Hawk Missile Sales to Iran
HUMAN EVENTS 7/4/92
The more one delves into Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's
prosecution of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger the more
furious one becomes. The chief charge in the Weinberger indictment
is that he, as Walsh's office puts it, "lied to Congress about his
knowledge of a shipment of U.S. Hawk missiles to Iran by Israel in
November 1985 in return for the release of American hostages held
in Lebanon."
Because he supposedly lied, the shipments themselves must have
been illegal, right? That is certainly the line being conveyed by
much of the major media, including the wire services, Ted Koppel
and the nightly news. Indeed, why else would he deceive U.S. law
makers? Why would Walsh be willing to move heaven and earth to go
after Weinberger unless Weinberger had deliberately covered up
federal malfeasance?
Well, those are all good questions. Yet as it turns out,
there was no good reason for Walsh to go after Weinberger, because
the shipments were never illegal to begin with. M. Stanton Evans
made a forceful case against their illegality in our cover story
last week, of course. But now his view has been corroborated by a
particularly authoritative source: Walsh's own shop.
We put this question to the chief spokesman for the office,
Mary Belcher, on June 24:
Q: "Has the Office of Independent Counsel ever charge anyone
with violating the law for implementing Hawk missile shipments to
Iran?
A: "No, no, we have not."
And a little later on in the interview.
Q: "Does the independent counsel believe shipments to Iran
were illegal?"
A: "We've never made a statement in court to that effect, that
the shipments to Iran were illegal. We've never charged that as a
crime."
Amazing. Just as Evans pointed out, Weinberger "is being
accused of illegal conduct and/or testimony concerning a policy
that was itself quite legal, so far as the public record
discloses." In fact, so far as the independent counsel admits.
To paraphrase Paul Craig Roberts, only the special counsel's
office would be so demented as to invest five and a half years to
prosecute a loyal public servant for allegedly "covering up" an
incident not even deemed to be unlawful. How can anyone be guilty
of concealing a crime when no crime has been committed?
There is also a notion, in hearing and reading reports on the
Weinberger indictment, that he denied to the congressional
committees probing Iran-Contra that he knew anything about the
efforts to ship weapons to Iran when, of course, he was perfectly
aware of such efforts.
But this isn't the case at all. Weinberger squarely addressed
the various attempts to furnish the weapons, and detailed his
vigorous opposition. For instance, the House Iran-Contra panel's
deputy chief counsel for the majority, Neil Eggleston, asked
Weinberger if he had received in the fall of 1985 "an intelligence
report that related to negotiations between American officials and
Iranians."
Yes, he did, said Weinberger, and he secured, with the help of
his aide, Gen. Colin Powell, even more disturbing information about
such negotiations.
Asked if he recalled his "specific objections" at a December
7, 1985, meeting at the White House to proposed arms shipments to
Iran, Weinberger responded: "Oh, yes. I ran through a whole group
and raised every point that occurred to me, including the fact that
we were at the same time asking other countries not to make sales
of weapons to Iran, that there was no one of any reliability, or
indeed, any sense with whom we could deal in Iran..." By the end
of the meeting, he said, he thought his arguments had prevailed
with the President with the President, and that "this baby had been
strangled in its cradle..."
In another meeting on January 7, however, Weinberger said the
President, after Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese had concluded the arms
transfer could be done legally, "now had decided" he wanted to go
ahead with the Iranian initiative. And in mid-January, Adm. John
Poindexter informed Weinberger the President wished to go ahead
with the deal.
Weinberger, in short, was not avoiding telling the committee
members about the sale of weapons to Iran. He discussed the issue
quite freely, saying who he believed favored the idea and who
didn't, when the President opposed it, and when he was for it.
What he did deny, however, was that he knew a specific
shipment of U.S. Hawk missiles had actually gone to Iran in
November 1985. He claimed he found out about it later. That's
what he supposedly "lied" about, although non one has yet provided
a convincing reason why he would choose to lie about an action he
adamantly opposed and which even the independent counsel has never
charged as being illegal.
Weinberger, moreover, was hardly firm about his recollection
of when or what he knew about the Hawk missile shipment, since he
was testifying nearly two years after the event. Asked by House
deputy chief counsel for the majority, Neil Eggleston, for
instance, if the "November Hawk shipment" was discussed at the
December meeting at the White House, Weinberger said: "No, I don't
believe so..."
Eggleston: "You think if it had been discussed, you would
remember it?"
Weinberger: "I think so, yes. I am not entirely sure. My
memory is not as good as it once was, but I don't have any memory
[of that] at this point."
Indeed, Senators Daniel K. Inouye (D.-Hawaii) and Warren
Rudman (R.-N.H.), the chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of
the Senate Iran-Contra panel, wrote to Weinberger's lawyer, Robert
Bennett, on April 29 of this year that while Weinberger testified
he did not have "contemporaneous knowledge of the 1985 arms
shipment to Iran through Israel," he also "indicated that his
recollection of dates was not as good as it once was and that he
had difficulty sorting out what he knew at any particular time form
what he had learned later...
"What was important to us, however, was not the date on which
the Secretary knew or could have inferred from other information
that arms shipments might have taken place, on which the testimony
and evidence was murky, but the adamant position that the Secretary
consistently took with the President in opposing sales to Iran on
which the testimony was incontrovertible...
"Finally, we shall end on a personal note. Our relationship
with Secretary Weinberger is professional and not personal. Based
upon our dealings with him over the years, we know Secretary
Weinberger to be a man of the highest integrity and honor. It is
inconceivable to us that he would intentionally mislead or lie to
Congress."
What the independent counsel is finally left with is whether
Weinberger, as is charged, "concealed from Congress" in his 1987
testimony his personal diary notes on the Iran-Contra affair or
made "false statements" to the Office of Independent Counsel about
his note-taking practices. Even if he did, there appears to be
nothing in his notes that reflects badly on Weinberger or was
inconsistent with his congressional testimony or sheds some
startling new light on Iran-Contra.
Walsh's shop says that during 1985 and 1986 Weinberger "took
more than 1,700 pages of daily notes and hundreds of additional
pages of notes from White House meetings," but just a small
fraction of those, it turns out, were relevant to Iran-Contra
dealings in 1985. And the New York Times reports that some of
"these scraps of paper" were "so hard to read that Mr. Weinberger's
former aides had to be enlisted to help decipher them..."
Weinberger's defenders also say the notes were ambiguous, and that
Weinberger himself informed the Office of Independent Counsel that
he had shipped them off to the Library of Congress.
The former defense secretary, furthermore, passed with flying
colors a lie detector test on May 5 of this year-given to him by a
polygraph examiner of some reputation, Paul Minor- which he
responded "no" when asked, among other things, if he had intended
to "deliberately mislead any governmental entity, including the
Office of Independent Counsel, about your diary notes."
In Weinberger's corner also sits Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff Colin Powell. From July 1983 to March 1986, Powell served
as Weinberger's senior military assistant. In his April 21, 1992
affidavit Powell stressed:
"During the period I worked with Secretary Weinberger at the
Department of Defense, I observed on his desk a small pad of white
paper, approximately 5" x 7". He would jot down on this pad in
abbreviated form various calls and events during the day. I viewed
it as his personal diary which reflected a record of his life.
"Knowing Secretary Weinberger as I did and knowing the routine
way he would jot down notes on these pads, it is entirely possible
that it would not have occurred to him to associate or link these
private notes on the 5" x 7" pads with a governmental request for
'notes' in the context of the Iran-Contra matter. I do not believe
that he would have viewed these as official documents. While I had
open access to his office and papers, I never read the notes of the
5" x 7" pads because I considered them a private diary."
In the last several weeks, Powell added, he had been asked by
Weinberger's attorneys and the independent counsel to review the
defense secretary's diaries. And while he had not reviewed them
all, said Powell, "the notes I have seen show a person committed to
trying to stop the Administration from transferring arms to Iran
but who was frustrated in his efforts...
"Some of the notes I reviewed covered the fall of 1985. These
notes do not suggest to me that Secretary Weinberger knew, at the
time that they were prepared, that Israel had sent missiles to
Iran. I do not believe that I knew in the fall of 1985 that Israel
had sent missiles to Iran.
"While I believe we may have heard about such discussions or
proposals or suggestions involving such activities, to the best of
my recollection we did not know that any such activities had
actually been carried out until long after.
"I also wish to emphasize that while the Iran-Contra matter
has been given a great deal of attention, it was only a 'blip' on
the screen in the Secretary's office during 1985. In the fall of
1985, neither of us spent a great deal of time on this issue."
Colin Powell swears, in effect, that Weinberger has told the
truth. Will Walsh now have the courage to indict chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff?
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