Here Today, Here Tomorrow: Bush's "Secret Team"by Jane Hunter*
Winter 1990
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The media honeymoon that marked the first weeks of the Bush administration soon gave way to complaints that the new administration had no overall direction and no foreign policy. In April 1989, New York Times White House correspondent Maureen Dowd noted that:
White House officials worry that the coming evaluations of the "first hundred days" will suggest that the President has done little of note so far. They are nervous that pundits will charge that Mr. Bush has no agenda, no money, no strategy, no message, no ideology, no world view and no explanation of his mysterious role in the Iran-contra scandal. [1]
It might take some time for George Bush to assemble a coherent foreign policy, even one simply for purposes of display. However, from the very beginning, the Bush administration has had the mechanism - and the actors in place - for pursuing a covert foreign policy.
The day after his election, Bush announced he would receive daily briefings from the CIA. According to a former CIA official, "This is a major change. It says that Bush wants a very close and direct relationship with the agency, without any filters in between. It says something about the role of intelligence and the degree to which the CIA, not the other intelligence agencies, is going to be a major influence on policy development. It says to me that the agency is back in the saddle." [2]
Well before he took the oath of office, Bush wrote a letter to UNIT A leader Jonas Savimbi assuring the longtime South African and CIA client of continued U.S. support for his war against Angola. One of Bush's first moves as president was to make a highly unusual appearance before the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee, asking them to fund a CIA operation to influence the May 1989 Panamanian elections. [3]
Unlike the ideologues of the Reagan era, the Bush people have no driving need to unite the nation in a war against "godless communism." The new administration does not want to lead public crusades. Indeed. it does not want anyone to look at what it is doing, or even wonder about it.
It is possible to draw these conclusions by looking at the history of the people whom Bush has appointed to senior positions in his administration. By examining the record, we see that many of the Bush appointees were involved in the Iran/contra affair and should probably be in jail rather than making policy. Furthermore, some of Bush's new (and old) recruits are longtime intelligence operatives.
The New (and Old) Players Robert Gates: Gates was deputy director of the CIA under the late William Casey, but Congress refused to consider him as Casey's replacement because of his knowledge of the CIA's role in the Iran/contra affair. Now, under Bush, he holds the position of deputy national security adviser.
At the NSC, it is Gates's job to convene a daily "deputies committee" meeting of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Deputy Director of the CIA, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and when needed, the Deputy Secretaries of State and Defense will attend. The idea, according to an administration official, is to avoid the plethora of inter-agency committees - the Restricted Inter-Agency Group (RIG) being the most infamous, which was devised to direct the secret war against Nicaragua. [4]
John Tower: One of several instances in which the President tried to repay those who helped him squeeze through the Iran/contra scandal was his nomination of John Tower as Defense Secretary. Tower, as the Reagan-appointed head of the Tower Commission, was the man who cleared Bush of complicity in the scandal - thus acquiring the moral status of co-conspirator. Bush stuck by Tower's nomination through weeks of revelations about the former Texas Senator's sordid past up until the time when the nomination went down in. a lopsided defeat on the Senate floor.
Tower was asked during a question-and-answer session at the National Press Club whether his nomination was "a payoff" for the "clean bill of health" the Tower Commission gave Bush. He responded:
I think that when you consider the fact that the Commission was made up of three people, Brent Scowcroft and Ed Muskie in addition to myself, that would be sort of impugning the integrity of Brent Scowcroft and Ed Muskie .... We found nothing to implicate the Vice President .... I wonder what kind of payoff they're going to get? [5]
Perhaps Tower did not consider Scowcroft's appointment as Bush's national security adviser sufficiently rewarding.
Thomas Pickering: In December 1988 Bush appointed Thomas Pickering, another Iran/contra player, to the prestigious post of Ambassador to the United Nations. Former Secretary of State George Shultz recommended him to Ronald Reagan, who sent him as Ambassador to El Salvador, as "the cream of America's career diplomats." 6
Yet during his time in El Salvador, from 1983-85, Pickering became entwined in the Iran/contra affair and never bothered to report some of his activities to the State Department. [7] In his (extensively censored) deposition to the Congressional committee investigating the Iran/contra scandal, Pickering admitted receiving a document in El Salvador from a representative of a "private" contra support group and delivering it to Oliver North in Washington, D.C.
The group was having trouble arranging for the delivery of the weapons and equipment - enough to outfit 4,000-5,000 contras - listed in the document and wanted it passed to contra boss Adolfo Calero. "At that point I had heard enough rumors of Ollie's activities in connection with private support for the contras that I thought he would be a useful address," Pickering told committee staffers. Later, he said, intelligence reached him that the weapons had been delivered.
Pickering also dismissed communications he received from Donald Gregg (at the time, Vice President Bush's National Security Adviser) regarding Felix Rodriguez as well as those from Gen. Paul Gorman, head of the U.S. Southern Command. Rodriguez was well connected to Bush and Gregg, as Gorman's communications clearly noted, and Oliver North wanted to use him as well. The general also spelled out that "Rodriguez' primary commitment to the region is in [one word censored] where he wants to assist the FDN," the main contra force bivouacked in Honduras.
Nevertheless, Pickering staunchly maintained that his contact with Rodriguez mainly concerned the helicopter warfare techniques he was supposedly developing for the Salvadorans. [8]
Pickering's contention that, during his tenure as ambassador in Israel, from 1985-1988, he had no idea that the arms-for- hostages machinations might be closer to the truth. The Israelis would hardly want regular reports going to the State Department of how, working through friends in the White House and the Iran/contra network, they were guiding U.S. policy toward Teheran.
John Negroponte: Bush's choice as Ambassador to Mexico was John Negroponte, who was Ambassador - many thought the term proconsul was more descriptive - to Honduras between 1981 and 1985. A foreign service officer in Vietnam in the 1960s, then an aide to former Secretary of State Kissinger during the Paris peace talks, Negroponte was assigned in the early 1980s to oversee the assembling of the mercenary army that came to be known as the contras and to ensure continuing Honduran cooperation. [9] According to one report, Negroponte "allegedly helped [Gen. Gustavo] Alvarez create Battalion 316, an elite unit responsible for more than 100 death squad killings." [10]
Credit: Rick Reinhard
Robert Gates was slated to be head of the CIA but Congress refused because of his role in Iran/contra. In a written response to a question posed during his confirmation hearing, Negroponte wrote: "I was net involved in the operational details of contra activities, and my contact with contra leaders was strictly limited." [11]
It is an open question as to whether Negroponte, whose last post in the Reagan administration was as deputy to National Security Adviser Colin Powell, is intended to preside over the dismantling of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or to protect it from defeat by the ascendant coalition slightly to its left, led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. The Mexican government was unimpressed with Negroponte's reportedly close personal connections with Bush and hesitated a week before approving his appointment. "The impression people have is that you don't send Negroponte to a place where you don't expect trouble," said Jorge Castaneda, a Mexican political scientist. [12]
Melton and Others Richard Melton: George Bush has picked Richard Melton to be Ambassador to Brazil. Melton was Reagan's Ambassador to Nicaragua until he was kicked out in June 1988 for helping to organize a violent demonstration. Melton has an interesting knack for turning up in unstable political situations - he was stationed in the Dominican Republic when the U.S. invaded in 1965 and was sent as Ambassador to Portugal after the overthrow of the military government in 1974.
Ironically, a bit of Melton's previous experience was gained in Brazil when he was a political affairs officer at the U.S. consulate in Recife in 1968. Ricardo Zaratini, now an adviser to a member of the Chamber of Deputies, recently saw a picture of Melton and recognized him as one of two U.S. officials who interrogated him in 1968. Zaratini, at the time a union organizer, says he had been arrested several days earlier and tortured before his confrontation with Melton. The encounter was brief, said Zaratini. "They were wearing short -sleeve shirts. They did not touch me." Melton, recalled Zaratini, "asked me what I had against the United States." [13]
Brazilian officials, who had expected Herbert Okun, a former U.S. consul in Brazil, to be appointed, were greatly displeased. [14] Brazilian government sources said that, while Brazil would not refuse to accept Melton, he would be put at the end of a long list of diplomats waiting to be officially received. [15]
Richard Armitage: Another Bush nominee - and Iran/contra activist - Richard L. Armitage, withdrew from consideration for the post of Secretary of the Army to avoid hearings "that were expected to include questions about his role in the Iran-contra affair" as well as allegations of drug dealing during his service in the Vietnam war. Armitage also resigned as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
In December 1985, Armitage discussed Iran arms sales with Menachem Meron, the director-general of the Israeli defense ministry, and, according to an unreleased Israeli report on the Iran/contra affair, told Meron that, besides Secretary Caspar Weinberger, he [Armitage] was the only Pentagon official "in the picture on the Iranian issue." [16]
Robert Kimmitt: Robert Kimmitt is yet another actor involved in the Iran/contra scandal who now serves in the Bush administration. Kimmitt was the executive secretary of the NSC during much of the Reagan presidency. As a member of Bush's campaign staff, Kimmitt is credited with dreaming up the choice of Dan Quayle for vice president. Kimmitt is a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran and is one of the only people to know if Dan Quayle is indeed "impeachment insurance" for Bush. [17]
According to one account, Kimmitt was not part of the Oliver North-Robert McFarlane inner circle at the NSC, [18] but he was involved in the quid pro quo deals with Honduras in 1985-86. (These were the agreements through which the Reagan administration secured Honduras's continued cooperation in the war against Nicaragua and in which George Bush played an important role.) As Bush's under secretary of state for political affairs, Kimmitt recently pressured Honduras into ignoring the agreement of the Central American governments to disband the contras and into dropping its demand that the mercenaries leave Honduran territory. [19]
Cresencio Arcos: Cresencio S. Arcos, Jr., commonly known as Chris Arcos was deputy director of the State Department's notorious Nicaraguan Humanitarian Aid Office between September 1985 and August 1986. Bush has recently chosen him to succeed Everett Briggs as Ambassador to Honduras. [20]
A career foreign service officer with the U.S. Information Agency since January 1973, Arcos had spent the five years leading up to his NHAO assignment as a public affairs counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras under then Ambassador John Negroponte.
While in Honduras, Arcos said he had the opportunity to meet Oliver North and Felix Rodriguez. Rodriguez, he claims, "was referred to me by Mr. Jorge Mas Canosa, who is the President of the Cuban-American (National] Foundation in Miami."
In his deposition to the Congressional Iran/contra committee, Arcos recounted meeting Rodriguez again, in December 1985 during a stopover in El Salvador on a one-day trip to Honduras he made with Oliver North and deputy assistant secretary of state William Walker (now U .S. Ambassador to El Salvador). Arcos said he and Walker became good friends when Walker was deputy chief of mission in Honduras from 1980-82.
Arcos also recalled sitting at a meeting of the Restricted Inter-Agency Group (RIG) and listening to Walker, Elliott Abrams, and NHAO director Robert Deumling, discuss a request by Oliver North to give Rob Owen a consultancy at NHAO. After his stint at NHAO, Arcos went to the State Department once again, this time as coordinator for public diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean. [21]
John Kelly: John Kelly, a long time State Department employee, has been nominated to be Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Before he left to begin work as Ambassador to Lebanon in August 1986, Kelly sought out Robert McFarlane (then no longer National Security Adviser) and asked for his help in obtaining release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Kelly is also known to have met with an assistant of Oliver North regarding the same issue. Kelly acknowledged having known McFarlane for over a decade and having met North during the Reagan years.
McFarlane told Kelly that he might be asked to help with a hostage release and three months later he was. Kelly admits that he followed instructions from Oliver North and John Poindexter, McFarlane's successor, communicating through a back channel without informing the State Department. Secretary of State George Shultz reprimanded Kelly for this breach and sent him back to Lebanon. Kelly's involvement might have been more extensive - much of the testimony he gave Iran/contra committee investigators has been blacked out. [22]
John Bolton: In February 1989, Bolton became Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. Until that time, he was Assistant Attorney General, a post he also held under Attorney General Edwin Meese. In the Meese Justice Department, Bolton sabotaged Sen. John Kerry's investigation into contra connections with drug trafficking, according to an aide to Kerry's subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations, by failing to provide requested information and by working actively with Republican senators who were opposed to Kerry's investigation. [23]
Herman Cohen: Cohen, the Bush administration's new Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was formerly on the Reagan administration's National Security Council staff. According to the London weekly SouthScan, Cohen "emerged as a key actor in the arming of Unita through Zaire" [24] which the CIA began after the repeal of the Clark Amendment in 1985.
Lawrence Eagleburger: The refusal of Eagleburger, who made $900,000 last year as president of Kissinger Associates, to reveal the names of all the "consulting" company's clients during his confirmation hearing for Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush administration, provoked an outcry which led nowhere. (National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, another associate, salaried at $293,000, also refused this request during his confirmation hearing.25) Speculation on exactly what Henry Kissinger has been doing as a private citizen - and for whom - resulted in the portrayal of Eagleburger as a man who would have a special relationship with the political and corporate elites of the creditor nations.
James Lilley, who was the CIA's China station chief when Bush was ambassador there ... is now himself Ambassador to China.
Yet Eagleburger's involvement in the Reagan administration's covert partnership with Israel suggests that there will be an additional dimension to his function in the Bush administration, where cooperation with Israel is certain to be a key element in covert policy.
"Strategic cooperation" is the code phrase for U.S.-Israeli covert operations against developing countries that was formalized in three "strategic" agreements during the Reagan presidency. In 1983, a U.S.-Israeli political-military committee was established and David Kimche, director of the Israeli foreign ministry, and Eagleburger "were named as coordinators of the new strategic cooperation outside the Middle East." [26] Kimche and Eagleburger met at least three times, the last one being in April 1984, when a major topic on the agenda was Israeli support of the administration's activities in Central America.
In addition to Donald Gregg, [28] Bush has kept at least two other CIA veterans in circulation. James Lilley, who was the CIA's China station chief when Bush was ambassador there (and was most recently Ambassador to South Korea, following a stint at the NSC and in the Taiwan diplomatic office), [29] is now himself Ambassador to China, where he is well positioned to continue the covert relationship, most notably coordination of Cambodia policies.
Vernon Walters, formerly deputy director of the CIA and most recently the Reagan administration's Ambassador to the United Nations, is now serving as Ambassador to West Germany. [30] It is not clear whether Walters will continue the special missions to trouble spots around the world that kept him busy during his tenure at the UN. He has already made it clear, however, that he is dead set against the nuclear disarmament that West Germans are increasingly demanding. [31]
With this crew of Iran/contra conspirators assembled, it would be wise for the major media outlets to have reporters mulling over administration handouts and statements for subtle signs of purpose.
Perhaps now some of the highly regarded (and highly paid) columnists and news analysts who were so shocked when the Iran/contra scandal broke might not be so easily fooled the next time around.
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Notes: * Jane Hunter is the author of several books and contributor to several foreign newspaper as well as editor of the independent monthly report Israeli Foreign Affairs which is available for $20 per year from: Israeli Foreign Affairs, P.O. Box 19580, Sacramento, CA 95819.
1. Maureen Dowd, "White House," New York Times, April 14, 1989.
2. News Conference, November 9, 1988; Stephen Engelberg, "With Bush in the Oval Office, Is the CIA 'Back in the Saddle'?" New York Times, November 13, 1988. The article notes that the CIA briefed Bush every morning when he was Vice President, after which Bush "usually attended the national security briefing for Mr. Reagan."
3. Doyle McManus, "CIA Aids Opposition in Panama Election," Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1989, citing U.S. News & World Report.
4. Bernard Weinraub, "Bush Backs Plan to Enhance Role of Security Staff," New York Times, February 2, 1989.
5. "How Tower Responds," New York Times, March 2, 1989.
6. John M. Goshko, "Low-Profile, High-Prestige Diplomat," Washington Post, December 7, 1988.
7. Walter Pincus, "Pickering Told Hill Panel of Aiding Contras; Bush Choice for U.N. Assisted on Donation," Washington Post, December 8, 1988.
8. Deposition of Thomas R Pickering, July 15, 1987, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B: Volume 20, 100th Congress, 1st Session, H. Rep. No. 100-433, S. Rept. No. 100-216, pp. 950-996. Quotations, pp. 962, 973.
9. Adam Platt, et al., "Have Savvy, Will Travel," Newsweek, February 20, 1989.
10. "Bush's ambassadorial mistakes," Washington Report on the Hemisphere, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington D.C., June 21, 1989.
11. Robert Pear, "A Bush Nominee Runs Afoul of the Contra Issue," New York Times, April 19, 1989.
12. Op. cit., n. 9.
13. O Estado de Sao Paulo, May 31,1989, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Latin America, U.S. Department of Commerce, June 1, 1989, p. 47.
14. Folha de Sao Paulo, May 27, 1989, FBIS Latin America, May 31, l989, p. 35.
15. EFE (Spanish News Agency, Madrid) 1400 UCT, June 2, 1989; FBIS Latin America, June 5, 1989, p. 42.
16. Andrew Rosenthal, "Armitage Withdraws as Army Secretary Nominee," New York Times News Service, International Herald Tribune, May 27, l989.
17. Joe Conason, ''The New Zoo," Village Voice, November 22, 1988.
18. Jane Mayer & Doyle McManus, Landslide (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), pp. 57-63.
19. "Honduras Bows to U.S. Pressure," Washington Report on the Hemisphere, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington D.C., June 21, 1989.
20. Washington Report on the Hemisphere, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington DC, July 5, 1989.
21. Deposition of Cresencio Arcos, May 11, 1987, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B: Volume 1, 100th Congress, 1st Session, H. Rep. No. 100-433, S. Rept. No. 100-216, pp. 1239-1358. Quotations, pp. 1342 and 1253.
22. Deposition of John H. Kelly, June 10, 1987, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B: Volume 14, 100th Congress, 1st Session, H. Rep. No. 100-433, S. Rept. No. 100-216, pp. 1153-1206.
23. David Corn and Jefferson Morley, "Beltway Bandits," The Nation, April 17, 1989.
24. "Hopes for Unita cut-off recede as Mobutu's dependence on Washington increases," SouthScan, April 5, 1989.
25. ''The out-of-office reign of Henry I," U.S. News & World Report, March 27, 1989.
26. "Israeli arms sales pick up," Latin America Weekly Report, January 13, 1984.
27. John M. Goshko, "Israeli Technical Aid to El Salvador Part of Meetings Here," Washington Post, April 21, 1984.
28. See Jane Hunter, The VP's Office: Cover for Iran/Contra, this issue.
29. The Today Show, NBC, June 8, 1989; Jim Mann, "Bush Reportedly Picks Ex-CIA Officer as Ambassador to China," Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1989.
30. See "Vernon Walters: Crypto-diplomat and Terrorist," CAIB Number 26, Spring 1987, p. 3.
31. Terrence Petty, "Bluntness is trademark of new U.S. envoy to Bonn," AP, Sacramento Bee, April 25, 1989.