The Nation - News from April 1, 1988

Swiss financier Bruce Rappaport backed out of a deposition he was scheduled to give to independent counsel James C. McKay last month and apparently has decided not to cooperate in the investigation of Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, sources in Washington and abroad told the Washington Post. Rappaport had been scheduled to give sworn testimony at a secret meeting in London with McKay and his aides, who are investigating the role Meese played in a 1985 plan to build a $1-billion pipeline from Iraq to Jordan, the sources said. But he changed his mind at the last minute, reportedly because he was afraid he might not remember everything accurately, the sources said. Under an agreement reached with McKay’s office, the Swiss financier and international oil trader was to have been given immunity from prosecution unless he perjured himself.