WHAT REAGAN KNEW, AND WHEN

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120002-9
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RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
July 6, 2012
Sequence Number: 
2
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
March 3, 1987
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120002-9.pdf118.16 KB
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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120002-9 Ci'~ PAGE NEW YORK POST 3 March 1987 WhatN~ MA own declared policy against and.dUDH %ET'Z selling his own deocllaarreed policy - policy nally being considered. The against paying ransom for President, McFarlane has hostages. He thereby pro- CONTRARY to what the members of the Tower Commission and al- most everyone else have said Ronald Reagan does not emerge from the pages of the commission's report as a confused old man who had only the foggiest notion about the secret arms deal with Iran which his own National Security Council had been pursuing for well over a year. It is true that the Tower Commission uncovered no evidence that the President knew about the diversion to the contras of profits from- the Iranian arms sales. But a careful reading of the re- port establishes three points that together refute the idea that Reagan suffered from any serious confusion about the arms sales themselves. To begin with, it becomes clear from the evidence supplied by the report that the first shipment of arms to Iran, made by the Israe- lis, went forward only after Reagan had given his ap- proval (even though he now claims that he cannot remember exactly when he gave It). Then about five months later, Reagan au- thorized the first direct supply of arms to. Iran by the United States. On Jan. 17, 1986, he wrote in his diary: "I agreed to sell TOWs to Iran." So much for the question of who was responsible for selling arms to Iran. Ronald Reagan was responsible. But (moving on to the second point) did Reagan understand what adopting such a policy meant? Not in the opinion of John Tower and his two colleagues on the commission, Brent Scowcroft and Edmund Muskie. They have charged that the President was never properly briefed by his advisers about.the risks to the nation and to his owji political fortunes entailed by the arms sales As Scow- croft has put it. "There should have been bells ringing, lights flashing and soon." Yet what we learned from evidence contained in the report itself is that bells did ring and lights did flash. Both Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Secre- tary of Defense Caspar Weinberger were against the arms sales, and on sev- eral occasions explained why in no uncertain terms At one meeting in the Oval Office, for example, Shultz "stated all of the reasons why I felt It was a bad idea . I didn't just sort of rattle these arguments oft I was Intense . . . the President was well aware of my views." Weinberger was equally vehement in denouncing the policy. At an earlier meeting with the President he "opposed it very strong- ly"" as "a terrible idea," and Shultz backed him up. So. persuasively and forcefully did they present their case that they thought they had "strangled the baby in the cradle." NQ'such luck. The President decided against them. He arrived at this deci- sion, according to Attorney General Edwin Meese's tes- timony, with "an adequate meat for and understanding of the argu- against the Project." This view has been confirmed by Robert C. McFarlane, who was na- tional security adviser when the policy was origi- testified "called and said. I vided an incentive for more think we ought to get on hostage-taking in the future with that ... and I said do and severely damaged the you understand, of course, anti-terrorist cause in gen- now that George [Shultz] eral. and Ca In all this, Reagan was p (Weinberger] are abetted by the Israelis and very much opposed to this their expert in counter-ter- and they have very good rorism whose expertise reasons? ... and he said: seemed to consist in figiu?- Yes, I understand how they Ing out new ways of paying feel, but I want to go ahead terrorists off. Here the with thi." Tower Report tragically in this same con, confirms what had already versation with McFarlane, been suggested by Israeli Reagan left no doubt that he behavior in two earlier hos- was also' fully conscious of tage crises - that Israel the political embarrass- can no longer be counted rather, would suffer it (or upon to settaanr example for him, r, Shultz later told the rest of the world ohow , not t if but when) the policy became public to deal firmly with terror- knowledge. McFarlane re- ism membered the President And what of all the talk saying that he would "be but encouraging "moder. glad to take all the heat ... " ate" elements in Iran and The director of the CIA. William J. Casey, came away with exactly the same impression from another meeting in the Oval Office: "I suspect he would be will- ing to... take the heat in the future," Casey noted in a memo, "if this will lead to springing the hostages." If this will lead to springing the hostages. There we have it, and on this issue of the President's motives, at least, the con- clusion reached by Tower and his colleagues is fully consistent with what their evidence shows. The overriding reason Ronald Reagan sold arms to the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime was that he wanted to free the American hos- tages who were being held in Lebanon by terrorists under Iranian control. In doing so, he violated his countering a future Soviet threat? Some of the players in this squalid drama were obviously moved by such strategic fantasies. But as McFarlane has finally con- fessed, the main function of this geopolitical rationale was to "gild the President's motives," which were fo- cused from beginning to end on the hostages. Thirteen years ago, dur- ing the Watergate tl'earings, it was, ironically, Reagan's new chief of staff, Howard Baker, who kept asking the two famous questions: What did the President know and when did he know it? If we ask these questions about Reagan's relation to the selling of arms to Iran, the answers we get from the evidence collected by the Tower Commission are: More than enough, and from the very first minute. Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120002-9