WHO GOT THE IRAN-CONTRA MONEY?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110026-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 5, 2012
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: March 31, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110026-4
WASHINGTON POST
31 March 1987
Iminimummilm...71 JACK ANDERSON and JOSEPH SPEAR
Who Got the Iran-Contra Money?
At his news conference last week, President
Reagan didn't answer the biggest question
remaining in the Iran-contra arms scandal:
Who got the money? The president said he hadn't
even known that there was a multimillion-dollar
"profit" from the arms sales to Iran, so he still
needs to find out what happened to it.
We can give him an advance tip on what
congressional investigators and the special counsel
will report: Some of the missing money was paid in
kickbacks to cronies of Iranian parliamentary
speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani. And a big bundle went
for commissions to the arms entrepreneurs who
cooked up the scam in the first place.
But there's another beneficiary that a timorous
Congress may be reluctant to identify: Israel.
During the protracted secret negotiations, the
Americans understood that some of the profits
would go to the Mossad, Israel's secret service,
which is always in need of cash to pay informants
and run its highly regarded intelligence network.
This may prove to be politically sticky for
Congress, although actually the Mossad payoff is
one of the more defensible features of the arms
deal. Over the years, Mossad officials have given
the CIA intelligence of incalculable value.
Turkish Reaganism: The "Reagan Revolution" may
be in trouble here, but basic Reagan policies are
thriving in a faraway land: Turkey. By coincidence,
this bastion of Reaganism is next-door to Iran,
which has been the root of the evils that have
befallen the president's agenda.
It's no accident that Turkish-American relations
have flourished in the concurrent administrations of
President Reagan and Turkish Prime Minister
Turgut Ozal. In a recent interview in the capital
city of Ankara, Ozal made it clear that he is an
enthusiastic advocate of Reagan's two unshakable
articles of faith: private enterprise and
anticommunism. He also favors such old-fashioned
American virtues as self-reliance.
Ozal wants more U.S. military and economic aid
now because his country needs it badly. But for the
long run, he wants Turkey to take care of itself.
"The most important thing is the determination of a
country to solve its own problems," he told our
associate Dale Van Atta. And, in his book, a free
and unfettered capitalist economy is the best road
to take.
"I will give you an example," he said. "Here in
this country, at the end of the 1970s, we still had
subsidies on petroleum. It was unbelievable. Many
other things were subsidized. We have removed
those subsidies completely."
Surprisingly, the Turkish people seem to have
accepted this, at a time when other governments in
the region avoid similar economic reforms for fear
of inciting riots or worse. How did Ozal do it?
"We have explained to our people that we have to
remove these subsidies because they are being paid
for by the people," he said. "The government
doesn't have a different purse. It's the same purse:
the nation's purse."
It takes a gutsy politician to impose free-market
policies on a depressed economy. But, except for a
production subsidy on agriculture, Ozal has
persevered on his capitalist course.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110026-4