Earlier Briefings of Bush on Iran Cited : Knew of Arms-for-Hostages Swap in 1985, According to Regan

Vice President George Bush was briefed at two key points in the White House’s arms-for-hostages venture with Iran, including a December, 1985, session where he was told that “we would probably never see our hostages” if the United States ended secret talks with Iran, according to newly declassified testimony from last year’s Iran-Contra hearings.

The testimony, by former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, also indicates that Bush attended a summer, 1986, White House session in which President Reagan approved direct talks with the nephew of Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of the Iranian parliament. Rafsanjani was approached after a year of arms sales brokered by Iranian go-between Manucher Ghorbanifar had failed to free all of the hostages.

The new statements are contained in some 200 pages of private depositions that Regan gave last March and July to lawyers for the Senate Iran-Contra investigating committee.

Overtures to Iranians

Like some committee documents released earlier, they suggest that the vice president was told earlier than he has admitted that the release of U.S. hostages was a vital component of American overtures to the Iranians.

In defending himself against the backlash from the disastrous initiative, Bush has maintained he was “deliberately excluded” from important White House meetings on the subject and that he did not learn until late 1986 that the arms sales were part of an explicit trade for hostages.

Despite repeated explanations, questions about Bush’s knowledge of and participation in the Iran venture have continued to dog his campaign for the presidency.

During campaign stops last month in Iowa, the vice president said he “knew a lot” about the Iran overtures from his occasional attendance at Reagan’s morning national security briefings, where the subject often was discussed.

Hostages in Lebanon

But he has strongly denied that he knew of serious doubts about the arms deals held by some Reagan Administration officials, or of the early and strong emphasis that the advocates of the Iran venture placed on freeing Americans held in Lebanon.

Bush has stressed that he was absent, attending a football game, when top Administration officials met on Dec. 7, 1985, and heatedly debated the Iran initiative and that he attended no substantive meetings on the topic in all of 1985.

The newly released Regan testimony places Bush at a previously unreported national security briefing at which Robert C. McFarlane, then national security adviser, briefed Reagan on a secret meeting in London with Ghorbanifar, then the White House’s closest contact with the Iranian government.

McFarlane had met with Ghorbanifar on Dec. 8, telling him that two previous arms deals with the Iranians had produced dismal results for the United States and that sales would end unless dramatic progress was made in improving relations between the two nations.

In the briefing, the deposition states, McFarlane told Bush, Regan, incoming National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and the President that Ghorbanifar had warned him that American hostages would likely die if the secret talks ended.

Asked whether McFarlane indicated that Ghorbanifar had “blackjacked” the United States with the threat, Regan replied: “I wouldn’t say ‘blackjacked,’ but this was becoming increasingly evident, that unless we got on a new tack, we would . . . probably never see our hostages. . . .”

Important Junctures

Two other meetings cited by Regan in his testimony suggest that the vice president was present and briefed at important junctures in the Iran initiative.

Regan places Bush at a morning national security briefing, possibly on Sept. 9, 1986, in which Poindexter told the President that Ghorbanifar should be dropped as an intermediary to the Iranian government and replaced with a “second channel,” reliably reported to be Rafsanjani’s nephew.

“We were told, more than asked, that there was this new initiative and it was going to be explored,” Regan said. He indicated there was “agreement--OK, go ahead and explore it and see how it comes out.”

The report of the White House commission that investigated the Iran-Contra affair indicates that Reagan was briefed on Sept. 9 on “the new Iranian interlocutor, the prospects for a hostage release and the possibility of a rescue operation” to free the captives.

The former White House staff chief also provided further information on a previously reported briefing on Jan. 6, 1986, in which Bush, Regan, Reagan and the former deputy national security adviser, Donald Fortier, discussed a controversial “finding” in which Reagan gave the go-ahead to further arms sales to the Iranians.

Reagan signed a draft of that finding that day, apparently by accident, investigators believe. He approved a final version of the document on Jan. 17 after a second briefing also attended by Bush.

Regan’s account of the Jan. 6 session states that the proposed finding “was gone over in detail as preparation or prelude to the Jan. 7 meeting” where the document was the object of a strong debate between Poindexter and opponents of the arms sales, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz and then-Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger. Bush was present at the session but has said he either stepped out of the room or does not remember any strong objections being voiced to continued arms sales.