Bush Brushes Aside Question on Iran-Contra

President Bush on Wednesday brushed aside a fresh assertion that he may have known more than he has admitted about the opposition of two Ronald Reagan Administration Cabinet members to the secret U.S. arms sales to Iran.

Asked at a news conference about a memo released Tuesday by prosecutors that disputed Bush’s version of events, the President said he knew nothing about it.

“No, I don’t know about that,” Bush said. “I’ve told very openly everything I have to say about it. I don’t know about that memo. I see no reason to contradict myself at all. There’s no story in it. To be honest, I didn’t read that.”

Prosecutors said they discovered that former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger kept notes on the Iran-Contra affair from a 1987 conversation that then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz had with his top aide.

In court papers, prosecutors described a handwritten note of the conversation between Shultz and his executive assistant, M. Charles Hill, on Aug. 7, 1987, when Congress was investigating the scandal.

The two men mentioned Weinberger’s note-taking habits.

Shultz and Hill also recounted that then-Vice President Bush had just claimed in the newspapers that he was not exposed to the arguments by Shultz and Weinberger against the Iranian arms sales.

“Cap (Weinberger) called me (and said) that’s terrible. He (Bush) was on the other side. Its (sic) on the record. Why did he say that,” according to Hill’s note of his conversation with Shultz.

Weinberger, who was indicted in June on five criminal charges arising from the scandal, is accused of deliberately concealing his notes from congressional investigators and then lying about them to the office of the Iran-Contra independent special prosecutor.

Weinberger, who has pleaded innocent to the charges, is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 5.