Kerry, Poindexter, North, Noriega, Reagan, Bush, Weld

DrFunkenstein

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Tue Aug-05-03 01:01 AM
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Kerry, Poindexter, North, Noriega, Reagan, Bush, Weld

We all have heard John Poindexter's name. He's the guy that just got canned for the terrorist gambling brainfart:

WASHINGTON -- Retired Adm. John Poindexter will resign his position at the Pentagon after the uproar over a research project he was overseeing that included a kind of futures market on political violence in the Middle East.

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In the 1980s Poindexter was national security adviser to President Reagan. He was a key figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-terror-market-poindexter,0,7253201.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

An old Eric Alterman article provides a little background on Poindexter, who is also responsible for DARPA's Total Information Awareness brainfart:

"Oh, and guess who's in charge? John Poindexter, the man who, during the Reagan/Bush administration, claimed under oath that he approved the payoff to the Contras of the profits garnered from selling missiles to terrorists without even so much as mentioning it to President Reagan. He did this, he said at the time, 'on my own authority' in order to 'preserve deniability.'

"But Poindexter could not produce a single piece of paper to support this alarming contention. He also admitted to discussing the implementation of a 'fall guy' plan should the program ever become public, and repeatedly misled Congress about his own involvement in order to hide the illegal program. While being questioned during the Iran-Contra hearings, Poindexter helpfully explained: 'I didn't want Congress to know the details of how we were implementing the president's policy.' To prevent this, he was willing, as he put it, to substitute an 'untruth,' which he did repeatedly."

http://hughhewitt.com/past_news_links_11.02/11.20.02.Kerry_Rises.html

Moving right along memory lane:

Oliver North, who met with Noriega's representative, described the meeting in an August 23, 1986 e-mail message to Reagan national security advisor John Poindexter. "You will recall that over the years Manuel Noriega in Panama and I have developed a fairly good relationship," North writes before explaining Noriega's proposal. If U.S. officials can "help clean up his image" and lift the ban on arms sales to the Panamanian Defense Force, Noriega will "'take care of' the Sandinista leadership for us."

North tells Poindexter that Noriega can assist with sabotage against the Sandinistas, and suggests paying Noriega a million dollars -- from "Project Democracy" funds raised from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran -- for the Panamanian leader's help in destroying Nicaraguan economic installations.

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The same day Poindexter responds with an e-mail message authorizing North to meet secretly with Noriega. "I have nothing against him other than his illegal activities," Poindexter writes.

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In 1987, the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, led by Senator John Kerry, launched an investigation of allegations arising from reports, more than a decade ago, of contra-drug links. One of the incidents examined by the "Kerry Committee" was an effort to divert drug money from a counternarcotics operation to the contra war.

On July 28, 1988, two DEA agents testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime regarding a sting operation conducted against the Medellin Cartel. The two agents said that in 1985 Oliver North had wanted to take $1.5 million in Cartel bribe money that was carried by a DEA informant and give it to the contras. DEA officials rejected the idea.

The Kerry Committee report concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems."

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Reagan administration officials interceded on behalf of Jos� Bueso Rosa, a Honduran general who was heavily involved with the CIA's contra operations and faced trial for his role in a massive drug shipment to the United States. In 1984 Bueso and co-conspirators hatched a plan to assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo C�rdoba; the plot was to be financed with a $40 million cocaine shipment to the United States, which the FBI intercepted in Florida.

Declassified e-mail messages indicate that Oliver North led the behind-the-scenes effort to seek leniency for Bueso . The messages record the efforts of U.S. officials to "cabal quietly" to get Bueso off the hook, be it by "pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence." Eventually they succeeded in getting Bueso a short sentence in "Club Fed," a white collar prison in Florida.

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The Kerry Committee report reviewed the case, and noted that the man Reagan officials aided was involved in a conspiracy that the Justice Department deemed the "most significant case of narco-terrorism yet discovered."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm

EVEN BEFORE THE joint Iran-Contra committees were formed, three other committees were already examining charges that Lt. Col. Oliver North's secret contra arms network was funded by illegal drug sales with the knowledge of the Central Intelligence Agency.

By far the most aggressive of the three congressional committees was John Kerry's Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations. His aggressiveness paid off, as Kerry was finding significant evidence of contra-connected drug smuggling.

BEFORE KERRY WENT public with his findings, he had attempted to get the Justice Department to act on what he considered compelling evidence of U.S. involvement in illegal activities including contra drug trafficking. On September 26, 1986, Kerry met with Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weld, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division.

Kerry handed Weld an 11-page "proffer," a sworn statement from FBI informant Wanda Palacio that directly implicated the CIA in drug trafficking. According to the minutes, Kerry asked Weld to read the statement and left the room. According to Winer, who stayed in the room with Weld, he "read about a half page and chuckled. I asked him why. He said, 'This isn't the first time today I've seen allegations about CIA agents' involvement in drugs.'

Weld never acted on the Palacio statement or any other evidence gathered by Kerry.

According to former Kerry committee counsel Jack Blum's recent testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Weld not only did not investigate but put up an "absolute stone wall" between the Justice Department and the Kerry investigation. "There were stalls, there were refusals to talk to us, refusals to turn over data...Weld put a very serious block on any effort to get information."

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The techniques of cover-up are old and familiar. For the CIA-contra-cocaine connection they include the narrowly phrased question, the blind inspector, "national security," selective prosecution, and sympathetic officials and media "assets."

It may be useful to examine how public officials and covert operators collaborate to suppress such serious information.

Congressional leaders announced an investigation into North's National Security Council network by the newly formed Iran-Contra Select Committee...But from its inception, it was clear this investigation would be limited and sanitized.

For starters, the Democratic chairs of both committees--Sen. Daniel Inoue and Rep. Lee Hamilton--were falling over one another to assure the public this would not be "another Watergate." As Inoue told reporters, the country "isn't ready" for that. Having thus declared their limits, they turned to an investigator who could limit their vision.

http://www.flashpoints.net/anatomyOACoverup.htm

When congressional leaders chose the members of the elite Iran-contra committee, Kerry was left off. Those selected were consensus-politicians, not bomb-throwers.

The feeling among a disappointed Kerry and his staff was that the committee members were chosen to put a lid on things. "He was told early on they were not going to put him on it," Winer recalls. "He was too junior and too controversial . . .. They were concerned about the survival of the republic."

Even some Democrats "thought John was a little hotter than they would like," says Rosenblith.

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/062003.shtml

Note 1: William Weld would later run a ferocious, but fruitless battle for Kerry's Senate seat in 1996.

Note 2: John Poindexter is only one of the key Iran-Contra figures to make their way into the Bush administration. Let us not forget Eliot Abrams, convicted for lying to Congress under oath, only to be pardoned by Bush Sr. and hired by his son, the human memory hole.

The historical exchange between Kerry and Abrams:

Elliott Abrams: "I can say that while I have been assistant secretary, which is about 15 months, we have not received a dime from a foreign government, not a dime, from any foreign government."

Senator Kerry: " `We' being who?"

Abrams: "The United States."

Senator Kerry: "How about the contras?"

Abrams: "I don't know. But not that I am aware of and not through us. The thing is, I think I would know about it because if they went to a foreign government, a foreign government would want credit for helping the contras and they would come to us to say you want us to do this, do you, and I would know about that."

This testimony, and similar statements to a House committee, would result in Abrams pleading guilty to charges of withholding information from Congress.

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/062003.shtml