Kept Silent on Contra Flights, CIA Figure Says

The CIA’s chief of operations in Central America has admitted that he allowed agency officers to assist the Nicaraguan rebels with weapons deliveries last year when the agency was prohibited from aiding the contras, and later concealed the fact from Congress, according to testimony released Tuesday.

“I got a little too rambunctious,” Alan D. Fiers, chief of the CIA’s Central American Task Force, told the congressional Iran-contra investigating committees.

Fiers said that he knew CIA officers in both Honduras and Costa Rica had aided contra supply flights in ways that went “over the edge.” But he kept silent about it when members of Congress asked about agency involvement because his superiors, including Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and CIA Deputy Director Clair George, denied knowing about it, he said.

Stays ‘With the Team’

“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. “ . . . I wasn’t going to break ranks with the team.”

Fiers said George knew about the aid, but he was not certain Abrams did. Abrams has insisted that he did not know any concrete details about the CIA efforts. George testified before the committees earlier this month, but his testimony has not been released.

Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “disturbed” by Fiers’ account.

“It was a conspiracy of silence--of CIA witnesses who came before the committees, and each had this silent vow not to be the first one to step forward,” Cohen said.

“I was silent,” Fiers agreed. “There is no excuse for it.”

In two days of closed-door testimony before the committees on Aug. 4 and 5, Fiers--whose identity remains officially secret, although he has been named privately by many officials--defended his conduct as legal, while acknowledging that some aspects may not have been proper.

He contended that he was unaware of many of the activities of Oliver L. North, the fired National Security Council aide who ran a secret network that used profits from Iranian arms sales to provide arms to the contras. Other officials have said, however, that Fiers worked closely with North on virtually all the Marine officer’s Central American projects.

“There is very little . . . that happened in Central America that I didn’t talk to Ollie about,” he told the committees. But he said he did not press to learn the details of all of North’s activities.

In testimony that was often vague but sometimes oddly colorful , Fiers gave the panels a history of the CIA’s attempts to support the rebels, despite Congress’ shifting restrictions on the aid. He described part of the contra effort as “a totally degenerate situation that was just like overboiled spaghetti,” and his own position as like “a cat thrown in a dryer, tumbling and trying to figure out what was happening to me . “

He said that he sent directives to his field officers ordering them to comply with Congress’ ban on aid to the rebels beginning in 1984. But by early 1986, after Congress loosened those restrictions to allow the CIA to share intelligence with the contras, Fiers said he told his men that they could broaden their assistance to the rebels.

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

The transcript of Fiers’ testimony that the committees released--heavily censored to remove classified information--did not include any specific examples of questionable operations that Fiers specifically approved. However, it included a cable from Fiers to agency officers in Central America that described a planned contra air drop in March, 1986, and ordered: “Assist as appropriate.”

“I was directing them . . . to do what they could, as appropriate, to urge that (the air drop) happen,” Fiers explained.

Fiers also confirmed reports first published in The Times that after he “loosened the reins,” agency helicopters in Honduras illegally carried weapons for the contras. He said a field officer asked for permission to run such supply flights , and he refused. But he later learned several flights went ahead anyway.

He said he also knew that Joe Fernandez, the CIA’s station chief in Costa Rica, was involved in aiding supply flights to contras in southern Nicaragua, and said he had told Fernandez to reduce his role.

Fernandez took an active part in coordinating the flights, advising the contras on their operations and passing messages between the rebels and North. After his actions later were discovered, he was suspended from active duty.

“I knew he was monitoring those flights, but I really, honestly thought he had fixed a way so he was not in the middle of the things,” Fiers said. He said that Fernandez could have aided the flights legally by simply assigning a contra officer to handle the communications tasks.

Fiers’ testimony conflicted with that of Fernandez, who has told the committees that he informed Fiers and other agency officials of all his actions.

Fiers also said that William J. Casey, the late director of the CIA, had taken a direct role in overseeing activities in Central America; in an unusual arrangement, the agency’s Central American Task Force reported directly to Casey. Casey dealt directly with North as well, Fiers said--a relationship he discovered when Casey ordered him to provide North with a copy of a highly sensitive draft CIA report.

He said that the CIA broke off relations with Eden Pastora, one of the contras’ major leaders, partly because of evidence that he was financing his guerrilla army with money from drug smugglers.

“There was a lot of cocaine trafficking around Eden Pastora,” Fiers said. “. . . It is not a couple (of) people. It is a lot of people.” But he said there was no evidence of drug trafficking connected to the other contra groups that are currently being supported with U.S. government funds.

A separate memorandum written by Robert A. Bermingham, an investigator for the House Iran-contra committee, and released by the committees said that the panel’s staff has found no evidence that contra leaders have engaged in drug trafficking or that U.S. officials have condoned links between the rebels and the cocaine trade.