IRAN AIDE SAID TO GIVE SPY DATA TO U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740045-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: April 23, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740045-4
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
23 April 1987
Iran aide said to give spy data
to U.S.
By Bernie Shellum
Inquirer Washington Bureau --
PORTLAND, Ore. - An Iranian of-
ficial secretly passed sensitive intel-
ligence information, including maps
of Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi's
headquarters, to the United States
two months before American planes
bombed Libya last year, according to
an Oregon businessman who says he
STAT erved as an intermediary.
Richard Brenneke. a former CIA
Clot, said in an interview that he
became a courier for a wide array of
intelligence information from Iran
while trying to win U.S. approval of
an arms-for-Iran deal in late 1984.
He said he and his associates re-
ceived maps of the Gadhafi head-
quarters and a number of terrorist
training sites in February 1986 from
an Iranian air force officer, the
source of all the intelligence, and
promptly delivered them to U.S.
Army and Marine officers through
diplomatic channels.
Brenneke said contacts in the De-
fense Department and the CIA told
him that most of the intelligence
information he relayed to those offi-
cers was accurate and "very, very
useful."
On April 14, 1986, two months after
Brenneke says he delivered the
maps, American pilots launched an
air strike against Gadhafi's head-
quarters inside a military barracks
in Tripoli. Gadhafi was not injured,
but one of his children was killed
and others were hurt. His home and
headquarters tent were damaged.
Bombs took more than 100 other
lives.
Brenneke said the Iranian infor-
mation identified terrorist training
sites in North Africa and the Middle
East, and included information on
Hezbollah,. a Muslim . extremist or-
ganization in Lebanon that is widely
reported to be under the influence of
Iran's revolutionary government.
He and two associates in France
provided some of the information to
French and Israeli intelligence serv-
ices as well as the United States,
Brenneke said.
U.S. military officers whom Bren-
neke identified as recipients of the
intelligence information either de?
clined to discuss the matter or could
not be reached.
But court records in New York
show that Brenneke and his asso-
ciates, Bernard Veillot and John De-
Larocque, were negotiating a pro-
posed arms deal with Iranian and
U.S. officials. Transcripts of tele-
phone conversations, tapped by the
U.S. Customs Service, also indicate
that the three men were aware of
covert U.S. arms sales to Iran,
through Israel, in 1985, and appear to
have learned about White House dis-
cussions about authorizing such
sales.
According to the court record,
Brenneke wrote to the Department
of Defense on Jan. 1, 1986, saying, "If
you wish me to discontinue collect-
ing and-or reporting intelligence in-
formation to you I will do so. Please
let me know."
Brenneke said his letters were de-
livered to specified military officers
by his Portland attorney, Richard
Muller, a retired Marine officer.
Brenneke's account marks the first
reported instance of intelligence in-
formation passing from Iran to the
United States at a time when the two
cQuntries were publicly at odds.
Iran's ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, was then denouncing the
United States as "the great Satan."
The Tower report
The Tower commission reported
Feb. 26 that U.S. officials had sup-
plied intelligence information about
Iraq to Iran, and about Iran to Iraq,
during the time the National Secu-
rity Council was arranging covert
arms sales to Iran from mid-1985
through 1986.
Asked how he knew that Iran's
government supported the Iranian
air force officer's intelligence offer-
ings, Brenneke said he sometimes
dealt directly, by telephone, with Ho-
jatoleslam Hashemi Rafsanjani, the
speaker of Iran's parliament, and
with other Iranian officials he said
were involved in the negotiations.
The Iranians were in desperate
need of U.S. warplanes and. spare
parts, Brenneke said, because their
U.S.-equipped air force was in calami-
tous condition.
Brenneke said the source of the
intelligence information, air force
Col. Kiamars Salahshoor, acknowl-
edged that only five of Iran's F-15s
and 10 of its F-4s were operational,
and that their pilot-ejection seats
had been bolted in place because the
mechanisms no longer worked. He
described the planes as "suicide
machines."
In addition, Brenneke said, some of
the Iranians he talked with "did not
like the Hezbollah movement" and
used Hezbollah to deflect blame for
terrorism from Iran.
`Self-serving' '
The Iranian officials, he said, had
"a very strong desire to indicate that
they were not the source of much of
the terrorism activity that had gone
on. It was a little bit self-serving in
that they wanted to keep telling ev-
erybody, 'Look, it wasn't us. We
didn't do it.' The fact that they may
have had some control over the peo-
ple who did do it, they didn't want to
admit."
Whether the intelligence informa-
tion from Iran played any role in the
strike against Gadhafi, or in an Oct.
1, 1985, Israeli air attack against the
Palestine Liberation Organization's
headquarters in Tunisia, could not
be determined.
But Brenneke said the information
he and his associates relayed to U.S.
intelligence officials included coor-
dinates and descriptions of Gadhafi's
headquarters and the PLO headquar-
ters near Tunis, as well as terrorist
sites in Libya, Chad, Algeria and Leb-
anon. He said that Gadhafi's head-
quarters was specified and that
"everything that related to what
Gadhafi was doing in Libya was.,
described."
The New York Times reported Feb.
22 that NSC planners had developed a
secret objective for the Libya mis-
sion - to kill Gadhafi - and that
Israeli agents had kept the United
States posted on Gadhafi's where-
abouts until two hours and 45 min-
utes before the attack. U.S. officials
have denied that the mission was
intended to kill Gadhafi.
uad tt
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740045-4
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740045-4
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Reliable data
Asked if he had received any eval-
uation of Iran's information from
U.S. officials, Brenneke said he had
questioned friends in the CIA and
the Department of Defense on that
point.
"I was told that I was batting well
over 90 percent and the majority of it
was very, very useful," Brenneke
said.
Moreover, U.S. officials urged him
to continue transmitting informa-
tion from Iran even though they
were doing nothing to advance the
proposed arms transaction in which
he and Veillot and DeLarocque were
to serve as middlemen, Brenneke
said.
He said that French and Israeli
intelligence officers also vouched
for some of the information.
Brenneke said the Iranians pro-
vided the information as an induce-
ment to the U.S. government to
.permit the weapons sales by his
group.
In the initial negotiations, Bren-
neke said, the Iranians sought a re-
sumption of low-level diplomatic
talks with the United States, the re-
lease of military equipment pur-
chased by the shah, and new
warplanes and tanks for use in Iran's
war against Iraq.
In pursuit of those goals, Brenneke
said, Iran offered the United States a
captured Soviet T-80 tank and help in
obtaining the release of American
hostages held by terrorists in Leba-
non as well as the intelligence infor-
mation on terrorists and their
training sites.
The Brenneke group's proposed
weapons transaction fell through,
however. Veillot and DeLarocque
were indicted in New York a year
ago after U.S. Customs agents carried
out a sting operation against another
group that was trying to arrange an
allegedly illegal arms-for-Iran deal.
At the same time, U.S. officials were
carrying out a covert arms-for-hos-
tages swap through another set of
intermediaries directed by Lt. Col.
Oliver North and other NSC officials.
Brenneke said he passed the intel-
ligence information on to Lt. Col.
Larry Caylor, of the Army Intelli-
gence and Security Command, and
Lt. Col. George Alvarez, a Marine
counterintelligence officer. An advi-
sor to Brenneke acknowledged that,
at his urging, Brenneke sent his Feb-
ruary, 1986 intelligence package,
which Brenneke says included the
maps and related terrorist informa-
tion, to the United States through
diplomatic channels from the U.S.
Embassy in Paris.
Caylor and Alvarez, in turn, passed
some information on to Air Force Lt.
Col. E. Douglas Menarchik, a security
affairs adviser to Vice President
Bush, Brenneke said.
Caylor said he was forbidden to
comment on the matter, and Alvarez
and Menarchik could not be reached.
Brenneke said that the Iranians
would not let him keep copies of any
material, and that while it was in his
possession he was constantly accom-
panied by Veillot, a former French
navy pilot who, Brenneke says, has
flown missions for the CIA in Africa
and for French intelligence.
"They baby-sat me very carefully,"
Brenneke said. "Bernard stayed with
me during the time I had the infor-
mation. I read it. I talked to Bernard
about it. The sites were marked on a
map. And there was some tight text
describing in general terms where
terrorist training was taking place."
He said Veillot was trusted by the
Iranians because he had been flying
insecticides and other farming
equipment to Iran since 1980, and
had known Salahshoor since before
the Khomeini revolution overthrew
the shah.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740045-4