U.S. Officials Think Contra Arms Totaled $10 Million

U.S. intelligence officials believe that more than $10 million in military aid reached the Nicaraguan rebels during the last year, much of it apparently funded with profits from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran, Reagan Administration sources said Thursday.

The sources said the CIA and other intelligence agencies had attempted to keep track of the rebels’ arms purchases, and analysts arrived at a rough dollar estimate based on what equipment reached the contras and the cost of delivering it.

“We know that the contras got, in the last year, at least $10 million (worth),” one official with access to intelligence reports said. “There may have been more; the $10 million is based just on what we saw.”

But the Administration estimate of $10 million still left millions of dollars unaccounted for from the Iranian arms deal.

Two of the middlemen in the arms sales have said that Iran paid at least $30 million for the weapons it received. But U.S. officials say the Pentagon was reimbursed only $12 million for the arms, leaving profits of at least $18 million.

Some of those profits went to pay for a yearlong operation to buy and airlift weapons for the rebels, which U.S. and contra officials said was run by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, then a National Security Council aide, and Richard V. Secord, a retired Air Force major general.

Contra officials said Thursday that some of the extra money was also spent in payoffs to officials in El Salvador and Honduras, where the rebel airlift operated. And they charged that Secord and other organizers of the airlift had kept some of the money as profits.

“We have had to pay officers for using the airfields,” one rebel official said. “We had no choice.”

“Secord was charging as much as $50,000 for each flight, and we knew his costs were not that high,” he added.

Secord, who has rejected several requests for an interview, could not be reached for comment. The House Intelligence Committee has summoned Secord for testimony next week; the retired general refused to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, invoking his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

The question of how much money from the secret arms sales reached the contras has largely stymied the House and Senate committees, which have been investigating the shipments and the secret diversion of the profits. The Administration has said that North, who was fired last month, secretly arranged the contra aid without the knowledge of the President.

‘It’s Not Nothing’

Some members of Congress have questioned whether the money reached the rebels at all. Several Administration officials said it was clear to them that some of the money from the Iranian deal did go to purchase weapons for the rebels, although they knew of no clear estimate of the amount.

“It’s not nothing,” said one official. “But we don’t know how much it is.”

“Was money stolen? We don’t know,” he said. “Did the contras get any cash? We don’t think so, but we still don’t know for certain.

“Ollie North took all the information with him,” he said.

The rebels insisted, as they have in the past, that they received no cash from the operation, only weapons and supplies. But several contra officials said they had seen documents that disclosed how much the airlift operation had paid for various services.

Contra Leader’s Estimate

“Of the $30 million that was supposedly realized, I can tell you we got no more than 25%,” or $7.5 million, contra leader Alfonso Robelo said in an interview with the Associated Press in Costa Rica. “I think a lot was paid out in large, perhaps illegal commissions.”

Contra leaders said they have been unable to produce a complete accounting of what aid they received from the scheme.

The airlift operation, based at El Salvador’s main air base at Ilopango, owned five C-123 cargo planes that reportedly cost a total of at least $1.5 million. Some reports have estimated that roughly $400,000 was paid out in salaries for the 30 or more crewmen who worked on the airlift.

The lion’s share of the money went to buy arms on the international market, contra officials said. But weapons prices are so variable, they said, that it is virtually impossible to guess at the cost of what they received.

A Dizzying Trail

Both the contras and Administration officials said they did not know how the arms purchases had been made, or where the profits from the Iranian arms sales had moved after they were deposited in the Swiss bank accounts of Lake Resources Inc., a firm reportedly controlled by Secord and his financial partner, Iranian businessman Albert A. Hakim.

Despite the dizzying trail of funds, U.S. officials said, the contras still suffered shortages of arms and equipment during most of 1986.

“They did have severe shortages,” one said. “The shortages peaked in June or early July . . . . The $27 million (from U.S. non-military aid) had run out. And there was earlier money from other sources, but it ran out.”

Even now, contra officials complain, none of the $100 million in aid which Congress approved in October has arrived.

“There are so many restrictions on the aid, so many checks and balances to be sure it is spent properly, that it has been very slow in coming,” Robelo said. “We have had no (air) drops inside Nicaragua.”

Robelo acknowledged that some of the aid has reached “intermediate points,” but he would not elaborate.

A U.S. official said one reason for the delay in deliveries has been the spreading Iran-contra scandal.

“It’s shut down,” he said.