CIA BROKE OWN RULES IN WEAPONS DEAL, GATES TESTIFIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000301270097-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 97
• Publication Date: February 17, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/10 : CIA-RDP99-01448R000301270097-0
17 February 1987
CIA BROKE OWN RULES IN WEAPONS DEAL, GATES TESTIFIES
BY ROBERT M. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON
Acting CIA Director Robert M. Gates said Tuesday the agency violated its
own rules in the way it handled the secret arms sales to Iran, while Israel's
prime minister defended the idea of reaching out to that "terrorist
country."Gates, testifying at a Senate hearing on his confirmation as director
of the intelligence agency, accepted a share of blame for the CIA and
suggested he would make quite different decisions if such a situation comes up
with him in charge.
The agency, he said, bypassed internal regulations in arranging a flight to
Iran in 1985. In addition, he said Congress should not have been kept in the
dark so long about the weapons deal.
He said he would consider resigning rather than go along with such.an
arrangement in the future.
But he also said it would have been wrong for him to have gone to Congress
with what he described as merely "flimsy speculation"that profits from the
weapons sales were going to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
As for Israel, both President Reagan and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who
arrived for a three-day visit, were described as eager to focus on Middle East
peace prospects and publicly sidestep the Iran arms affair.
On the subject of Iran itself, Shamir told reporters, "I think it is one of
the most dangerous countries in the world. It is a terrorist country, a
totalitarian country. But he said in spite of Iran's behavior "we have to do
everything possible to change the situation."Israell too, has sent weapons to
Iran.
A senior U.S. official stressed that Reagan's decision to authorize arms
shipments to Iran through Israel was an American not an Israeli initiative.
"We have made clear we accept responsibility for the decision, and we do not
blame Israel," said the official,_who spoke to reporters only on condition
that he not be identified.
Likewise, Israeli officials said Shamir will try to make clear during his
visit that arming Iran was an American idea, and that Israel had nothing to do
with the diversion of some of the profits to Nicaraguan rebel forces.
As special House and Senate investigative committees made preparations for
exhaustive hearings into the Iran-Contra affair, starting sometime in April, .
Gates testified that he would consider resigning if the White House ever ordered
him to keep Congress in the dark about a covert operation.
Information the committees are expected to examine include data from National
Security Council computers, which a presidential panel is now studying. The
data, compiled from a backup archive at the NSC, where much of the Iran-Contra
work was done, are said to be yielding important information for a presidential
panel investigating the affair.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in Wednesday's editions that former
national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane, who has since been hospitalized
with an overdose of tranquilizers, was the one who tipped congressional
investigators to the existance of the archive. Continued
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Sen. David Durenberger, R-Minn., the former chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, told the newspaper that McFarlane volunteered word of
the archive during testimony before the committee. Durenberger said the
committee, under pressure to complete a preliminary report, did not try to
examine the data but advised the other investigating congressional committees
and the presidential panel about it.
The presidential commission headed by former Sen. John Tower, R-Texas,
learned of secret projects and financing operations carried on under the name
Project Democracy, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, congressional investigators are arranging to gain access to
transcripts of portions of Reagan's handwritten notes on the affair.
"We may not see the notes themselves," Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii,
chairman of the Senate's special Iran-Contra committee, told The Associated
Press. But he said that "arrangements have been made to acquaint ourselves with
the contents of the notes."A knowledgeable congressional source, who spoke only
on condition that he not be identified, said the Senate panel will be given
access to the same excerpts of the presidential notes that have been shown to
the Tower Commission, which Reagan appointed to review operations of the
National Security Council.
That group was allowed to see typewritten transcripts of notes that the
president, working with close advisers, decided were relevant to the inquiry.
Gates, a 43-year-old agency professional nominated by Reagan to succeed
former CIA Director William J. Casey, said the decision against notifying
Congress about the Iran arms deal had stretched relations between Congress and
the executive branch "to the breaking point."Testifying at a confirmation
hearing by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gates promised to help
"re-establish mutual trust and confidence" between the CIA and Congress.
Gates said he had heard only "flimsy speculation" last October that Iranian
arms profits were being funneled to the Contras, and that it would have been
irresponsible to report such sketchy information to Congress at the time.
But he said it was a CIA "error" to conceal the secret arms sales from
Congress for 10 months. And he said the arms deal was full of "shortcomings"
that worried him, at least in retrospect.
He said CIA agents had "violated our own internal regulationsflin arranging
to fly weapons to Iran in November 1985.
"We did not communicate well enough internally about what was going on," he
said. "We should have protested more vigorously our involvement in an operation
where there were significant elements unknown to us and where we mistrusted key
figures.
Ne tolerated ground rules suggested by others that excluded our own experts.
I also believe the CIA made an error in not pressing to reverse the directive
to withhold prior notification once the Operation began to string out in
February 1986."Said Gates: "The entire undertaking was a unique activity that we
are all determined not to repeat."Shamir, who is touring the United States for
10 days, will meet with Reagan on Wednesday and also will confer with Secretary
of state George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.-
Confinuati
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04%.
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Israeli officials said that when questions are raised here about the U.S.
arms shipments to Iran, Shamir will portray his country as a helpful middleman,
a role befitting a close friend.
Israeli diplomats and arms dealers took part in the arrangements, and the
weapons sent to Iran were taken out of Israeli stockpiles and replaced later by
the Defense Department.
Recent Senate findings suggested that Israel played an active part in
managing the arms sales rather than merely acceding to U.S. requests to transfer
arms to Iran.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/10: CIA-RDP99-01448R000301270097-0