Did the CIA murder Senator John Tower? by Wayne Madsen Report

Did the CIA murder Senator John Tower? by Wayne Madsen ReportAlthough they were both Republican politicians from Texas, Senator John Tower and President George H. W. Bush became bitter rivals. Documents discovered in the Central Intelligence Agency's archives point to Bush and his allies within the CIA being upset with Tower over his findings as the chairman of the Tower Commission, named to investigate the culprits behind the Iran-contra scandal. The information gleaned by Tower may have also resulted in his and his daughter's 1991 death in an airplane crash in Georgia.

In November 1986, President Reagan named Tower, who had declined to run for re-election in 1986, to chair the "President's Special Review Board" on the actions of the National Security Council and its staff during the Iran-contra affair. The Tower Commission, as it was known, discovered, as did Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, that Vice President George Bush was a central figure in the scandal. Bush ensured he had his own plant installed on the Tower Commission, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who would hold the same office in the George H. W. Bush presidency. The third commission member was former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie.

In 1989, Bush nominated Tower to be his Secretary of Defense. However, the Senate rejected their former colleague in a 47-53 vote. The last Senate rejection of a Cabinet nominee was in 1959. It later became known that it was Bush, who, via articles and statements by the vitriolic conservative rabble rouser Paul Weyrich, leaked rumors of Tower's "womanizing" and problems with alcohol in order to publicly humiliate Tower. The bad press resulted in Tower's embarrassing rejection by the Senate. In other words, Bush set Tower up for a very public fall. It was retaliation for Tower's probing of Bush's central involvement in Iran-contra. And Tower's rejection opened the door for Dick Cheney to become Secretary of Defense.

On April 5, 1991, Tower and his daughter Marian, along with 21 others, died in the crash of Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 2311 while it approached the Brunswick, Georgia airport. The crash was blamed on aircraft equipment failure. Tower and his daughter, who had just cooperated in the publishing of Tower's memoir, were collaborating on a second "tell-all" book about Iran-contra that was reportedly going to "name names" and Bush's name would have been prominently mentioned.  
Any further investigations of Bush and Iran-contra went down in flames on April 5, 1991 with Atlantic Southeast 2311 [left] and the plane that crashed the day before in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania [right].

CIA archival documents show that Tower cited as one of the major Iran-contra co-conspirators in the Tower Report, Graham Fuller, who was CIA director William Casey's top advisers and a friend of Tower Commission member Scowcroft. Fuller was a major architect of the CIA's training and arming Islamic jihadists to not only fight the Soviets in Afghanistan but in the USSR itself, especially in central Asia and the Caucasus, the latter called the "Second Afghanistan."

It was this policy of encouraging Islamist radicalization that ultimately led to the creation of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Fuller's daughter was married to Ruslan Tsarnaev, the uncle of accused Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. As previously reported by WMR, Fuller, throughout the 1980s, Fuller was front and center during many of the acts of violence in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, from Lebanon and Syria to Iran, Libya, and Algeria, as well as Iraq, Afghanistan, and South Yemen. Among Fuller's fellow CIA provocateurs trying to stir up Muslims against the Russians was John Brennan, the current CIA director who continues the policy with CIA support of jihadist groups in Syria.

As a result of the Tower report, one of the first heads to roll at the CIA was Fuller, who resigned after the report's release in 1987. Bush and his sycophants at the CIA were livid over not only what Tower released in the report but also what he failed to include but knew about: that Bush was the central kingpin in the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran and the use of the profits to aid the contras. Bush swore out a vendetta against Tower, one that would culminate with a fiery plane crash in Georgia in 1991. Bush tried to escape blame by prodding a dementia-afflicted Reagan to fire White House chief of staff Donald Regan. Bush saw to it that Regan was blamed for the Iran-contra debacle. However, unlike Tower and his daughter, Regan did escape Bush's wrath with his life.

Not so lucky was Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz III, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated Iran-contra and one of Tower's supporters in the confirmation vote for Secretary of Defense. On April 4, 1991, the day before Tower died in the plane crash in Georgia, Heinz was killed in a freakish mid-air crash of his plane with a helicopter outside of Philadelphia.

Armitage Part III: A Neocon for All Seasons?

Our first post on the American Turkish Council’s new chairman, Richard Armitage, focused on his early years and his involvement with Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle. Our second post focused on Armitage’s history in Washington and his involvement with the Iran-Contra Affair. This post will focus on Armitage’s role as the Deputy Secretary of State for the second Bush administration and the 11 September attacks.

In 1999 Richard Armitage joined an “advisory team” put together by Condoleezza Rice for the George W. Bush presidential campaign. Other members of this “advisory team” included Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Zoellick, and Donald Rumsfeld all of whom, along with Armitage, were signatories to the 1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton that advocated regime change in Iraq through the bogus “Weapons of Mass Destruction” argument. It should have been no surprise, therefore, to see where these “advisors” were to lead as soon as they were appointed to key positions in the Bush administration in early 2001.

Armitage was appointed as the number 2 man at the State Department but not without protest from a certain former Republican congressman:

“General Colin Powell has named Richard Armitage to the key position as his deputy secretary of state.

“Mr. Armitage served in the Pentagon back in the 1980s and, in the process, caused so many problems that by 1989 he twice had to withdraw his name from consideration for high-ranking positions in the first Bush administration.

“Simply stated, the U.S. Senate would not confirm him for any job.

“The FBI agent in charge of compiling the ‘file’ on Armitage said at the time, ‘The Armitage file is the thickest file ever for any nominee for any position.’”

“Now, 12 years later, the new Bush administration is again trying to ram Armitage through the confirmation process. Powell wants him because ‘Rich Armitage is my best friend in the world.’”

Both Armitage and Powell had served in Vietnam and it’s worth remembering that prior to his performance at the UN National Security Council in early 2003, Colin Powell was best known for helping to cover up the My Lai Massacre.

Armitage was confirmed by the Senate as the Deputy Secretary of State in late March, 2001, in plenty of time to implement the plan for regime change in Iraq that he had supported in 1998 and which PNAC had argued for in September, 2000:

“Further, the process of [US military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

The “new Pearl Harbor” that was so desired by Armitage and the rest of the PNAC crowd occured on 11 September, 2001. Immediately after 11 September, Armitage threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age”:

“During last week’s US media blitz to promote his new book, Musharraf claimed soon after 9/11, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, the US would ‘bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age’ if it did not immediately turn against its Afghan ally, Taliban, and allow the US to use military bases in Pakistan to invade Afghanistan.

[ . . . ]

“I’ve heard various versions of Armitage’s exact words. But I know whatever he said put the fear of god into Pakistan’s military leadership.

“ISI sources say the Bush Administration threatened to bomb faithful old ally Pakistan, cut off its oil, collapse its banking system, and call in its loans. More frightening, Washington also threatened to ‘unleash’ India against Pakistan, either allowing India to conquer the Pakistani-held portion of disputed Kashmir, or give Delhi a green light to invade all of Pakistan, possibly with American assistance.”

Such language by Armitage would be consistent with other ultimatums issued by the US government, such as this gem by a Bush administration State Department negotiator to the Taliban in August, 2001, more than a month before the “new Pearl Harbor”:

“At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: ‘Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold [for 'secure access to the Caspian Basin for American companies'], or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.’ With the futility of negotiations apparent, “President Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan before the end of October.”

“This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.”

Almost a year later, Armitage was sent by the Bush administration to deliver, perhaps, the same message to the Pakistanis:

“Bush has stopped short of publicly admonishing Pakistan, Washington’s key ally in the war on terror, but he’s dispatching burly Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage to Islamabad next week, and his mission will be to deliver a heavy, private bruising. ‘If anyone can threaten to crack Musharraf in half, it’s Armitage,’ says one State Department source.”

“Bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age”? “Crack Musharraf in half”? It should be no surprise that Armitage was tasked with delivering these messages. He was sent by the Reagan administration to deliver a similar message to Manuel Noriega a year before the US invasion of Panama:

“The Reagan Administration sent a high-ranking Pentagon official on a secret mission to Panama last week to press its strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, to step down and allow free elections in the country, State Department and congressional sources said Thursday.

“The emissary, Richard L. Armitage, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, held what one U.S. official called ‘a lengthy session’ with Noriega early last week to urge him to withdraw from politics.

“Armitage was picked to deliver the Administration’s strongest direct message to date to Noriega because the Panamanian strongman is a ‘military man’ and Washington wanted “the most effective interlocutor possible,” the official said.”

Having arrived in the US a week before 11 September “on a regular visit of consultations”, the ISI’s General Mahmoud Ahmed met with State Department officials, including Armitage, on 12 and 13 September:

“The press reports confirm that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad had two meetings with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, respectively on the 12th and 13th. After September 11, he also met Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the powerful Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate.

“Confirmed by several press reports, however, he also had ‘a regular visit of consultations’ with US officials during the week prior to September 11, –i.e. meetings with his US counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon.

“What was the nature of these routine ‘consultations’? Were they in any way related to the subsequent ‘post-September 11 consultations’ pertaining to Pakistan’s decision to cooperate with Washington, held behind closed doors at the State Department on September 12 and 13? Was the planning of war being discussed between Pakistani and US officials?”

The article continues:

“The meeting behind closed doors at the State Department on September 13 between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was shrouded in secrecy. Remember President Bush was not even involved in these crucial negotiations:

“‘Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage handed over [to ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad] a list of specific steps Washington wanted Pakistan to take’. ‘After a telephone conversation between [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Pakistan had promised to cooperate.’ President George W. Bush later confirmed (also on the morning of September 13th) that the Pakistan government had accepted “to cooperate and to participate as we hunt down those people who committed this unbelievable, despicable act on America’.

[ . . . ]

“Armitage was one of the main architects behind US covert support to the Mujahedin and the ‘militant Islamic base’, both during the Afghan-Soviet war as well as in its aftermath. US covert support was financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade.”

We know that Armitage was no stranger to the Golden Crescent drug trade.

General Mahmoud Ahmed met with someone else in those days immediately following 11 September, and that “someone else” worked directly under Richard Armitage. That “someone else” was none other than Marc Grossman:

“ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood’s week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. [ . . . ] But the most important meeting was with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. US sources would not furnish any details beyond saying that the two discussed ‘matters of mutual interests.’”

Or, as Sibel Edmonds stated back in 2005:

“Although Grossman ‘has not been as high profile in the press’ FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds cryptically told me the other day, ‘don’t overlook him – he is very important.’”

Chris Deliso elaborates further:

“Marc Grossman has served in a number of interesting countries and positions over the past 29 years. From 1976-1983, at a pivotal point in the Cold War, he was employed at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan – America’s key regional ally, through which millions of dollars in weapons and other “aid” were delivered by Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service to the mujahedin following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

[ . . . ]

“Grossman’s professional ties with Pakistan apparently long outlived his nine-year tenure there. The Guardian, among others, mentioned the fact that in the days immediately preceding Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistani ISI chief Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed – financier of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta – paid a visit to senior administration officials, including Grossman, then undersecretary of state for political affairs.”

As The Times reported in January, 2008 (although not mentioning Grossman by name), Grossman was so deeply involved in the sale of nuclear secrets to Pakistan that he was under FBI surveillance. Since Grossman was directly responsible to Armitage, what did Armitage know about Grossman’s dirty dealings?

That question does not stretch the imagination because Armitage became involved in another event that Grossman was also involved with–Plamegate and the exposure of CIA front company Brewster Jennings, and those events will be included in our next post.

Armitage Part II: History in Washington

Thursday, 3. December 2009

Mizgin’s Desk Reports

Our first look at the life of Richard Armitage, the new American Turkish Council chairman, focused on his adventures in Southeast Asia. Today we’ll look at his history in Washington.

Back in Washington in 1980, Armitage served as a foreign policy advisor to President-elect Ronald Reagan, and was soon appointed by Reagan to the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs. Armitage held that position from 1981 until 1983, when he was promoted to the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. Wikipedia has a list of the duties associated with Armitage’s position as Assistant Secretary of Defense. He held this position until 1989.

During this time, Armitage became involved with US arms shipments from Israel to Iran that eventually became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. In a report by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, it was determined that US weapons were, in fact, delivered to the Islamic Republic of Iran by Israel on behalf of the US. Neoconservative Michael Ledeen and Iranian businessman Manucher Ghorbanifar facilitated links between the US, Israel, and Iran and they would be mentioned years later when a subsequent US administration sought to manufacture evidence of yellowcake sales to Iraq.

LTC Oliver North modified the original plan of arms sales to Iran in order to divert money to the Nicaraguan Contras and it is through North that Armitage became entangled in the affair. According to the History Commons, with links to reports by the Independent Counsel on Iran-Contra Affairs:

“National Security Council (NSC) officer Oliver North has become far more outspoken among government officials about his illegal funding of the Nicaraguan Contras (see May 16, 1986). During a meeting of his Restricted Interagency Group (RIG—see Late 1985 and After), CIA official Alan Fiers, a member of the group, is discomfited at North’s straightforward listing of the many activities that he is causing to be conducted on behalf of the Contras, everything from supplying aircraft to paying salaries. Fiers is even less sanguine about North’s frank revelations about using illegally solicited private funding for the Contras (see May 16, 1986). North goes down the list, asking if each activity should be continued or terminated, and, according to Fiers, making it very clear that he can cause his Contra support program (which he now calls PRODEM, or “Project Democracy”) to respond as he directs. North also begins arranging, through Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, for $2 million in stopgap funding for the project. North will confirm the $2 million in an e-mail to NSC Director John Poindexter. North will conduct similar meetings in August and September 1986, at least one of which will include Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Armitage (see July 22, 1987) and other Defense Department officials (see November 13, 1990). It is not until Fiers testifies in 1991 about North’s behaviors that verification of North’s discussion of such specifics about Contra activities and funding will be made public (see July 17, 1991).”

In September, 1986, North brought up for discussion in an RIG meeting in Armitage’s office the fact that the Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega, would be willing to conduct sabotage inside Nicaragua for money. The discussion focuses on the possibility of paying Noriega from private funds. The offer is ultimately rejected.

In July, 1987, Armitage failed to recall anything:

“Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, who has attended some of Oliver North’s Restricted Interagency Group (RIG) meetings (see Late 1985 and After and July 1986 and After), testifies before the Joint House-Senate Committee investigating Iran-Contra (see May 5, 1987). Armitage is asked about RIG meetings in which North recited a list of his activities in coordinating the Contras, discussed the private funding of the Contras, and demanded item-by-item approval from group members: “[D]o you recall, regardless of what dates, regardless of where it was, regardless of whether it had exactly the players he said—because he could have gotten all that wrong—do you recall any meeting at which he did anything close to what his testimony suggests?” Armitage replies, “I do not.” It is not until RIG member Alan Fiers, a former CIA official, testifies in 1991 about North’s behaviors that verification of North’s discussion of such specifics about Contra activities and funding will be made public (see July 17, 1991).”

The Office of the Independent Council eventually decided not to prosecute Armitage for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair:

“The notes demonstrated that Weinberger’s early testimony — that he had only vague and generalized information about Iran arms sales in 1985 — was false, and that he in fact had detailed information on the proposed arms sales and the actual deliveries. The notes also revealed that Gen. Colin Powell, Weinberger’s senior military aide, and Richard L. Armitage, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, also had detailed knowledge of the 1985 shipments from Israeli stocks. Armitage and Powell had testified that they did not learn of the November 1985 HAWK missile shipment until 1986.

[ . . . ]

“There was little evidence that Powell’s early testimony regarding the 1985 shipments and Weinberger’s notes was willfully false. Powell cooperated with the various Iran/contra investigations and, when his recollection was refreshed by Weinberger’s notes, he readily conceded their accuracy. Independent Counsel declined to prosecute Armitage because the OIC’s limited resources were focused on the case against Weinberger and because the evidence against Armitage, while substantial, did not reach the threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

As a result of the conclusions of the Independent Council, we may assume that Armitage received a less than honorable exoneration in this scandal. Shortly afterwards, Armitage became entangled in another scandal which forced him to withdraw his name from consideration by George H. W. Bush as the Secretary of the Army:

“Richard L. Armitage, President Bush’s choice as Secretary of the Army, withdrew his name from consideration today rather than undergo confirmation hearings expected to include questions about his role in the Iran-contra affair and his relationship with a woman convicted of illegal gambling.

“Over the past two years, Mr. Armitage has been the focus of repeated allegations about his private life, some of them published by the columnist Jack Anderson. The Texas industrialist H. Ross Perot joined the fray in 1987 when he complained to then Vice President Bush of Mr. Armitage’s possible involvement in drug operations when he served in the Vietnam War.

“Mr. Armitage has denied the charges. He was out of town today and could not be reached for comment. He withdrew so that he could spend more time with his wife and eight children, said a Pentagon spokesman.

[ . . . ]

“Mr. Armitage’s withdrawal, which came before his name was formally submitted to the Senate represented a surprising reversal. Just two weeks ago, he had been providing Democratic senators with a detailed written rebuttal of the allegations relating to Vietnam and Ms. O’Rourke. Mr. Armitage told senators he was ready to refute the charges personally at his confirmation hearings, a Senate aide said.”

Frank Carlucci, National Security Advisor at the time, asked Ross Perot in secret to drop his investigation of Armitage’s involvement with Nguyet O’Rourke and her connections to organized crime. Both Carlucci and Armitage would later serve as board members of the Middle East Policy Council.

During the Gulf War, Armitage served as a special emmissary to the King of Jordan and later in the 1990s he “directed US assistance to the new independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union.” In 1996, the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce was established in Washington with Armitage on its board of directors. Other board members included John Imle of Unocal while Zbigniew Brzezinski served the USACC as an Honorary Council Advisor. By the end of the 1990s, Armitage would have served as a lobbyist for Unocal at a time that Unocal was courting the Taliban in Texas in order to win a pipeline bid to move Turkmenistani gas through Afghanistan to Pakistan.

It was in 1997, too, that Armitage “went to Burma on a trip sponsored by the Burma/Myanmar Forum, a Washington group with major funding from UNOCAL.” Burmese villagers filed a lawsuit against Unocal for human rights abuses. Armitage was implicated in the lawsuit. Hamid Karzai and Zalmay Khalilzad were, like Armitage, also affiliated with Unocal. Karzai was a representative of Unocal in Afghanistan while Khalilzad was an advisor to Unocal and participated in its talks with the Taliban.

Armitage and Khalilzad were both signatories of the PNAC letter to President Clinton in 1998 which outlined the policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein that would be adopted by the Bush administration in its war against Iraq after 11 September, 2001. Before those attacks, however, Armitage would be called back to public service by The Vulcans.

Do the CIA and Mossad have both sides of coin covered in Iran?

Recent reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hails from a Persian Jewish family with the surname Sabourjian, which translates from the "weaver of the sabour," sabour being the Persian Jewish prayer shawl, has intelligence agents all over the Middle East wondering if Ahmadinejad, with his bluster about there being no Holocaust and his reviling of Zionism, is just not too good to be true for those who want to attack Iran and overthrow the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad's father, Ahmad, did change the family's name from Sabourjian to Ahmadinejad, some say to hide the family's Jewish roots by adopting a Muslim name.

Of course, having Jewish roots in no way makes Ahmadinejad some sort of secret agent for the Mossad. However, the reports could undermine Ahmadinejad's standing among the more radical members of the Iranian Islamic leadership.

Ahmadinejad is linked politically to the Supreme Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khamenei. However, according to an undated CIA document titled "Recent Developments in Iran," that appears to be from the time of the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, Khamenei is linked to the group of mullahs that included Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's losing challenger in the recent Iranian presidential election. Mousavi served as Prime Minister under then-President Khamenei in the 1980s. More significantly, Mousavi, who received a great deal of financial support from groups associated with George Soros and his CIA-linked "foundations" during the recent presidential election campaign, was part and parcel of the Iranian end of the Iran-contra affair. Mousavi played a key role in freeing the American hostages in Lebanon in return for secret U.S. military aid in Iran's war against the forces of Saddam Hussein, who was also secretly backed by the Americans.

Another member of the Khamenei bloc, according to the CIA document, was Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, now the Secretary General of the Combatant Clergy Association. Kani's colleague in the bloc, according to the CIA document, was Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Mousavi Ardabili, the head of the Iranian judiciary under Ayatollah Khomeini, who was, along with Khamenei, Rafsanjani, and Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti, believed by many in Iran and abroad of having pre- and post-revolution links to the CIA. Beheshti was killed, along with over 70 other members of his Islamic Republican Party on June 28, 1981 in a terrorist bombing carried out by the neocon-supported Mohajedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the favorrite Iranian terrorist group of Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen. Beheshti was close to Mohamad Khatami, who would later become a moderate president of Iran, and Khomeini.

One of Ledeen's associates, Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian Jew who lived mostly in Rome, was a key middleman in the supply of U.S. weapons to Iran in the Iran-contra scandal. Ghorbanifar also became a key interlocutor in the lead-up to the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq and his involvement is suspected in the forged Niger "yellowcake" uranium documents that were partially used to justify the attack on Iraq.

According to the CIA document, the Khamenei-Mousavi bloc was oposed by the bloc of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and, ironically, a backer of Mousavi in the recent election. Rafsanjani was also a key player in the Iran-contra affair and is suspected of receiving gifts from top Reagan administration officials in cementing the Iranian end of the Iran-contra operational pipeline. Also associated with the Rafsanjani bloc was Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri, a once-powerful and quite liberal mullah who was exiled to Qom and house arrest by Khamenei. Earlier, Montazeri's chief aide, Mehdi Hashemi, was accused of leaking information on Rafsanjani's connections to the Iran-contra scandal and he was executed as a counter-revolutionary in 1987.

It is noteworthy that the CIA document states that the second, Rafsanjani-Montazeri group had the "backing of fanatic terrorist organizations." In fact, the more radical policies came out of the first group that included Khamenei and the now-"moderate" Mousavi. Nevertheless, from the Iran-contra scandal to the secret U.S. arming of Iran, the CIA had its links to both blocs. The relationships built between the CIA and the Khamenei-Mousavi and Rafsanjani blocs in the 1980s may continue with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad bloc today.

Although the Mossad and CIA were heavily involved in the secret Iran-contra arms shipments to Iran during the 1980s, the CIA document also reveals that an Italian middleman named "Seratore" was involved in secret negotiations to provide Iran with weapons, including tanks from Argentina and armored personnel carriers from Italy.

Government stalling on Reagan October Surprise records disclosure

Government stalling on October Surprise records disclosure

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has apparently not received word from the Obama administration that the infamous Ashcroft memorandum, which struck down previous freedom of information edicts that favored disclosure over retention of documents. In one of his first acts as President, Obama instructed all federal departments and agencies, including NARA to "apply a presumption of openness" with regard to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

At the crux of the problem at NARA is its foot dragging in releasing enclosures to a March 16, 1981, formerly classified, memorandumfrom Associate Attorney General-designate Rudolph Giuliani to Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division John Keeney requesting that Keeney prepare a letter for Deputy Attorney General Edward Schmults' signature, a request for a report on a criminal referral from the CIA regarding "alleged foreign government interference with the 1980 Presidential election." In essence, the CIA requested that the Justice Department investigate charges that the Reagan-Bush campaign, with the involvement of Reagan campaign manager William Casey, negotiated with the Iranian revolutionary government an arms-for-no-hostages deal that saw U.S. embassy hostages in Tehran kept as hostages until after the November 1980 election, a contest that saw President Jimmy Carter lose to Reagan primarily due to the Iran "hostage crisis."

After at first indicating that a formal FOIA request was not necessary for access to certain documents, including enclosures to the Giuliani "smoking gun" memo contained in ten boxes of Schmults' papers, which total some 10,000 pages, NARA now claims that FOIA requests are required for certain documents contained in the Schmults records. But NARA does not indicate which papers are subject to a FOIA request. It is clear that NARA is attempting to withhold access to the Giuliani memo enclosures since they will surely point a finger at the complicity of the Reagan-Bush campaign in a conspiracy that resulted in a criminal referral from the CIA to the Justice Department.

According to researchers who have been trying to open up archival materials, their production will prove that the Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to deny Carter a second term by secretly sending without government authorization a U.S.-flagged merchant ship, the SS Poet, from Philadelphia to an Iranian port with arms, ammunition, and F-14 spare parts, and then having a third-country, reported by WMR to have been Israel, scuttle the vessel and eliminate the crew of 34 American merchant marine men.

According to the researchers, the "Giuliani letter was classified for decades and although it unmistakably refers to the 1980 treasonous October Surprise by the Republicans in making a deal with the Iranians to hold the American hostages past the election in exchange for arms, this letter never surfaced in the House Iran-Contra, Senate October Surprise, Judge Lawrence E. Walsh or other investigations."

The researchers also maintain that "the Poet, a U.S.-flag vessel that U.S. Coast Guard reported as having disappeared without a trace after departing Philadelphia on October 24, 1980, with corn for Egypt, did in fact arrive in Iran. We have forced U.S. Coast Guard to release over 140 documents from their investigation to us after it claimed to have none of them.

Among these documents is the charter for the voyage which has war risk insurance in an odd addition made to the charter. No war or hostilities was in progress in Egypt at the time but Iraq had invaded Iran on September 22, 1980. There are many other facts that we have collected that together support the conclusion that the Poet and the murder of its 34 crewmen were part of October Surprise.

The charter was signed for Egypt by a company whose address was in the same Rosslyn, Virginia building that housed multiple CIA activities, fronts and proprietaries."

The researchers believe that the reported October 2008 loss by NARA of a hard drive containing 2 terabytes of data, said to be from the Clinton administration, could be connected, in part, to covering up information that would point to collusion by the Reagan administration in the October Surprise. The Final Report by Judge Walsh on the Iran-Contra "matters" was not issued until the Clinton administration had been in office for six months. The Clinton administration took no measures to further investigate the previous two administrations, those of Reagan and George H. W. Bush, for the serious allegations of wrongdoing contained in the Walsh Report.

The researchers believe, "From the March 16, 1981, Giuliani letter and our correspondence with the principals we conclude that the Carter CIA made the referral to the Reagan DOJ, that negotiations occurred between the top leadership of both parties and an agreement was reached to hide the facts from the American people through classification. Political conspiracy, including the hiding of treason and murder, and secretly ceding a wrongful Presidential election, in effect put an administration in place subject to blackmail, and all kinds of compromises in legislation, international dealings, subversion of justice and misuse of executive power, initially and on-going, potentially through successive administrations. It negates our Constitution and overrides the checks and balances upon which our democracy depends."

Deputy Attorney Schmults, who sat on the CIA criminal referral regarding Reagan, Bush, and Casey conspiring with the Iranians, remained in the first Reagan term for three years.

His resignation letter follows:

The President, The White House, Washington, D.C. 20500

January 23, 1984

My Dear Mr. President:

For three years, it has been my privilege to be the Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Every day I have had a keen sense of accomplishment and pride in working with Bill Smith to serve the cause of justice and carry out your policies here at the Department of Justice. Thus, it is not easy for me to tender my resignation, which I do by this letter, effective on February 3, 1984.

Because of your unswerving leadership and strong support, the Federal effort against crime is being fought more effectively than at any time in our Nation's history. The law enforcement community knows it has a President who respects and supports what it is doing, and the results are now apparent to the American people.

My deepest thanks for the opportunity of helping you to further your goals. As I return to private life, I stand ready to do whatever you ask as you seek a second term, knowing that the American people will reelect a President who has served them so well.

Respectfully,

/s/Edward C. Schmults

Reagan's response:

The Honorable Edward C. Schmults, Deputy Attorney General, Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Ed:

It is with regret that I accept your resignation as Deputy Attorney General, effective February 3, 1984.

I know that you have been a strong right hand for Bill Smith as the Department of Justice has kept our promise to the American people to wage unremitting war against crime. You have played a leading role in our counterattack against those who terrorize innocent victims, and especially against organized crime, which can only be defeated by resolute action at the Federal level. Your experience and knowledge in this and many other areas will be sorely missed, but I know that your successor will build on the solid foundations you have laid. I want to thank you personally for a job well done.

Nancy and I send you our best wishes for every future success and happiness.

Sincerely,

Ronald Reagan

ies, incluidng NARA

Iran-Contra For Idiots

The Seymour Hersh Mystery - A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…And No One Notices

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

All of this was being done as part of a "sea change" in the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government -- and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.

Imagine. All this and much more (including news of U.S. military border-crossings into Iran, new preparations that would allow George W. Bush to order a massive air attack on that land with only 24-hours notice, and a brief window this spring when the staggering power of four U.S. aircraft-carrier battle groups might be available to the President in the Persian Gulf) was revealed, often in remarkable detail, just over a week ago in "The Redirection," a Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker. Hersh, the man who first broke the My Lai story in the Vietnam era, has never been off his game since. In recent years, from the Abu Ghraib scandal on, he has consistently released explosive news about the plans and acts of the Bush administration.

Imagine, in addition, that Hersh went on Democracy Now!, Fresh Air, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and actually elaborated on these claims and revelations, some of which, on the face of it, seem like potentially illegal and impeachable offenses, if they do indeed reach up to the Vice President or President.

Now imagine the response: Front-page headlines; editorials nationwide calling for answers, Congressional hearings, or even the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into some of the claims; a raft of op-ed page pieces by the nation's leading columnists asking questions, demanding answers, reminding us of the history of Iran-Contra; bold reporters from a recently freed media standing up in White House and Defense Department press briefings to demand more information on Hersh's various charges; calls in Congress for hearings and investigations into why the people's representatives were left so totally out of this loop.

Uh…

All I can say is: If any of this happened, I haven't been able to discover it. As far as I can tell, no one in the mainstream even blinked on the Iran-Contra angle or the possibility that a vast, secret Middle Eastern operation is being run, possibly illegally and based on stolen funds and Saudi money, out of the Vice President's office. You can certainly find a few pieces on, or reports about, "The Redirection" -- all focused only on the possible build-up to a war with Iran -- and the odd wire-service mention of it; but nothing major, nothing Earth-shaking or eye-popping; not, in fact, a single obvious editorial or op-ed piece in the mainstream; no journalistic questions publicly asked of the administration; no Congressional cries of horror; no calls anywhere for investigations or hearings on any of Hersh's revelations, not even an expression of fear somewhere that we might be seeing Iran-Contra, the sequel, in our own moment.

This, it seems to me, adds up to a remarkable non-response to claims that, if true, should gravely concern Congress, the media, and the nation. Let's grant that Hersh's New Yorker pieces generally arrive unsourced and filled with anonymuous officials ("a former senior intelligence official," "a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel"). Nonetheless, Hersh has long mined his sources in the Intelligence Community and the military to striking effect. Undoubtedly, the lack of sourcing makes it harder for other reporters to follow-up, though when it comes to papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, you would think that they might have Washington sources of their own to query on Hersh's claims. And, of course, editorial pages, columnists, op-ed editors, Congressional representatives, and reporters at administration news briefings don't need to do any footwork at all to raise these subjects. (Consider, for instance, the White House press briefing on April 10, 2006, where a reporter did indeed ask a question based on an earlier Hersh New Yorker piece.) As far as I can tell, there haven't even been denunciations of Hersh's report or suggestions anywhere that it was inaccurate or off-base. Just the equivalent of a giant, collective shrug of the media's rather scrawny shoulders.

Since the response to Hersh's remarkable piece has been so tepid in places where it should count, let me take up just a few of the many issues his report raises.

"Meddling" in Iran

For at least a month now, our press and TV news have been full to the brim with mile-high headlines and top-of-the-news stories recounting (and, more rarely, disputing) Bush administration claims of Iranian "interference" or "meddling" in Iraq (where U.S. military spokesmen regularly refer to the Iraqi insurgents they are fighting as "anti-Iraq forces"). Since Hersh published "Plan B" in the New Yorker in June 2004 in which he claimed that the Israelis were "running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria," he has been on the other side of this story.

In "The Coming Wars" in January of 2005, he first reported that the Bush administration, like the Israelis, had been "conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since" the summer of 2004. In April of 2006 in "The Iran Plans," he reported that the Bush administration was eager to put the "nuclear option" on the table in any future air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities (and that some in the Pentagon, fiercely opposed, had at least temporarily thwarted planning for the possible use of nuclear bunker-busters in Iran). He also reported that American combat units were "on the ground" in Iran, marking targets for any future air attack, and quoted an unnamed source as claiming that they were also "working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops ‘are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,' the consultant said. One goal is to get ‘eyes on the ground'… The broader aim, the consultant said, is to ‘encourage ethnic tensions' and undermine the regime."

In "The Redirection," he now claims that, in search of Iranian rollback and possible regime change, "American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the [Iranian] border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq." In his Democracy Now! radio interview, he added: "[W]e have been deeply involved with Azeris and Baluchis and Iranian Kurds in terror activities inside the country… and, of course, the Israelis have been involved in a lot of that through Kurdistan… Iran has been having sort of a series of backdoor fights, the Iranian government, because… they have a significant minority population. Not everybody there is a Persian. If you add up the Azeris and Baluchis and Kurds, you're really 30-some [%], maybe even 40% of the country."

In addition, he reported that "a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours," and that its "new assignment" was to identify not just nuclear facilities and possible regime-change targets, but "targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq."

Were there nothing else in Hersh's most recent piece, all of this would still have been significant news -- if we didn't happen to live on a one-way imperial planet in which Iranian "interference" in (American) Iraq is an outrage, but secret U.S. operations in, and military plans to devastate, Iran are your basic ho-hum issue. Our mainstream news purveyors don't generally consider the issue of our "interference" in Iran worthy of a great deal of reporting, nor do our pundits consider it a topic worthy of speculation or consideration; nor, in a Congress where leading Democrats have regularly outflanked the Bush administration in hawkish positions on Iran, is this likely to be much of an issue.

You can read abroad about rumored American operations out of Pakistan and Afghanistan aimed at unsettling Iranian minorities like the Baluchis and about possible operations to create strife among Arab minorities in southern Iran near the Iraqi border -- the Iranians seem to blame the British, whose troops are in southern Iraq, for some of this (a charge vociferously denied by the British embassy in Tehran) -- but it's not a topic of great interest here.

In recent months, in fact, several bombs have gone off in minority regions of Iran. These explosions have been reported here, but you would be hard-pressed to find out what the Iranians had to say about them, and the possibility that any of these might prove part of a U.S. (or Anglo-American) covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian fundamentalist regime basically doesn't concern the news mind here, even though past history says it should. After all, many of our present Middle Eastern problems can be indirectly traced back to the Anglo-American ur-moment in the Middle East, the successful CIA-British-intelligence plot in 1953 to oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry) and install the young Shah in power.

After all, in the 1980s, in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, the CIA (with the eager connivance of the Pakistanis and the Saudis) helped organize, arm, and fund the Islamic extremists who would someday turn on us for terror campaigns on a major scale. As Steve Coll reported in his superb book Ghost Wars, for instance, "Under ISI [Pakistani intelligence] direction, the mujahedin received training and malleable explosives to mount car-bomb and even camel-bomb attacks in Soviet-occupied cities, usually designed to kill Soviet soldiers and commanders. [CIA Director William] Casey endorsed these despite the qualms of some CIA career officers."

Similarly, in the early 1990s, the Iraq National Accord, an organization run by the CIA's Iraqi exile of choice, Iyad Allawi, evidently planted, under the Agency's direction, car bombs and explosive devices in Baghdad (including in a movie theater) in a fruitless attempt to destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime. The New York Times reported this on its front page in June 2004 (to no effect whatsoever), when Allawi was the Prime Minister of American-occupied Iraq.

Who knows where the funding, training, and equipment for the bombings in Iran are coming from -- but, at a moment when charges that the Iranians are sending into Iraq advanced IEDs, or the means to produce them, are the rage, it seems a germane subject.

In this country, it's a no-brainer that the Iranians have no right whatsoever to put their people, overtly or covertly, into neighboring Iraq, a country which, back in the 1980s, invaded Iran and fought a bitter eight-year war with it, resulting in perhaps a million casualties; but it's just normal behavior for the Pentagon to have traveled halfway across the planet to dominate the Iraqi military, garrison Iraq with a string of vast permanent bases, build the largest embassy on the planet in Baghdad's Green Zone, and send special-operations teams (and undoubtedly CIA teams as well) across the Iranian border, or to insert them in Iran to do "reconnaissance" or even to foment unrest among its minorities. This is the definition of an imperial worldview.

Sleepless Nights

Let's leave Iran now and briefly take up a couple of other matters highlighted in "The Redirection" that certainly should have raised the odd red flag and pushed the odd alarm button here at home far more than his Iranian news (which did at least get some attention):

1. Iran-Contra Redux: Does it raise no eyebrows that, under the leadership of Elliot Abrams (who in the Iran-Contra period pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress and was later pardoned), such a meeting was held? Does no one want to confirm that this happened? Does no one want to know who attended? Iran-Contra alumni in the Bush administration at one time or another included former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Otto Reich, John Negroponte (who, Hersh claims, recently left his post as Director of National Intelligence in order to avoid the twenty-first century version of Iran-Contra -- "No way. I'm not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. [National Security Council] running operations off the books, with no [presidential] finding."), Roger Noriega, and Robert Gates. Did the Vice President or President sit in? Was either of them informed about the "lessons drawn"? Were the Vice President's right-hand men, I. Lewis Libby and/or David Addington in any way involved? Who knows? In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration drew together the seediest collection of freelance arms dealers, intelligence agents, allies, and -- in the case of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian regime -- sworn enemies in what can only be called "amateur hour" at the White House. Now, it looks like the Bush administration is heading down a similar path and, given its previous "amateur hour" reputation in foreign policy, imagine what this is likely to mean.

2. Jihadis as Proxies: Using jihadis as American proxies in a struggle to rollback Iran -- with the help of the Saudis -- should have rung a few bells somewhere in American memory as another been-there, done-that moment. In the 1980s -- on the theory that my enemy's enemy is my friend -- the fundamentalist Catholic CIA Director William Casey came to believe that Islamic fundamentalists could prove tight and trustworthy allies in rolling back the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan, as a result, the CIA, backed by the Saudis royals, who themselves represented an extremist form of Sunni Islam, regularly favored and funded the most extreme of the mujahedeen ready to fight the Soviets. Who can forget the results? Today, according to Hersh, the Saudis are reassuring key figures in the administration that this time they have the jihadis to whom funds are flowing under control. No problem. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

3. Congress in the Dark: Hersh claims that, with the help of Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan (buddy to the Bushes and Dick Cheney's close comrade-in-arms), the people running the black-ops programs out of Cheney's office have managed to run circles around any possibility of Congressional oversight, leaving the institution completely "in the dark," which is undoubtedly exactly where Congress wanted to be for the last six years. Is this still true? The non-reaction to the Hersh piece isn't exactly encouraging.

To summarize, if Hersh is to be believed -- and as a major journalistic figure for the last near-40 years he certainly deserves to be taken seriously -- the Bush administration seems to be repeating the worst mistakes of the Reagan administration and of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, which led inexorably to the greatest acts of blowback in our history. Given what we already know about the Bush administration, Americans should be up nights worrying about what all this means now as well as down the line. For Congress, the media, and Americans in general, this report should have been not just a wake-up call, but a shout for an all-nighter with NoDoz.

In my childhood, one of the Philadelphia papers regularly ran cartoon ads for itself in which some poor soul in a perilous situation -- say, clinging to the ledge of a tall building -- would be screaming for help, while passersby were so engrossed in the paper that they didn't even look up. Now, we have the opposite situation. A journalist essentially writing bloody murder in a giant media and governmental crowd. In this case, no one in the mainstream evidently cares -– not yet anyway -- to pay the slightest attention. It seems that there's a crime going on and no one gives a damn. Think Kitty Genovese on a giant scale.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.