Contra Operations: Heart of the Scandal

In newsrooms across the nation, the struggle to coin a name for the mushrooming scandal in Washington goes on. “The Iran Connection” and “the arms deal” were quickly succeeded by “Irangate,” “Contragate” and “Olliegate.” But none caught on, and more fanciful names are being floated: “Iragua” (a British import), “Teflon Dome” and “Iran-amok.” Behind the fruitless search is an obvious but still puzzling question: What is this scandal about?

The somewhat surprising answer is: the contras. Emotionally, the arms deal with Iran seems the center of the scandal. The 1979-81 hostage crisis has made the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini a permanent irritant to the U.S. psyche. Ronald Reagan’s hypocrisy about “no negotiations with terrorists” compounds the public’s dismay. But the fact remains, the Iranian transaction was a sideshow to the secret war in Central America.

In contrast to the improvised Iranian affair, the covert war in Nicaragua was an institutional effort and a high priority in Reagan foreign policy. Not only did it begin earlier than the effort to free the hostages, it involved many more U.S. officials. The idea that Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the former National Security Council official in charge of executing Administration policy, was a “cowboy” who was “out of control” on the contras is increasingly implausible. Associated Press reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger have written that North drafted a three-page memo, in early 1984, proposing a “private aid” network to fund the Nicaraguan rebels. National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane presented it orally to Reagan, who approved it.

It was not until late 1984 that the White House got into the business of selling guns to Iran. There was no geopolitical design behind it. Reagan’s arms deal, it now seems clear, was an ad hoc response to an emergency: the kidnaping of William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut. And North always kept one eye on Nicaragua. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III says North diverted from $10 million to $30 million in profits from the arms sales to “the forces in Central America.”

Moreover, while the investigation of the Iranian transactions has proceeded quickly, far less is known about the Central American end--and the Administration is less eager to investigate it. Meese has ordered Justice Department investigators to look into North’s diversion of the arms sale profits--but none of his other Central American activities. Meese has also slowed the Justice probe into a contra gun-smuggling operation in Fort Lauderdale in March, 1985.

As North carried out the Administration’s policy, he was assisted by dozens of government officials. If Reagan and his aides now seem reluctant to come clean, it may be because they have some idea just how shady the execution of that policy was and how many people are implicated.

North proceeded on three fronts: psychological, political and military.

Psychological operations are reportedly among North’s favorites--”psy-ops” in the lingo of Beltway strategists. The point is to disrupt the enemy’s thinking, goading him into miscalculation.

A classic example was the effort to rattle the Sandinistas right after Reagan’s reelection, in November, 1984, by having U.S. jets set off sonic booms over Nicaragua. Administration sources say the sonic booms were North’s idea.

A more intricate and widely coordinated “psy-op” seems to have been the 1984 cocaine smuggling sting that snared a Nicaraguan named Federico Vaughn, described by the Reagan Administration as a ranking Sandinista official. Vaughn’s arrest meshed nicely with Reagan policy. In a televised speech last March, the President showed pictures of the transaction and declared that “top Nicaraguan government officials are deeply involved in drug trafficking.” Nicaragua denied the accusation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration said it had no evidence to substantiate Reagan’s charge.

The sting operation has North’s fingerprints all over it. A DEA informant and pilot named Adler (Barry) Seal set up a cocaine shipment from Colombia to the United States, using Nicaragua as a transfer point. Like North, Seal was experienced in covert operations, having served in the U.S. Army’s Special Operations forces in Vietnam. Moreover, the plane Seal was flying was the same plane shot down in Nicaragua on Oct. 5, carrying Eugene Hasenfus and two other Americans. Phone records of the San Salvador house where Hasenfus’s superiors lived show frequent phone calls to North’s White House office. Is it sheer coincidence that the same plane was used in both operations?

This psy-op has a curious and fatal ending. Seal was gunned down in a New Orleans parking lot last February. The Uzi machine gun allegedly used by his killers came from a Miami gun store owned by a man involved in the Fort Lauderdale gun smuggling operation that the Justice Department is now investigating. Another participant in the illegal shipment was Robert W. Owen, North’s aid at the NSC.

North was also intimately involved in helping the contra cause politically. He spoke to dozens of right-wing groups and provided them with photos and information. He assisted right-wing organizations in making TV spots harshly criticizing opponents of contra aid, such as Rep. Barbara A. Mikulski, now senator-elect from Maryland. Last fall Mikulski’s unsuccessful Republican opponent, Linda Chavez, thought the ads were counterproductive. But she didn’t ask the sponsors to pull them. She went to North.

Most important, of course, was North’s support for the contras’ military efforts. Exactly how North implemented his plan for the “private aid” network is not yet known. But one critical early episode involved the activity of a Defense Department advisory panel in mid-1984. Ostensibly the seven-man committee advised the Salvadoran air force about bombing tactics against left-wing guerrillas. The panel was headed by retired Gen. John K. Singlaub, a leader in the “private aid” network and a close friend of North’s. Singlaub’s report is still classified.

The Singlaub connection is not the only intriguing aspect of this panel. At least two other members also had ties to North and the private-aid network: retired Brig. Gen. Harry C. Aderholt who heads a Florida organization, the Air Commando Assn., active in assisting the contras, and F. Andrew Messing, a strategist of Third World “low-intensity conflicts” and another friend of North’s. The substance of the panel’s meetings with the Salvadoran air force would prove interesting. By March, 1985, the contra resupply effort was operating out of the Salvadoran air force’s largest base.

The U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Edwin G. Corr, and the top U.S. military adviser, James Steele, both admit having “monitored” this air supply operation. And Vice President George Bush acknowledges that he helped a Cuban-American named Felix Rodriguez get a job advising the Salvadoran air force. Rodriquez lived in the San Salvador safehouse from which phone calls were made to North’s office. Bush says that he met three times with Rodriguez, and that one meeting was attended by Corr and North. Yet Bush says no one told him that Rodriguez was working in the contra resupply operation. Given the cooperation that North received, it should be clear that the scandal is the Administration’s policy of defying the congressional ban on direct or indirect support to the contras.

Bush’s revelations about Rodriguez are only one part. One of Rodriguez’s colleagues in the contra supply operation was a Cuban-American who worked under the alias of “Ramon Medina.” Hasenfus, when shown a picture of a man named Luis Posada Carriles, identified him as his boss, Ramon Medina. National Public Radio has reported that phone calls from the San Salvador safehouse where “Medina” lived went to Posada’s mother and doctor in Miami. No one in the contras or the Administration has denied that Medina is Posada. The silence is significant: Posada/Medina is a fugitive terrorist.

Posada was arrested in Venezuela in 1976, for his role in planting a bomb aboard a Cubana Airline jet. The plane blew up after takeoff, killing all 73 people aboard. Posada served nine years in a maximum-security prison before escaping in 1985, under mysterious circumstances. Soon after, he turned up in San Salvador working for the contras along with Rodriguez. (Now, Posada has vanished.)

Could Bush, North and other U.S. officials “monitoring” the contra resupply operation know Medina was Posada? Posada was close to anti-Castro activists in Miami who have longstanding CIA ties. Bush served as CIA director in 1976.

More generally, Reagan demonstrated in the Iranian arms deal that he had no qualms about doing business with people involved in international terrorism. And North, his friends report, was fond of saying “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” Perhaps he had Posada in mind. Perhaps, North was--once again--articulating Administration policy. That the Administration may have known its “freedom fighters” were terrorists is the heart of the scandal.