Reagan Didn’t Research Gulf Risk, Aspin Says

President Reagan made the decision to protect Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf without seeking a formal assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies about the risk of retaliatory terrorism posed by Iran, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said today.

“It is clear now that there was never any direct assessment asked of any of the intelligence agencies about the impact of this,” said Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.).

Aspin spoke at a news conference after a closed-door meeting of the panel with representatives of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department and Pentagon.

“We discovered that the intelligence community was never asked for any specific analysis of the threat (from Iran) before the Kuwaiti reflagging decision was made,” Aspin said.

The failure to seek that analysis is “an indication that the policy was put together on the back of an envelope,” he said.

Aspin said the Democratic-controlled Congress likely will try to pass some type of legislation to change the plan to reflag 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers within the next two weeks, before it goes into effect early in July.

Pentagon officials have informally told Congress that they will review their Persian Gulf plans to make sure U.S. servicemen and ships are safe from terrorist attacks in the face of CIA warnings that such strikes are likely, congressional sources said earlier.

The sources said the reassessment will be done in the face of congressional pressure to make sure the Pentagon looks at all possible risks.

Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that “the problem right now is that the policy decision has been made and the intelligence analysis is coming after the decision. It should have been done the other way around.”