Knew of Contra Air Drops, Kept Silent, CIA Aide Says : Claims He Got Overly Zealous

A high-ranking CIA officer acknowledged that he knew lethal supplies were air-dropped to the Nicaraguan contras with U.S. assistance and that he later listened silently as superiors misled Congress about the government’s role, according to testimony released today.

“I got a little too rambunctious” in directing the aid, the official testified.

A transcript of the testimony by Alan Fiers, chief of the CIA’s Central American task force, was released by the joint congressional Iran-contra investigating committees, which questioned Fiers and two other CIA officers in secret sessions in early August. Release of a major portion of the testimony was delayed until later, however.

Fiers said he decided to remain silent last October as he sat at the witness table with Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams and CIA Deputy Director Clair George in a closed meeting of the House Intelligence Committee. Abrams and George denied U.S. or CIA involvement with the contra supply plane that was shot down over Nicaragua earlier that month.

“Probably it was the most difficult decision I have made in my life,” Fiers said, calling their answers “cute.”

“So long as others who knew the details, as much as I, who knew more than I, were keeping their silence on this, I was going to keep my silence,” he said.

Fiers said he provided direction for U.S. assistance in lethal materiel drops to contras fighting on Nicaragua’s southern front in 1986.

Changing Language Cited

He said he tried to remain within the strictures of the congressional ban on U.S. military aid, and he said the changing language of the Boland Amendment bans caused him to pull back CIA involvement in the air drops in the spring of 1986.

“By my own admission, if I got some place that is controversial, it was in February and March where I let the reins out, I got a little too rambunctious, like a colt that got out of the barn to play, and I pulled myself back in,” he said.

“I didn’t do it all myself. My task force lawyer was whispering like Jiminy Cricket in my ear. I probably got us a little too far forward leaning at a point in time and then pulled us back.”

Fiers was not identified by name in the transcript of his testimony, but committee sources confirmed his identity.

Fiers said his involvement in the politically charged Nicaraguan situation began in 1984 and he knew from the beginning it was a sticky program for the Administration.

He voiced bitterness at the White House for not being forthcoming about the operation when it started to unravel in the fall.

He said the White House’s lack of candor left him “hanging . . . out.”

Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.) and Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) the chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee who also sit on the Iran-contra panels, both rebuked Fiers for misleading Congress.

Cohen criticized what he described as a “conspiracy of silence” among senior CIA officials when testifying before Congress about the U.S. role in the contra aid operation.

On another point, Fiers defended his receipt of a $20,000 CIA bonus for his performance in 1986. Fiers volunteered to the panel: “That was not done by the director (Casey) as a bribe.”