Casey Defends Iran Arms Sale on Capitol Hill

CIA Director William J. Casey defended President Reagan’s secret arms sales to Iran on Friday before disbelieving lawmakers, and a senior GOP senator said the President needs “to bring in some big leaguers to run things” at the White House.

House Democratic leader Jim Wright of Texas, after hearing Casey’s report, said Iranians paid $12 million for the weapons they received, including 2,008 anti-tank weapons.

Although those weapons shipments were not necessarily directly related to the U.S. effort to improve relations with Iran and free American hostages held in Lebanon, Wright said, the shipments were made with “the condoning of the United States and the complicity of the United States in some instances.”

He renewed his charge that Reagan broke the law by failing to inform Congress of the ales for several months--a charge that Casey denied. “Oh, no, no, no,” Casey told reporters as he shuttled between closed-door sessions with the House and Senate intelligence committees.

‘High Risk-Meeting’ The Senate Intelligence Committee sent Reagan a letter Friday saying it “cannot accept a logic” which holds that it is all right to have a “high-risk meeting” between U.S. and Iranian officials while rejecting “the comparatively minor risks inherent” in telling Congress.

Reagan was unavailable to reporters, ignoring questions shouted to him as he left the White House for a helicopter trip to his Camp David, Md., retreat.

While the Administration struggled with the controversy that has engulfed the President for more than a week, a senior ayatollah in Iran boasted that disclosures of the arms sale was Tehran’s “biggest victory in the world’s political arena. . . . “ The reports have set off an “explosion” in Washington that the U.S. government was “now trying not to let the fire catch its skirt,” said Ayatollah Abdulkarim Moussavi Ardabili.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, meantime, denied a report in Friday’s Los Angeles Times that he asked Reagan to fire Adm. John M. Poindexter, the White House national security adviser and one of the chief architects of the arms sale to Iran.

“That story is not true,” Shultz told reporters aboard his airplane en route from Washington to Canada, where he held talks with External Affairs Minister Joe Clark. A similar denial was issued in the name of Adm. William Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also was cited in the paper’s story as seeking Poindexter’s ouster.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes, asked whether Poindexter was going to quit, replied, “I haven’t heard him say so.” Asked whether Reagan wants his national security adviser to remain in his post, Speakes said, “I’m sure he wants him to stay on the job.”

But pressure seemed to be rising in Congress for a change in personnel at the White House.

Senate Democratic leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, asked on CBS-TV whether Poindexter should be removed, said, “He certainly has not served the President well. . . . He may have to go. But I don’t believe that a single scapegoat is going to solve the Administration’s problems.”

‘Need Big Leaguers’

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters at a breakfast that the Reagan White House “ . . . is not falling apart. But it needs to be strengthened. They need to bring in some big leaguers to run things.”

Lugar later said in an interview that Reagan’s credibility has been damaged by the controversy, and “a good common-sense prescription for the President to end all this would be for the President to admit it was all a mistake.”

Democrats maintained intense criticism of Reagan’s secret sale.

Wright said a law permitting the President to withhold information from Congress about covert operations is “clear and unambiguous.”

“I don’t think there is any question that the law has been broken,” he said after the two-hour meeting with Casey.

Wright said 1,000 of the 2,008 anti-tank TOW missiles shipped to Iran were gathered last February in San Antonio in preparation for shipment. The remainder were sent separately, he said. “All were paid for by Iran--$12 million plus” placed in a Swiss bank. But he said he didn’t know if the deposit was in a check, cash or gold.

At least one Republican, Rep. Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, defended Reagan against the allegation that he broke the law, but quickly added that it was “unwise” of the President to keep the policy a secret from Congress.

Reagan, in a televised news conference on Wednesday night in which he defended the sale, also denied violating any law.

Wide Range of Measures

The law involved is the National Security Act, which covers a wide range of national security measures, including requirements to inform Congress.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee listened to Casey’s explanation, then criticized the operation in strong terms.

“I can’t believe what I heard and I don’t. It’s hard to believe that such things could be planned and undertaken,” said Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).

Said Byrd: “I find on the basis of what we heard that this whole operation . . . was incredibly clumsy and amateurish.”

Lugar emerged as one of Reagan’s sharpest critics.

‘P.R. Aspect’

“My guess is that no one down in the basement of the White House who was running this operation was worried about the P.R. (public relations) aspect of all of it or how it would be perceived in domestic politics in this country once it all got out,” he said in an interview.

“That’s one of the problems of keeping something like this so closely held,” he said. “If some of the senior people, perhaps some people with more experience in politics, had been informed, they may have been able to more correctly assess the political impact of all this.”

He endorsed the concept proposed by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) of creating a “council of wise men and women” who would advise Reagan on foreign policy. “I think that would help restore a sense of order.”

Much of the committee’s meeting with Casey centered around the legal requirements to tell Congress about secret operations, Wright said. Casey noted that Reagan had signed a secret order last Jan. 17 directing Casey to withhold the information from Capitol Hill, Wright said.

Casey assured the panel that there are no other cases where Reagan has ordered the CIA to withhold information from Congress, Wright said. “Of course, I believe him in the absence of any question to the contrary.”

Casey didn’t apologize to the panel, Wright said, nor was he asked to do so. “We didn’t ask the head of the CIA to come in wearing sackcloth and ashes and kneel and kiss our ring. We are simply trying to prevent a recurrence of this.”

Rep. Bob McEwen (R-Ohio), who also attended the meeting, commented, “Hell hath no fury like a congressional committee scorned.”