we learn anything from what has been revealed in the past two weeks? If so, it must be that…power shouldn’t be given to those who aren’t accountable for their actions because…they might do bad things with it. And, in any case, they probably won’t want to share. Or, whatever.
Good night.