Secord Tells Bush Role in Arms-Hostage Swap : Iran-Contra: Then-vice president helped persuade Reagan on weapons sales to Tehran, retired general says.

A key figure in the Iran-Contra affair said Thursday that President Bush played a much larger role than he has admitted in promoting secret arms-for-hostages sales during the Ronald Reagan Administration.

“Bush has claimed to have been ‘out of the loop’ with respect to the Iran initiative. That’s absolutely false,” retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord said in an interview promoting a book published today.

Secord, who helped arrange many of the secret weapons deals, said Bush, who was then vice president, helped persuade former President Reagan to continue the arms sales to Iran in the summer of 1986, when some officials were suggesting that they should be stopped.

Secord’s account contradicts Bush’s assertions about his role on several key points. Bush has repeatedly said that, although he knew weapons were being sent to Iran, he was not aware of the details and had little impact on the policy.

Reagan sold anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons to Iran, despite legal prohibitions against such transfers, in an attempt to win the release of Americans held hostage by pro-Iranian militants in Lebanon. Proceeds from the sales were used to help Contra guerrillas battle the Nicaraguan government.

Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, moving to deflect Bush’s attacks on his draft record, seized on the Secord book--and a reassessment of Iran-Contra evidence published by the Washington Post on Thursday--to demand that Bush “come clean” and give “a full response, not more evasions” on his role in the affair.

Mimicking a famous quote from the Watergate scandal and a Bush statement on Clinton’s draft explanations, Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos asked in a press release: “What did Bush know and when did he know it? Why won’t he tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

Arkansas Gov. Clinton and his running mate, Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.), suggested that Bush might be ducking a campaign debate to avoid questions about Iran-Contra.

“I’ve answered a hundred times as many questions on the draft as he has on Iran-Contra,” said Clinton, who has been criticized for being evasive in explaining how he avoided the draft during the Vietnam War.

Secord said in the interview: “I’m not accusing Bush of doing anything wrong” and “I want him to win.” He said it “bothers me a lot” that Clinton may use his book, “Honored and Betrayed,” against Bush. But he believed it was important to tell “this very important part of the Iran initiative.”

But Secord has also acknowledged that he is still bitter at Reagan and Bush for allowing a special prosecutor to pursue him on criminal charges stemming from the affair. In a 1989 plea bargain, Secord pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of giving false information to Congress.

Bush has said that he was “out of the loop” when the arm sales to Iran were approved and that he did not realize that the deals boiled down to a swap of arms for hostages until Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.) explained the arrangement to him in December, 1986, six weeks after the scheme was revealed.

But Secord, who arranged most of the arms deliveries, said Bush was given a detailed briefing about terms of the deal in July, 1986--and carried to Reagan an Israeli proposal for continued sales.

Bush met in Israel that month with Amiram Nir, an adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who explained the details of the arms sales, according to notes taken at the meeting by a Bush aide. The notes were released in 1987 by a presidential commission investigating the sales.

After the meeting, Secord wrote in his book, Nir praised Bush as “very attentive . . . a very quick study.”

Nir said Bush “was noncommittal in his response” to the Israeli proposal, which was for a series of deals to swap weapons for individual hostages, one by one, Secord wrote. Bush “indicated only that he would take the proposal for sequential release back to President Reagan for final judgment.”

But one day after Bush relayed that Israeli message, Reagan agreed, according to Secord’s book.

“The day after Bush relayed the Israeli proposal to President Reagan, the all-or-nothing policy had been dumped in favor of sequential release. Since the President had been so adamant before, Nir’s briefing must have been a doozy, moving Bush from note-taker to advocate, but that appears to be what happened,” Secord wrote.

A few days later, Secord arranged the delivery of a planeload of anti-aircraft missiles to Iran--but the Tehran government did not release a hostage in return.

“My worst fears . . . seemed to be coming true: The ‘sequential release’ plan was only leading us deeper into the arms-for-hostages swamp,” he wrote.

Later, after the scandal was revealed, Reagan fired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the White House aide who had managed the arms sales. Bush telephoned North the same day and “praised him as a hero, one for whom he had the highest regard,” Secord said.

Appearing with Secord on ABC’s “Nightline” on Thursday night, former National Security Council aide Howard Teicher also suggested that Bush knew more about the Iran-Contra matter than he has acknowledged.

“I myself briefed the then-vice president several times” about the Iran initiative, Teicher said.