McFarlane Repeats Charge Reagan OKd ’85 Shipment

Former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, again contradicting an official White House version of the Iranian arms affair, told a House committee Monday that President Reagan personally approved the August, 1985, shipment of U.S. anti-tank missiles that began 14 months of secret weapons deliveries to the Tehran regime.

But McFarlane said that he does not know who in the White House approved the controversial cash-skimming operation that funneled several million dollars in profits from Iranian arms sales to rebels in Nicaragua--an operation that now is at the center of investigations into the arms-and-hostages affair.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. . . . It’s out of place for me to speculate,” he said repeatedly when asked about key 1986 decisions in the arms scheme.

In an afternoon-long session before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, McFarlane gave a detailed account of steps that White House officials took during 1985 in a failed attempt to conduct a “political dialogue” with elements of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s government.

His account, like that which he gave in a closed session last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee, conflicted with the Reagan Administration’s version of the Iranian affair: that the arms deals began without the President’s knowledge and were never permitted to become a straight guns-for-hostages swap.

McFarlane, testifying under oath, said that Reagan did approve a proposal by a third country, publicly identified as Israel, to ship U.S. weapons to Iran in August, 1985, “for the purpose of strengthening elements against terrorism.”

He agreed that, at first, there was “no direct linkage” between the arms shipments and the freeing of U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon.

But McFarlane contended that it was clear “within a month or so” after the President’s approval for the first arms shipment that Iranian negotiators wanted weapons as a condition for freeing hostages.

The White House declined to comment Monday on McFarlane’s statements. Last week, after news reports quoted McFarlane as telling the Senate Intelligence Committee much the same thing, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that a “written recollection” by one principal in the Iranian operation showed that Reagan had no early knowledge of arms dealings.

Written by North

That recollection, The Times reported Saturday , was written by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, now the focus of an FBI probe of alleged wrongdoing in the arms shipments and the diversion of profits from the weapons sales to contras in Nicaragua .

In his Monday testimony, McFarlane cast himself as a skeptical early participant in the weapons sales part of the Iranian operation who rapidly became disillusioned with its lack of success.

Under his tenure as national security adviser, he said, the United States made but limited overtures to Iranian “elements” who expressed a desire for better relations. When those overtures failed to produce results, McFarlane added, they were quickly cut off.

But he shed no light on the course of the arms-and-hostages dealings during 1986, a time when McFarlane no longer served in the White House but did act as a secret emissary to Tehran for the Reagan Administration.

Approached by ‘Friend’

The former Reagan adviser said that the White House was approached in mid-1985 by “one of our closest friends in the Middle East” with a proposal to establish a dialogue with unnamed Iranian officials “and others of influence” in Iran.

Those elements, concerned by economic and political woes besetting Khomeini’s regime, at first pledged to prove their good will by working for the release of hostages, McFarlane said. A month later, in August, they said they required a “modest” arms shipment to demonstrate their own influence to other Iranian elements.

At that point, McFarlane testified, Reagan agreed to allow a third nation--presumably Israel--to ship to Iran “small quantities of arms, nothing that would alter the military balance” in the lengthy war between Iran and Iraq.

Reagan’s order was delivered orally to him and to other Cabinet and National Security Council members in private, one-on-one meetings, McFarlane said.

Helped Free Hostage

An August shipment by the Israelis of U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles helped free one U.S. hostage, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, but a November weapons shipment was later sent and rejected by the Iranians as substandard.

McFarlane said that he met on Dec. 8, 1985, with Iranian negotiators in London to express American disappointment over the lack of progress in the secret talks.

At the session, McFarlane said, he told the Iranians that the United States “would have nothing to do” with further arms dealings. “I then left the government” in December, 1985, “assuming that the matter was closed,” he said in a prepared statement to the lawmakers.

When asked in the House hearing whether such shipments did not violate an embargo then in effect on the transfer of American-made arms to Iran, McFarlane said they did not because the weapons went to Iranian elements that opposed terrorism and the Khomeini regime’s religious fanaticism. But he did not refute the contention of one House member that the weapons wound up in the hands of Iranian soldiers at war with Iraq.

Secret Mission

McFarlane said he learned of the diversion of Iranian weapons monies to the contras in May of this year after being summoned by the White House to undertake a secret mission to Tehran with North and two other emissaries.

Word of the cash-skimming operation came from North, McFarlane said, adding that he “took it to have been a matter of . . . established policy approved by higher authority.” Normally, a decision of that import would be approved by the National Security Council, he said. The council includes the President, vice president and Cabinet-level officials.

He expressed confidence that neither North nor Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter--McFarlane’s successor as national security adviser--would knowingly skirt laws then in effect barring U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels or funnel aid to the contras without higher approval .

However, he said, someone may have decided to “assume as authority the prior approvals he had gotten” from the President to generate financial support for the contras. North was in charge of efforts to raise millions of dollars in private money for the rebels during much of the time that the Iranian arms shipments took place.

McFarlane added, however, that he had no personal knowledge of how the cash-skimming operation was directed or approved.