Ghorbanifar Says He Won’t Be ‘Fall Guy’

Saying he is not going to be the “fall guy,” Iranian arms broker Manucher Ghorbanifar complained angrily in his first interview with U.S. investigators that he is being blamed unfairly for the collapse of secret U.S. arms sales to Iran and the diversion of profits to the contras , The Times has learned.

Ghorbanifar, a key middleman in the arms-for-hostages dealings, provided documents and was questioned in detail about the origins, financing and eventual disclosure of the operation during a private 5 1/2-hour meeting with a special presidential commission headed by former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.) at the elegant Plaza Athenee Hotel here late last week.

Khashoggi Interviewed

Another middleman, Saudi Arabian arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi, who also met for the first time with U.S. investigators, was interviewed by the commission for more than an hour in his nearby Picasso- and Renoir-adorned apartment about his financial role in at least four arms shipments.

Roy M. Furmark--a New York businessman who previously testified in Washington before the three-member Tower commission, which includes former Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Me.) and Brent Scowcroft, a former White House national security adviser--acted as intermediary for the panel here. He hand-delivered Tower’s written requests to Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar in Paris last week, escorted the commission members to Khashoggi’s apartment after they arrived on Thursday and joined them for drinks after the interviews that night.

“I set it up,” Furmark said Sunday of the interviews.

Khashoggi has said he lost money in the Iran arms transactions and told associates here last week that he is considering suing Lake Resources Inc., a shell company that apparently was controlled by since-fired National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North and his associates.

Khashoggi has said that he deposited $15 million at North’s direction in a Swiss bank account of Lake Resources last May 15. However, the transaction was aborted and Khashoggi contends he is still owed $10 million from the deal.

Congressional investigators are focusing on the Lake Resources account as the most likely conduit for the still-unexplained diversion of millions of dollars in profits from the Iran arms deals to support anti-Sandinista forces in Central America.

Will Furnish Records

Furmark said Khashoggi agreed to supply the commission with copies of canceled checks and other records from the May transaction.

He said Ghorbanifar, who acted as a U.S. intermediary to the Iranian government until mid-1986, also provided “lots of documents,” including detailed lists of which weapons and equipment were ordered and delivered and “memos of meetings” with U.S. officials.

The Tower commission’s Paris interviews with the two middlemen came four days after panel members spent 76 minutes in the Oval Office questioning President Reagan. The commission members and their aides left Paris on Friday. None of the three commission members or their staff aides could be reached for comment in Washington on Sunday. Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar left Paris on Saturday night for the south of France and also could not be reached.

Angry at Being Blamed

Furmark, a business associate of both Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi, said Ghorbanifar was angry that U.S. officials and a Senate Intelligence Committee report released Thursday fault him for his role in the scandal.

“He said he’s not going to be the fall guy,” Furmark said.

“He said he gave them everything he knew,” added Furmark, who spoke to Ghorbanifar after his appearance before the commission. “He wants the truth out.”

But the 65-page Senate report repeatedly questioned Ghorbanifar’s credibility and reliability. The CIA considered him a “talented fabricator,” the report notes, and warned other government agencies in August, 1984, that he is unreliable.

The CIA was not reassured when officials administered a polygraph test to Ghorbanifar in January, 1986, according to the report. The test indicated deception “on virtually all the questions, including whether he was under control of the Iranian government . . . whether he cooperated with Iranian officials to deceive the U.S. and whether he acted independently to deceive the U.S.,” the report said.

Contact Cut Off

The report notes that former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane became convinced that the United States should not “do business” with Ghorbanifar after top Iranian officials refused to meet a secret U.S. negotiating team in Tehran, as Ghorbanifar had promised. The United States later cut off contact with Ghorbanifar and began using another Iranian intermediary.

But Furmark said that Ghorbanifar, who summoned his Washington attorney to the Paris session, told the commission that he “performed a service” for both the United States and Iran by trying to foster better relations.

“He worked hard for the U.S. government,” Furmark said. “Who did everything? He did.”

“Now he’s being blamed for everything,” Furmark added. “Whatever went wrong was his idea. That’s the way it looks.”

Lost About $2 Million

Furmark said Ghorbanifar will be “vindicated” when the Tower commission checks his account. He said Ghorbanifar had lost about $2 million on the arms deals and that he had suffered “health problems” from depression after the deals collapsed.

Given Ghorbanifar’s involvement, his information could shed new light on the role that White House, CIA and other officials played in the Iran-contras affairs.

Among questions the Tower commission submitted in advance to Ghorbanifar as “proposed questions for discussion” were: Who was involved in the arms transfers? What role, if any, did he play in the release of the U.S. hostages? What were the details of the financial arrangement? What was the origin of his knowledge about fund diversions to the contras? And what was behind initial public disclosures of the clandestine operation?

Reagan appointed the special review board in November to examine the role of the National Security Council, the White House agency that directed the Iran arms sales.