by Peter Dale Scott*
Winter 1990
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Media concern with the Iran/contra affair suddenly vanished in the spring of 1988, as soon as it became clear that George Bush, one of the scandal's dramatis personae, would become his party's presidential candidate.
On the surface, the Iran/contra controversy might indeed seem to have subsided. U.S. arms sales to Iran appear to have ceased. Overt military aid to the Nicaraguan contras now appears a remote possibility -- although we should not forget that its successor, "humanitarian assistance," was exactly what Oliver North called the arms he was supplying to the contras via Richard Secord's "Enterprise." [1]
And yet there remains a disturbing institutional legacy from the Iran/contra era which was responsible for the flagrant abuses of covert power. This legacy is the secret counterterrorism apparatus that was assembled under the auspices of then Vice President Bush and which became the vehicle for Oliver North's extraordinary influence within the government.
With the world-wide decline in the number of private terrorist incidents, there is even more reason to review the powerful and still intact counterterrorism apparatus organized under the Reagan administration whose overall coordinator in the National Security Council (NSC) was Colonel Oliver North.
The 1987 Congressional investigation of the Iran/contra scandal revealed in passing how North and his counterterrorism associates in other agencies abused the secret institutions of this apparatus to bypass legal restrictions and to further the controversial Iran arms sales. In fact, it was through the auspices of Vice President Bush's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism that North began his rise to power and infamy in the U.S. government.
Bush, North, and Domestic Repression
This article will examine how the Vice President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism served as the springboard for Oliver North's operations both in the U.S. and abroad. This revealing aspect of the relationship between North and Bush has often been overlooked in the mainstream media and provides evidence of just how deeply Bush was involved in the Iran/contra scandal.
We will begin by reconstructing from the public record what little is known of the North-Bush collaboration in the area of domestic repression, including the contingency plans developed by North (under Bush's auspices), for the roundup and deportation of "terrorist aliens."
The little-noticed secret relationship between North and the Office of the Vice President goes back at least to 1982, when North was the National Security Council staff coordinator for crisis management. Bush at this time was charged by National Security Decision Directive #3 (NSDD3) with responsibilities for crisis management, and had been reported to be the head of a Cabinet-level crisis management committee. [2]
North's secretary, Fawn Hall, joined him in February 1983, and the two then worked on the development of a secret Crisis Management Center. [3] North also met with members of the Office of the Vice President on such related committees as the Crisis Pre-Planning Committee and the National Security Planning Group.
There has been much debate as to what this first phase of North's work on crisis management involved. On July 5,1987, the Miami Herald reported that North "helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of national crisis such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad." [4] The plan allegedly envisaged the roundup and internment of large numbers of both domestic dissidents -- some twenty-six thousand -- and aliens -- perhaps as many as three to four hundred thousand -- in camps scattered across the country.
In June 1986 a new "Alien Border Control Committee" was established, "to implement specific recommendations made by the Vice President's Task Force on Terrorism regarding the control and removal of terrorist aliens in the U.S." [5] One of its working groups was charged with conducting "a review of contingency plans for removal of selected aliens." [6]
These contingency plans "relating to alien terrorists ... anticipated that the INS may be tasked with ... apprehending, and removing from the U.S., a sizable group of aliens," and again called for housing "up to 5,000 aliens in temporary (tents) quarters" at a camp in Oakdale, Louisiana. [7] As the designated coordinator of counterterrorism in the National Security Council, North would certainly have known of these contingency plans, which, disturbingly enough, appear to still be with us.
"[North] was responsible for working closely with the designated lead agencies and ... facilitating the development of response options and overseeing the implementation of the Vice President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism recommendations. "
In the televised Iran/contra Congressional hearings North was asked by Representative Jack Brooks (Dem.-Tex) to discuss the alleged contingency plan to suspend the U.S. Constitution. Daniel Inouye (Dem.-HI), the Committee Chairman, twice intervened, ruling that the question was "highly sensitive and classified," and should only be discussed in executive session. The next day North told Senator David Boren (Dem.-OK), a much more pliant questioner, that to his knowledge the United States had no such plan "in being," and that he had not participated in it. [8]
The Vice President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism
In October 1983, under the guidance of the Vice President's Special Situations Group, North helped draft the National Security Decision Directive which authorized the invasion of Grenada. That winter the two men visited El Salvador, where Bush told local army commanders they would have to cease their support for death squads. North testified that Bush's action "was one of the bravest things I've seen for [sic] anybody." Bush has since reciprocated by repeatedly referring to North as a "hero." [9]
In April 1984 North drafted another National Security Decision Directive, creating a new counterterrorism planning group, the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG), to rescue U.S. hostages in Lebanon (and above all CIA station chief, William Buckley). North became the chair of the new counterterrorist group and TIWG's first major action was the October 1985 interception and capture of the hijackers of the Achille Lauro -- which gave a big boost to North's prestige inside the administration.
The group's methods were rather unconventional, one could say heinous, but it had operated successfully for years. An example is the case of the "Palestinian" attack on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. That was, in fact, an Israeli "black" propaganda operation to show what a deadly, cutthroat bunch the Palestinians were.
The operation worked like this: Eitan passed instructions to Radi that it was time for the Palestinians to make an attack and do something cruel, though no specifics were laid out. Radi passed orders on to Abu'l Abbas, who, to follow such orders, was receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. Abbas then gathered a team to attack the cruise ship. The team was told to make it bad, to show the world what lay in store for other unsuspecting citizens if Palestinian demands were not met. As the world knows, the group picked on an elderly American Jewish man in a wheelchair, killed him, and threw his body overboard. They made their point. But for Israel it was the best kind of anti-Palestinian propaganda.
-- Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network, by Ari Ben-Menashe
In July 1985, the Reagan administration convened the Vice President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism. Then, on January 20, 1986, following the recommendations of an official report of the Task Force, National Security Decision Directive 207 institutionalized North's role as coordinator of the administration's counterterrorism program. He was given a secret office and staff (the Office to Combat Terrorism) that were kept hidden from certain members of the National Security Council.
Possibly the only official reference to NSDD 207 appears in a letter of April 17, 1987, from FBI Executive Assistant Director Oliver B. Revell to Senator David Boren (Dem.-OK), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, explaining some of the contacts which he and the FBI had with Oliver North. This document, which explains North's exact duties, is quoted here at length: [10]
At the time [April 1986], Col. North was the NSC official charged by the President with the coordination of our national counterterrorist program. He was responsible for working closely with the designated lead agencies and was responsible for participating in all interagency groups, maintaining the national programming documents, assisting in the coordination of research and development in relation to counterterrorism, facilitating the development of response options and overseeing the implementation of the Vice President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism recommendations.
This description of Col. North's position is set forth in the public report of the Vice President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism, February 1986. There is an even more detailed and comprehensive description of Col. North's position in the classified National Security Decision Directive #207 issued by the President on January 20, 1986.
Two key members of Bush's Task Force staff, Robert Earl and Craig Coy, moved over to staff North's new office. Earl and Coy spent much of the next year working on the Iran arms sales and contra support operation, making it easier for North to travel. While working for North, Earl and Coy were in fact officially attached to the Crisis Management Center, where North had worked in 1983. [11]
Bush's Lies
Bush's political autobiography, Looking Forward, gave the impression that he had only minimal acquaintance with North and the Iran arms sales initiative. The Vice President acknowledged only two contacts with North: during the Grenada operation, and when he telephoned North from Israel before meeting that country's top representative in the Iran arms deals. He admitted knowing of the secret trip by North and Robert McFarlane to Teheran, but denied knowing of North's "other secret operations" before November 1986. [2]
North's diaries suggest, however, that in this period he was in recurring contact with Bush, Bush's advisers, and the other members of Bush's Task Force. From July 1985 to January 1986, when the secret end-run around George Shultz on Iran arms sales was devised, the available pages of North's diaries (most remained classified by the government) show only one meeting with President Reagan. However, the diaries show four meetings with Vice President Bush, either alone, or with Amiram Nir, the top Israeli counterterrorism expert, or in the presence of Donald Gregg. In addition there are at least six recorded meetings between North and members of the Vice President's Task Force during this period.
Credit: State Department
Robert Oakley, member of the Terrorism Task Force.
The Operations Sub-Group (OSG), [13] an interagency creation of the Task Force and NSDD 207, was convened for the first time on January 7, 1986 - the day that Shultz and Casper Weinberger vigorously opposed the Iran arms sales plan. The OSG met twice again that month but its members appear to have been already meeting with North, under the auspices of the Restricted Terrorist Incidents Working Group (RTIWG) months earlier. The diaries also show at least fourteen other meetings between North and the Task Force's senior members (Admiral James Holloway, Ambassador Robert Oakley, Charles Allen), its principal consultant (Terry Arnold), and its staff (Robert Earl and Craig Coy). [14]
In his testimony North suggested an even more intimate relationship with Bush. He told the Committee that "when my father died, there were three people in the government of the United States that expressed their condolences." Two of these were Admiral Poindexter and William Casey, his top bosses in the Iran/contra covert operations. The third ''was the Vice President of the United States." [15]
Though they seem to have worked chiefly on the Iran arms deals and the contra supply operation, North and his two staffers, Robert Earl and Craig Coy, operated at the heart of a whole complex of controversial secret operations in 1986. Earl himself testified that he spent between a quarter and a half of his time on Iran matters; his colleague Coy "knew everything ... about Democracy Incorporated" (the contra support operation). [16] Earl and Coy also took the minutes for the interagency Operations Sub-Group.
Others Involved
By establishing a special apparatus to combat terrorism, the Reagan administration, and the Bush Task Force in particular, created an ongoing network able to bypass normal channels and proceed with an Iran arms sales policy that was opposed by both Secretary of State Shultz and Secretary of Defense Weinberger, as well as the area desk officers in their departments and in the CIA.
It is therefore important to consider the other players involved in the counterterrorism apparatus because this will help demonstrate the scope and depth of the network. This apparatus, while clearly not some sort of well-planned and thought-out conspiracy, is more accurately described as a cabal. It was created as an arrangement which suited all parts of the Reagan administration, including those who preferred to have no responsibility for a policy (selling arms to Iran) which they could not bring themselves to support. This consensual sidestepping of responsibility (or what we might call "guiltlessness by dissociation") was not even limited to the administration.
The true cabal appears to have consisted largely of those middle-level operatives brought together by their responsibility for counterterrorism, a group including not only North and Poindexter but the CIA's Duane Clarridge and the quintet who moved from developing and reviewing the "counterterrorist" policies with North at the Bush Task Force Senior Review Group to executing them with North through the Operations Sub-Group. (The five were: Charles Allen of the CIA, Robert Oakley of State, Noel Koch of the Defense Department, Lt. Gen. John Moellering from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Oliver Revell of the FBI.) Some of these men survived in the Reagan administration unscathed, despite having responsibilities for the Iran/contra affair that would seem at least comparable to North's.
It can be argued that these men were not only accomplices of North's in the execution of the controversial Iran arms sales, but the true authors of the counterterrorism gambit which led a Marine Lieutenant Colonel to act in defiance of official U.S. policy.
For example, in 1985-86, Robert Oakley was the director of the State Department's Office to Combat Terrorism. In this capacity he served first on the Bush Task Force Senior Review Group, and then co-chaired the Operations Sub-Group (OSG) with North until about July 1986. He then resigned from the administration, allegedly because he disagreed with the Iran arms sales policy of North. One of National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci's early acts of post-Iran/contra housecleaning in 1987 was to bring Robert Oakley back from private life to the National Security Council. Oakley now serves as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan.
It is noteworthy that the Iran arms deals with Ghorbanifar, although they had been proposed as early as November 1984, were blocked until the Bush Task Force began to operate in July 1985. Thereafter the arms deals were handled by a number of bureaucrats whose common denominator, and whose means of communicating directly with each other, was their responsibility for counterterrorism. (These men were Michael Ledeen, Charles Allen, Duane Clarridge, Robert Oakley, Oliver North for the United States; Amiram Nir for Israel.)
By creating a counterterrorism network, with its own secure system of intelligence communications, channels had been opened whereby other bureaucrats, with opposing viewpoints, could simply be excluded. The counterterrorism network even had its own "special worldwide antiterrorist computer network, code-named Flashboard," by which members could communicate exclusively with each other and with their collaborators abroad. [17] Those involved in the Iran arms deals appear to have used "flash" messages on this secure system, as late as October 31, 1986. [18]
The Criminals Judge the Crime
When Ronald Reagan admitted in March 1987 that the arms sales to Iran were a mistake he asked Bush to reconvene his Task Force "to review our policy for combatting terrorism and to evaluate the effectiveness of our current program." [19] Having been asked, in effect, to evaluate his own creation, Bush's public response in June 1987 was predictable: "our current policy as articulated in the Task Force report is sound, effective, and fully in accord with our democratic principles and national ideals of freedom." [20]
Bush's public finding was truly ominous. The depositions that Robert Earl and Craig Coy gave to the Congressional committee investigating the Iran/contra affair reveal that the Office to Combat Terrorism had rapidly become the means whereby North could coordinate, not only the Iran arms sales and the contra supply operation, but also the domestic propaganda activities of Carl "Spitz" Channell and Richard Miller, the closing off of potentially embarrassing investigations by other government agencies, and the handling of rightwing contributors for illegal contra arms purchases. [21]
Thus the Bush people in the Reagan administration, having first used North and then acquiesced in his departure, would appear to have approved the continuation of most of his secret political activities in the name of combatting terrorism; they denounced only "the mistakes involved in our contacts with Iran." (These "caused a temporary reduction in credibility which has been regained as our resolve has become apparent.") In concluding his 1987 review Bush not only endorsed the achievements of the apparatus which North put together, but declared that we must "do better."
Credit: Wide World Photos
Robert Earl on his way to the Iran/contra hearings.
It is not surprising that the Vice President's Task Force should so exonerate the extraordinary abuses of power committed by the counterterrorism apparatus which it set up. To an extraordinary extent the men at the center of that apparatus were drawn from the Senior Review Group of the Task Force itself. That they should have been reconvened to evaluate what changes were needed was a sure sign, if one were needed, that the Republicans were determined to resist any pressures for significant change.
Conclusion
It is clear now that members of the Bush Task Force Senior Review Group used their counterterrorism channels to thwart official U.S. policy and to conceal their activities from their superiors. It is interesting to note that the Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair did a reasonable job of chronicling the "secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law" of "a small group of senior officials" but that it went out of its way to ignore the existence of the counterterrorism network that operated through its own institutions, institutions which at least partly still exist.
This should be a matter of grave concern to those who believe in the open and democratic determination of foreign policy, particularly in matters that could lead to war. As we have seen, members of the counterterrorism cabal, above all Oliver North, used the extraordinary powers of this apparatus to carry out a covert foreign policy agenda as well as silence domestic opponents of the administration's Central American policies. With this counterterrorist apparatus still intact, and with George Bush in the White House, there's no doubt it will be used again.
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Notes:
* Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat, teaches English at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include: The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam (in collaboration); Crime and Cover-Up; and The Iran Contra Connection (in collaboration).
1. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair (henceforward cited as The Iran-Contra Report), 100th Congress, 1st Session, H. Rept. No. 100-433; S. Rept. No. 100-216 (November 1987), p. 100.
2. Top Secret White House Memo of May 14, 1982, Subject: Crisis Pre-Planning (Bates No. N 29464); New York Times, April 12, 1981.
3. Public testimony of Fawn Hall, The Iran-Contra Report, June 8, 1987, p. 15.
4. See Diana Reynolds, The Rise of the National Security State, this issue.
5. Memo of September 15, 1986 from Immigration and Naturalization Service Assistant Commissioner Robert J. Walsh, quoted in Mideast Monitor, vol. IV, no. 4, 1987, p. 2. The Alien Border Control Committee was formally established on June 27, 1986, by former Deputy Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen.
6. Ibid.
7. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Investigations Division, "Alien Terrorists and Undesirables: A Contingency Plan" (May 1986), pp. ii, 19, 25; partially quoted in Mideast Monitor, vol. IV, no. 4, 1987, p. 2.
8. Public testimony of Oliver North, The Iran-Contra Report, pp. 643, 732-33.
9. Ibid, pp. 574-75; San Francisco Chronicle, December 14, 1987 and January 14, 1988.
10. Washington Post, February 17, 20, and 22, 1987; Wall Street Journal, February 20, 1987.
11. Deposition of Robert Earl, The Iran-Contra Report, May 2, 1987, vol. 9, pp. 22-23; Deposition of Craig Coy, The Iran-Contra Report, March 17, 1987, vol. 7, pp. 24-25.
12. George Bush, with Victor Gold, Looking Forward: An Autobiography (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1987), pp. 242-43.
13. The OSG is a subgroup of the TIWG to deal with immediate crises.
14. The preceding information is from Oliver North's diary pages in The Iran-Contra Report, Shultz public testimony, GPS-74-78, pp. 833-1037.
15. Public testimony of Oliver North, op. at., n. 8, p. 345.
16. Earl deposition, op. cit., n. 11, pp. 35, 98-99.
17. Newsweek, October 21, 1985, p. 26.
18. Earl Exhibit, nos. 3-8, op. cit., n. 11.
19. Presidential address to nation on March 4, 1987; Bush press release of June 2, 1987.
20. Bush press release of June 2, 1987.
21. Earl Deposition, op. cit. n. 11, May 30, 1987, pp. 33-37; May 15, 1987, pp. 117-21 (Channell and Miller); May 15, 1987, pp. 131,119 (rightwing contributors).