WHAT REAGAN KNEW, AND WHEN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120002-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 3, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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