http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0710-04.htm Published on Sunday, July 10, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times
Confessed Iran-Contra Figure Lands Sensitive Pentagon Post
Robert Earl, who helped in the failed coverup of the '80s scandal, is now chief of staff to Gordon England, acting deputy secretary of Defense.
by John Hendren
WASHINGTON — In 1987, Robert L. Earl told a grand jury that he had destroyed and stolen national security documents while working for Lt. Col. Oliver L. North during the Iran-Contra scandal.
Now, he sits in one of the most coveted offices in the Pentagon as chief of staff to Gordon R. England, acting deputy secretary of Defense. Earl has clearance to review the kinds of classified documents he once destroyed.
As England goes through his Senate confirmation process, his hiring of Earl has drawn criticism from government ethics watchdogs. But congressional sources said it was unlikely to affect support for England, who was popular on Capitol Hill but whose nomination was tied up over an arcane financial rule.
President Bush nominated England to replace Paul D. Wolfowitz, who left the deputy secretary's post this spring to head the World Bank.
..more..
----
A BIGGER, BADDER SEQUEL TO IRAN-CONTRA (article from 2003)
Jim Lobe, AlterNet
Just like Ollie North and his cohorts, a small network of officials are pursuing a covert foreign policy agenda -- except their aims are vastly more ambitious.
http://www.alternet.org/story/16597 /
The specter of the Iran-Contra affair is haunting Washington. Some of the people and countries are the same, and so are the methods ? particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy.
Boiled down to its essentials, the Iran-Contra affair was about a small group of officials based in the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that ran an "off-the-books" operation to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. The picture being painted by various insider sources in the media suggests a similar but far more ambitious scheme at work.
Taken collectively, what these officials describe and what is already on the public record suggests the existence of a disciplined network of zealous, like-minded individuals. Centered in Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith's office and around Richard Perle in the Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon, this exclusive group of officials operates under the aegis of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.
This network includes high-level political appointees, such as Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who are scattered around several other key bureaucracies, notably in the State Department, the NSC staff, and most importantly, in Cheney's office.
...more..