Poindexter Shielded Iran Deal Details, Sources Say

WASHINGTON — During the time President Reagan’s secret arms-and-hostages deal with Tehran was going forward, then-National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter specifically told senior intelligence specialists on the National Security Council staff not to scrutinize the Middle East hostage issue, Administration officials said Wednesday.

Poindexter’s unusual move--apparently an effort to preclude criticism that might have aborted the risky venture--had the effect of shielding the Iran operation from the expert analysis and criticism normally given to such undertakings. If NSC professionals had played their usual role in reviewing intelligence material and other matters with regard to the American hostages in Lebanon, they would almost certainly have learned about the clandestine dealings with Tehran.

Poindexter’s action was reportedly part of a much broader effort to short-circuit the complex machinery for studying and approving highly sensitive policy decisions and proposals for using covert operations.

“It’s clear they wanted to keep it ‘off-line’ (out of normal channels) to avoid the kind of scrutiny by the standing procedures for approving covert action proposals that killed at least one Casey project in the past,” one knowledgeable official said, referring to William J. Casey, who is director of central intelligence and head of the CIA.

By “they” the official meant Poindexter and his fired deputy, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North and--by inference perhaps--CIA officials who were called on to help implement Reagan’s Jan. 17 intelligence order known as a “finding,” which secretly authorized U.S. arms shipments to Iran.

Meanwhile, some congressional staff members are examining the possibility that Dewey Claridge, a close Casey aide who headed the CIA operations in Central America that led to the mining of Nicaraguan harbors in 1983, may have played an important role in the diversion of funds from the Tehran arms sales to Nicaraguan rebel forces by way of Swiss banks.

For the last year, Claridge has been head of the CIA counterterrorist group. That assignment brought him in close contact with North, whose dual jobs at the NSC were to assist the Nicaraguan contras and deal with combatting terrorists in the Mideast.

Some sources familiar with the affair are concerned that Casey, who was instructed by the President not to circulate the “finding” within the government, may have been instrumental in persuading the President to bypass the NSC intelligence staff as well as to keep the document secret for most of this year.

It was only 10 days ago that the document was finally circulated within the broad intelligence community of the government, including the departments of State, Defense and Justice, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and other agencies.

Arms for Iran

The document states, in paraphrase, that President Reagan had found it in this country’s national interest to provide arms to Iran in an attempt to persuade moderate elements in the Tehran government to use their influence to reduce the government’s hostility to the United States and to affect its policy of sponsoring terrorism, officials said.

No mention of using the arms to obtain release of U.S. hostages was formally stated in the document, in line with the Administration’s contention that its initial aim was to improve the position of moderates in Iran.

However, knowledgeable officials expressed the view that the real aim quickly became the freedom of Americans held hostage by pro-Iranian extremists in Lebanon.

Officials who provided this account maintained that established procedures for determining the need for a covert action, such as the clandestine arms sales to Iran, had been circumvented in several ways in this case.

Other Hidden ‘Findings’?

They said it was the first time in the six-year history of the Administration, during which several dozen “findings” have been signed, that these procedures were not followed. When asked if Poindexter might have hidden away other “findings,” as well, one official quipped:

“When they cleaned out his safe, they didn’t find any others.”

Had the normal scrutiny been given to the proposed arms-to-Iran action, the group of eight senior officials who are supposed to examine such findings before they are signed--a group consisting of second- or third-ranking officials in their departments--would have immediately raised “red flags” on at least two grounds, the officials said.

First, providing “lethal material” to a country such as Iran, which has been extremely hostile to the United States, is blatantly not in the U.S. national interest, they said, particularly without identifying the Iranian moderates and ensuring the start of a dialogue.

Second, it would have been immediately clear that the aim of establishing a dialogue with moderates was only an excuse to obtain the hostages’ freedom and thereby a violation of standing Administration policy against paying ransom to terrorists, the official said.

The normal practice, endorsed by Reagan early in his Administration, is that covert action proposals must follow a series of steps beginning with a policy recommendation by a committee of senior officials from the key agencies involved. The committee is called the Crisis Pre-Planning Group.

This procedure does not have the force of law or federal regulation but is designed to assure orderly and careful consideration of such important policy questions.

Only after it has been followed are covert action plans supposed to be approved by the President.

After the policy decision has been recommended by the crisis planning group, a proposal to engage in covert operations to further the policy--whether a paramilitary move such as supplying arms or less risky activities such as propaganda or financial support to political parties--would then be put before a committee called the Planning Coordinating Group, which may be composed of many of the same officials, except in the case of the CIA.

In the crisis pre-planning group, the CIA official (the deputy director for intelligence) would be the chief intelligence analyst, but in the coordinating group that role would be filled by the chief of clandestine operations (the deputy director for operations).

With the recommendation of the coordinating group, which assesses the risks and benefits of the undertaking, a covert action proposal goes to the National Security Planning Group, which is composed of the top officials of the various departments--State and Defense, the attorney general, the CIA chief and others involved--who, in turn, pass on it.

Under this system, only with their unanimous approval in writing does a proposal for covert action go before the President, officials said. Even then, in very sensitive cases, a special meeting will be called in which the National Security Planning Group members approve the proposal in a meeting with the President.

Only after this meeting does the President approve the “finding,” which constitutes final formal approval for the covert action to proceed. The signed finding is then circulated among the National Security Planning Group members to show that it has been approved by the President.

So far as appropriate officials know, this procedure, which had apparently served the Administration well in the past, was circumvented. The approving letters, which normally are provided in advance of the “finding,” apparently were not provided--certainly not from Secretary of State George P. Shultz and presumably not from Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, because both opposed the Iran venture and Shultz has said that he knew nothing about the Jan. 17 finding until recently.

This suggests that neither the national security group’s session nor its usual predecessor steps occurred.

Moreover, the “finding” as approved by the President was not circulated among intelligence agencies. Casey apparently was ordered by the President not to do so, according to reports.

Casey Plan Rejected

Casey last year proposed a covert action in a situation in which no Administration policy had been set, because he feared that congressional intelligence committees would reject his budget request for funds to operate in that foreign country. His proposal was rejected, and Congress denied him the funds, officials said.

“The procedures, the safeguards, if you will, worked,” one official said. “I think we have established the best procedures for developing, implementing and monitoring covert actions--keeping track of those actions as they go along, and ending them when they stop being necessary--that this nation has had since World War II,” he added.

In the final year or 18 months of the Jimmy Carter Administration, about 10 covert operations were approved. In the six years of the Reagan Administration, considerably fewer than 50 new covert actions have been initiated, officials said, excluding continuation of inherited programs such as arms aid to the Afghan rebels.

As the Iran-contras scandal has spread, professionals within the U.S. intelligence community who would normally have been involved have become increasingly unhappy--over being excluded and over the potential impact of the affair on U.S. intelligence operations as a whole.