MUSKIE SAYS ARMS CASH FOUND IRANIAN POCKETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403730002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 5, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403730002-6
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE _.-
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
5 March 1987
Tower report. paid and that "no one, as far as
i edeen told an unnamed CIA I know, has said that."
official that the Iranians had The former secretary of state
From Chicago Tribune wires
WASHINGTON-Former
Secretary of State Edmund
Muskie, a member of the Tower
Board, said Wednesday he
suspects some of the profits
from covert arms sales to Iran
were paid as bribes to Iranian
officials. But he said he has no
proof.
The possibility of kickbacks
was raised in December, 1985,
by Michael Ledeen, a govern-
ment consultant who played a
major role in the initial sale of
weapons to Tehran and whose
comments were included in the
Muskie says arms cash
found Iranian pockets
mary of Ledeen's meeting with
an unnamed agency official as
saying:
"Ledeen noted that they had
purposely overcharged the
Iranians and had used around
$200,000 of these funds to sup-
port subject's [Ghorbanifar's]
political contacts inside Iran,"
the report said.
Ledeen, a consultant to the
National Security Council until
December, 1986, said in a tele-
phone interview Monday that he
could not recall making such a
statement.
Muskie was quoted in
Wednesday's San Francisco Ex-
aminer as saying Ghorbanifar,
who served as a middleman in
the clandestine Reagan adminis-
tration dealings, had told the
of Iranian arms dealer Manucher
Ghorbanifar, the report said.
The report quoted a CIA sum-
been overcharged for U.S.-made
weapons they bought from Israel
to generate profits for supporters
commission "there were expen-
ses that accompanied this. He
treated it as an expense of doing
business."
Asked by a reporter for the
newspaper how he interpreted
Ghorbanifar's reference to "ex-
penses." Muskie was quoted as
saying:
"That was the euphemism. It
was my impression he wanted to
communicate that to us. They
were bribing each other to get
the deal through."
Interviewed Wednesday,
Muskie said the commission had
no proof that bribes had been
said someone in the arms indus-
try, whom he did not identify,
had told him bribes were paid to
Iranian officials.
But, referring to the commis-
sion report released last week, he
added that "you don't state
[that] as facts until you can
prove them, especially in a doc-
ument supposed to be authorita-
tive."
The Examiner said the bribed
officials included Hashemi Raf-
sanjani, speaker of Iran's legisla-
ture. The newspaper said in a
copyright story that other sourc-
es confirmed the bribes.
A Senate Intelligence Commit-
rce told the newspaper
,tee
the bribes totaled $6 million
from the summer of 1985 to the
spring of 1986.
Clark McFadden, the Tower
Board's chief counsel, told the
newspaper Ghorbanifar "had to
grease the way somehow." [ 8
Block spaces, for 0.45 Picas. ]
In other developments:
? Attorney General Edwin
Meese said Wednesday the Jus-
tice Department will seek dis-
missal of a lawsuit that chal-
lenges the law under which
independent counsel Lawrence
Walsh was appointed to investi-
gate the Iran-Contra scandal.
Meese told the Senate Judici-
ary Committee that the depart-
ment will join Walsh in seeking
dismissal of the suit by lawyers
for Lt. Col. Oliver North, the
former National Security Coun-
cil staffer who is one of the cen-
tral figures in the investigation.
? Nicaraguan contra leader
Adolfo Calero went before a fed-
eral grand jury in Washington
Wednesday, bearing bank re-
cords of six offshore accounts
used to receive funds for the re-
bels fighting Nicaragua's San-
dinista government, Calero's at-
torney said.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403730002-6