Robert McFarlane, Ronald Reagan's third National Security Advisor.
(Image by (Official portrait)) Details DMCA
Though this secret conduit between the neocons and Israel about Iran may have originated before Election 1980, it continued, with some fits and starts, for years finally merging with what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair of 1985-86. In that scandal, Reagan secretly authorized the sale of U.S. anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran through Israel. The documents from the Reagan library suggest that the Iran-Contra machinations were an outgrowth of these earlier U.S. contacts with Israel regarding arms sales to Iran dating back to 1980-81.
McFarlane's personal involvement in these activities threaded through the years of these clandestine operations, beginning with pre-election maneuverings with Iran in fall 1980 when its radical government was holding those 52 U.S. hostages and thus dooming President Carter's reelection hopes.
McFarlane, then a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and a Senate Armed Services Committee aide to Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, participated in a mysterious meeting with an Iranian emissary at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington. That contact has never been coherently explained by McFarlane or two other Republican participants, Richard V. Allen (who later became Reagan's national security advisor) and Laurence Silberman (who was later appointed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington). [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
Seeking the Iran Portfolio
After Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, McFarlane popped up at the State Department working hand-in-glove with the Israelis on Iranian arms shipments. He subsequently moved to Reagan's National Security Council where he played a central role in arranging a new security cooperation agreement with Israel in 1983 and initiating Reagan's illicit Iran-Contra arms sales through Israel to Iran in 1985-86.
In 2013, when I asked Veliotes about the declassified 1981 documents describing the McFarlane/Wolfowitz arrangement for third-country arms sales to Iran, he responded by e-mail, saying:
"My guess it was triggered by the issue of the provision of U.S.-origin defense items to Iran by Israel, which received a certain amount of publicity around this time [July 1981]. This was contrary to U.S. law."My further guess is that Israel would have been the channel for delivery of non-U.S.-origin arms. That Wolfowitz and McFarlane would push this is no surprise. The two were part of the neocon cabal that professed to see Soviets everywhere in the Middle East and Israel as a major anti-Soviet ally. Ergo, support for Israeli actions would be in the U.S. interest."
On July 13, 1981, with the Israel-to-Iran shipments in full swing but still five days before the Argentine plane crashed, this State Department neocon group pushed a formal plan for allowing third-country weapons shipment to Iran. But the idea encountered strong resistance from an Interdepartmental Group (IG), according to a memo from L. Paul Bremer III, who was then the State Department's executive secretary and considered one of the neocons.
Though many Americans were still livid toward Iran for the 444-day hostage crisis, Bremer's memo described a secret tilt toward Iran by the Reagan administration, a strategy which included confirming "to American businessmen that it is in the U.S. interest to take advantage of commercial opportunities in Iran." But the memo noted an inter-agency disagreement over whether the United States should oppose third-country shipments of non-U.S. weapons to Iran.
"State felt that transfers of non-U.S. origin arms to Iran by third countries should not be opposed," the memo said. "However, other agency representatives at the IG -- DOD [the Department of Defense] and CIA -- felt that the supply of any arms to Iran would encourage Iran to resist efforts to bring an end to the war [with Iraq] and that all arms transfers to Iran should be actively discouraged." (More than two decades later, Bremer would become famous -- or infamous -- as the American proconsul overseeing the disastrous occupation of Iraq.)
Because of the disagreement within the Interdepartmental Group, the Iran arms issue was bumped to the Senior Interdepartmental Group or SIG, where principals from the agencies met. Yet, before the SIG convened, the Israeli-chartered plane crashed inside the Soviet Union revealing the existence of the already-functioning secret arms pipeline.
But that incident was downplayed by the State Department in its press guidance and received little attention from the U.S. news media, which still accepted the conventional wisdom depicting President Reagan as a forceful leader who was standing up to the Iranians, surely not rewarding them with arms shipments and business deals.
Approving the Shipments
When the SIG met on July 21, 1981, the State Department's view, giving Israel a green light on arms shipments to Iran, prevailed. The SIG -- reflecting the opinions of such top officials as Vice President George H.W. Bush, CIA Director William J. Casey, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State Alexander Haig -- sided with State's neocons.
Though the SIG decision paper was not among the documents released to me by the archivists at the Reagan library, the policy shift was referenced in a Sept. 23, 1981 memo from Bremer to National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen. Bremer's memo was reacting to a Sept. 3 complaint from the Joint Chiefs of Staff who wanted their dissent to the relaxed Iran arms policy noted.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
