WHAT DID ISRAEL KNOW?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890019-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: August 13, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890019-4
ILLEGIB
'7-LVIED
?
WASHINGTON POST
13 August 1986
Rowland Ep_afflfind Robert Novak
What Did Israel Know?
Unintended disclosure to a U.S. undercover
agent by a key figure in the scheme to smuggle
62 billion worth of U.S.-made arms from Israel to
Iran worsens an embarrassing new disturbance in
the unwritten but intimate U.S.-Israeli alliance.
Tapes now in the possession of the U.S.
attorney in New York City reveal Samuel
Evans, an American lawyer based in London, in
conversation this past spring somewhere' in
Europe with alleged co-conspirators in the
arms deal. In connection with the operation, he
confided that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence,
had sent his name to the CIA for a routine
background check.
What Evans did not know is that he was
confiding to an undercover agent of the U.S.
Customs Service. When that information
reached Reagan administration officials, it
raised questions about Israel's claim to have
known nothing about the plot to sell its surplus
U.S. arms to Iran?an illegal sale to an enemy
of the United States.
That deepens the irony of the special U.S.-
Israeli relationship: While reaching a peak of
intimacy in the Reagan administration, it is
suffering from a series of deep embarrass-
ments. Israel's disclaimer of any government
knowledge of the Iranian arms conspiracy fol-
lowed its policy of proclaiming ignorance in the
matter of admitted Israeli sP IstgathAplgy
Pollard. In that case, too, th?stice Depart-
me?iarnd FBI have found it difficult to accept
Israel's claim of innocence,
Evans, reserve Israeli Gen. Avraham Bar-Am
and three others were arrested in Bermuda Int
APril, put on a plane to New York a month later
and rearrested there on charges of conspiracy to
smuggle arms to Iran. The trial is set for late.
November. According to the indictment, the
planned sale included 18 F-4 Phantoms, 18 F-5
Tigers and 46 Skyliawics?now surplus aircraft in
Israel's U.S.-supplied air force.
Prior to his arrest, Evans told the
undercover agent that Monad had told him the
CIA had been asked for a "tracer" on him that
would reveal any derogatory information in the
files at Langley. That disclosure, picked up on
tape by the agent, was news to U.S. officials.
In a separate taped conversation with alleged
co-conspirators, Evans confided that both Mossad
and the Lazuli Ministry of Defense had instructed
him not to set foot in the United States. The
reason, he said, was that information about the
huge sale of American arms from Israel to Iran
might get out because 90 many participants in so
many different places were aware of it. ?
It was, he said, a matter of personal safety. If
the United States learned about a conspiracy to
violate its laws by selling the Ayatollah Khom-
eini weapons given by American taxpayers for
the defense of Israel, he continued, the conspir-
ators would risk immediate prosecution by the
United States. That could land them in jail after
a trial that could embarrass Israel, he conclud-
ed. We have perused the transcripts If the
tapes but cannot quote from them.
The record of one conversation has Evans
telling his colleagues they must-not dare come
into the United States. When undercover ?
agents invented an Iranian participant named
"Mehran," who insisted on consummating the
arms deal in New York, Evans demanded that
"Mehran" come to London or Paris. The two
sides finally compromised on Bermuda. It was
there, with the connivance of British authori-
ties, that the conspiracy came to an abrupt end.
The hill extent of knowledge, if any, within the
Israeli government in this conspiracy may never
be {mown. Officials throughout the Reagan ad-
ministration?outside the State Deportment?
are hoping that the trial will bring out the truth.
For political and diplomatic reasons, specialists
at State are not, anxious to publicise Israeli
complicity. That explains a wise administration
decision to keep the leaky State Deportment
largely in the dark as the "sting" operation in the
Iranian arms sale progressed early this year.
Behind this is an institutional conflict over
how to handle the Israeli factor when American
policy is undercut. In the Iran-Iraq war; Israel
strongly backs Iran while the United States
leans toward Iraq. That conflict will not be
resolved any time soon. But Justice Depart-
ment officials hope the trial in the Iranian arms
conspiracy will prove beneficial to the U.S.-Is-
rael relationship in the long run.
The trial will be painful if it demonstrates
that Israel exploited its policies at U.S. ex-
pense. But the evidence has convinced high-
ranking officials that the Iranian affair must be
ventilated and might become the catalyst to
end such practices. That would benefit both the
United States and Israel.
019116, News America Syndicate
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890019-4