At the time, State denied U.S. knowledge. But in a
later interview, assistant secretary of state Nicholas Veliotes said "it was
clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed
that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military
equipment."
According to a sworn affidavit by former Reagan national
security staffer Howard Teicher, the administration enlisted the Egyptians in a
secret "Bear Spares" program that gave the United States access to
Soviet-designed military equipment.
Teicher asserted that the Reagan administration
funneled some of those weapons to Iraq and also arranged other shipments of
devastating cluster bombs that Saddam's air force dropped on Iranians troops.
He tapped into the Saudi slush funds for money to
support the Nicaraguan contra rebels in their war in Central America. The
President also authorized secret weapons shipments to Iran in another
arms-for-hostages scheme, with the profits going to "off-the-shelf" intelligence
operations. That gambit, like the others, was protected by walls of
"deniability" and outright lies.
Some of those lies collapsed in the
Iran-Contra scandal, but the administration quickly constructed new stonewalls
that were never breached. Republicans fiercely defended the secrets and
Democrats lacked the nerve to fight for the truth. The Washington media also
lost interest because the scandals were complex and official sources steered the
press in other directions.
'Read Machiavelli'
When I interviewed Haig in the early 1990s, I asked him if he was troubled by the pattern of deceit that had become the norm among international players in the 1980s.
"Oh, no, no, no, no," he boomed, shaking his head.
"On that kind of thing? No. Come on. Jesus! God! You know, you'd better get out
and read Machiavelli or somebody else because I think you're living in a dream
world! People do what their national interest tells them to do and if it means
lying to a friendly nation, they're going to lie through their teeth."
But sometimes the game-playing did have unintended consequences.
In 1990, a decade after Iraq's messy invasion of Iran, an embittered Saddam Hussein was looking for pay-back from the sheikhdoms that he felt had egged him into war. Saddam was especially furious with Kuwait for slant drilling into Iraq's oil fields and refusing to extend more credit.
Again, Saddam was looking for a signal from the U.S.
President, this time George H.W. Bush.
When Saddam explained his
confrontation with Kuwait to U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, he received an
ambiguous reply, a reaction he apparently perceived as another "green light."
Eight days later, Saddam unleashed his army into Kuwait, an invasion that required 500,000 U.S. troops to reverse, an event that also unlocked a virtual Pandora's Box of violence, death and misery that remains open two decades later.
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