Whitehouse Hiding Judge Roberts role in the Iran Contra Scandal

[sans-culotte]

Judge John Roberts and Iran Contra Drug Smuggling

Did Judge Roberts advise on setting up the loophole agency that allowed the Iran Contra operation to exist outside of the purview of Congress??

It appears that Roberts may have worked to circumvent the very Constitution that he has now been nominated to rule on.

According to the wapo article regarding at least one withheld memo, Judge Roberts may have helped the Reagan whitehouse to go around the constitution to fund an illegal war after Congress had explicitly forbidden Reagan from doing so with the Boland Amendment.

"Democrats Seeking Release of Withheld Roberts Documents: Iran-Contra Among Topics of Reagan-Era Papers"
Washington Post
http://tinyurl.com/cyb6s
"..One file withheld, regarding the Iran- contra affair, was a draft memo from Roberts to his bosses with the heading "re: establishment of NHAO" -- referring to the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office.
The office was one of the ways the Reagan administration got around what were known as the Boland amendments, which prohibited U.S. intelligence agencies from spending money to overthrow the Sandinistas. The office was a way the administration could get funds to the contras for nonmilitary purposes, but once there the money was used for all sorts of things....."

Though long denied, oughtright lied about by the CIA and DEA during the Iran-Contra and Kerry Commission hearings, the NSA revealed declassified Ollie north emails just last year that confirm his involvement and constant communication with senior admin officials in the smuggling of cocaine into the US. The msm has been mum on this.

National Security Archives
http://tinyurl.com/ctkx7
"Washington D.C., 26 February 2004 - Diaries, e-mail, and memos of Iran-contra figure Oliver North, posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive, directly contradict his criticisms yesterday of Sen. John Kerry's 1988 Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee report on the ways that covert support for the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s undermined the U.S. war on drugs.....

.....Among the documents posted....
Mr. North's diary entries, from the reporter's notebooks he kept in those years, noting multiple reports of drug smuggling among the contras......

...Memos from North aide Robert Owen to Mr. North recounting drug-running "indiscretions" among the contras, warning that a known drug-smuggling airplane was delivering taxpayer-funded "humanitarian aid" overseen by Mr. North.....

..... On February 10, 1986, Owen ("TC") wrote North (this time as "BG," for "Blood and Guts") regarding a plane being used to carry "humanitarian aid" to the contras that was previously used to transport drugs. The plane belongs to the Miami-based company Vortex, which is run by Michael Palmer, one of the largest marijuana traffickers in the United States. Despite Palmer's long history of drug smuggling, which would soon lead to a Michigan indictment on drug charges, Palmer receives over $300,000.00 from the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Aid Office (NHAO) -- an office overseen by Oliver North, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, and CIA officer Alan Fiers -- to ferry supplies to the contras.

State Department contracts from February 1986 detail Palmer's work to transport material to the contras on behalf of the NHAO....."

there's more... National Security Archives
"The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations"
"Documentation of Official U.S. Knowledge of Drug Trafficking and the Contras"
"Evidence that NSC Staff Supported Using Drug Money to Fund the Contras"
http://tinyurl.com/2cnjj

Left Coaster's take on this...
"If Roberts Helped Set Up NHAO, Hearings Will Revisit Ties Between Iran Contra and Drugs"
http://tinyurl.com/bares
".....There probably is good reason for the Bush White House to want such documents to disappear, because the Kerry subcommittee found that the drug cartels used the Contra supply network set up by Oliver North and his buddies on the southern front and the cash sent to the Contras to fund humanitarian projects to support their drug trafficking operations into the United States. It needs to be remembered that Roberts did the legal work for the Reagan White House that guided them on how to get around the Boland Amendment by establishing the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO), an enterprise that was used by North and one Elliott Abrams to fund the Contras and provided a transportation infrastructure for drug running into the United States.

I’m sure Kerry is looking forward to these hearings a great deal."


A little on perhaps why the msm has failed to cover this story. They may have been afraid of getting killed if they did.

Check this out...
National Security Archives
"The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations"
http://tinyurl.com/2cnjj
"An August, 1996, series in the San Jose Mercury News by reporter Gary Webb linked the origins of crack cocaine in California to the contras, a guerrilla force backed by the Reagan administration that attacked Nicaragua's Sandinista government during the 1980s. Webb's series, "The Dark Alliance," has been the subject of intense media debate, and has focused attention on a foreign policy drug scandal that leaves many questions unanswered......"

This entry from Wikipedia is helpful, and raises some serious questions as to how far our govt might be willing to go to make sure this doesn't get out...
http://tinyurl.com/afpv9
"...Gary Webb (August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" series for the San Jose Mercury News in which he explored the Contra-crack cocaine connection (it was later published as a book under the same title). His controversial and highly damaging revelations were disputed at the time, and the affair effectively ended his career as a journalist......
.....under mounting pressure, San Jose Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos published a retraction on May 11, 1997, claiming the Dark Alliance series fell short of his standards. Webb was reassigned to a suburban bureau one hundred fifty miles from his home. Because of the long commute, Webb quit the paper in December, 1997, but by then his marriage had fallen apart and his career had been destroyed.....
....On December 10, 2004, he was found dead from gunshot wounds to the head. While acknowledging that the two fatal shots that had entered through the back of his head was unusual, coroner Robert Lyons determined that it was suicide. It subsequently became known that Webb had been suffering from clinical depression for many years. This information was ascertained only after the fact. Further investigation of the evidence indicates that the CIA murdered Gary Webb and engaged in a suicide cover-up...." WTF!!!

Although the wikipedia entry can't be taken as a trusted source by itself, it does raise the possibility of serious foul play, we do know from the archives that Gary Webb was not only right all along, he had only scratched the surface. He had his career ruined, and 'supposedly' committed suicide by two gunshots to the head (excuse me???) months after it had been revealed that he had been right all along.

Consider the following...
"Evidence Begins To Indicate Gary Webb Was Murdered
Webb Spoke Of Death Threats, 'Government People' Around His Home"
video clip "Watch a Dateline report on CIA drug trafficking which includes interviews with Gary Webb, Cele Castillo and 'Freeway' Ricky Ross"
http://tinyurl.com/4sy7m

I first came across Ollie's '04 declassified emails and memos while working on a research paper over the summer on the Sandinista-Contra(US) War, and I couldn't believe it.

The msm failed to cover the fact that documents released last year (before Gary Webb's death, one can only wonder what he was working on??) confirmed that the republican's favorite president, you know the one who began the "war on drugs" and "just say no", had senior officials in his admin, some who are in Bush's current admin, who were knowingly aiding and abetting a coke smuggling ring.

If John Roberts, as council to the whitehouse during the Reagan admin, helped to circumvent the Constitutional power of Congress by arguing a way to establish the NHAO, as the Washington Post article suggests, as a way to fund the illegal war without Congressional oversight, which is exactly what they did, he may have been the key reason behind the whole Iran-Contra scandal ever occuring in the first place.

I had read previously about Webb's story and the Kerry commission findings, but there was never any hard proof until last year of Ollie's involvement and how far up the chain the knowledge went.

Then when the WaPo story suggested Judge Roberts may have had a role in the "establishment of NHAO", the wing of the govt that allowed the charade to operate and last as long as it did beyond Congress' purview, I knew this is big news.

I can only hope anyone who has read this will think so too.

Please help this get the attention it deserves.

[blm]

1. Inter-office memo at KnightRidder last week said Ceppos is LEAVING

as Vice-President of news to go into education.

Maybe he didn't want the publicity that Roberts' hearing might give his decision from back then.

[sans-culotte]

2. I didn't catch that. hmmmm

I wonder.
thanks for the headsup.
I'm not so sure any of this will even get raised in the hearings if it doen't start to get some attention.

[blm]

3. Are there any Kerry allies at the hearings? He's the one who knows the

info and was the only Senate supporter of Webb's story at the time.

He said in an email over a month ago he was going to make sure Roberts was grilled.

[TayTay]

4. Teddy Kennedy will be at the hearings.

I should think the Sr. and Jr. Senators from MA might gt together and have a chat on this.

BTW, one of my favorites stories from those days ran in the Baltimore Sun on 11/26/96 (after the Gary Webb series.) Martha Honey, who was in Costa Rica on humanitarian concerns had her house broken into in July of 1987. Local narcotics agents ransacked her house looking for evidence of a drug-smuggling ring:

The agents ransacked file drawers in our ground-floor office and then tore through the rest of the house, looking for drugs. They found none. No matter, they said, they already had the "smoking gun." They produced a brown paper package addressed to us, with a return address from the Interior Ministry in Nicaragua. The package contained a letter signed "Tomas" and a book whose center had been hollowed out. A small plastic packet filled with white powder was inserted in the space. High-quality cocaine, the agents informed us.

Through tears, Carmen explained that after collecting our mail at the post office, she was seized by narcotics agents waiting outside, thrown into a car, and taken to a judge's chambers. There the package was ceremoniously opened, and the cocaine "discovered."

The letter, supposedly from the Sandinistas' interior minister. Tomas Borge, described a cocaine trafficking network involving my husband, Tony Avirgan, and me, several top Nicaraguan government officials, the Soviet Ambassador to Costa Rica, and Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat. The next day, right-wing newspapers throughout Central America ran identical articles, headlined: "Two journalists arrested as drug traffickers."

snip

The Cuban Americans had included John Kerry's name in the "Tomas" letter because he was spearheading a Senate investigation into contra- and CIA-linked drug trafficking. Over the course of the three-year probe, Kerry's staff ran into numerous other obstacles, as Kerry's chief investigator, Washington lawyer Jack Blum, testified during a recent Senate hearing. "We were subject to a systematic campaign to discredit everything we did," he said.

That has to be the worst frame ever (on a sitting US Senator.)

So many folks who worked on the whole Iran-Contra thing are still working for the Bush family:
Elliot Abrams
John Bolton
John Negroponte
And so many more. BTW, Blum's testimony when Dark Alliance came out is a good way to catch-up with what the hell went on in the hearings days. http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/blumlive.html

[wli]

6. If this blows completely open, we'll get an Iran-Contra redux

Looks pretty serious.

[TayTay]

15. Hey, then they can finally get the Reagan Justice Dept

to own up to doing everything possible to stonewall and derail that investigation. Congress did everything but bark and roll over in order to get that one tossed out. The investigatory hearings were a joke and the immunities handed out torpedoed any chance at getting some accountability.

It would be nice to see this come out. The work that Sen. KErry did then on Iran-Contra and on the drug-running was amazing stuff. But it got buried. (BTW, the Kerry Commission report, or at least major parts of it, are a the National Security Arvhives at Geroge Washington University. Makes for fascinating reading, again considering how many of the players are still there.)

Ollie North: Piece of Shit: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/index.htm

Here's some of the Kerry Commission Report: http://www.thememoryhole.com/kerry/

But this story also seems to swallow people whole and they don't come out. Poor Gary Webb, he got nailed on this in typical Rethug fashion, they accused him of something he never said and then hanged him on it. His cowardly bosses bailed on him and he was left out to dry.

[Supersedeas]

5. It is a tangled web

[Eloriel]

7. Please help this get the attention it deserves.

Are you saying for all practical purposes you're the only one who knows about this?

Have you tried to get it to some staff people in appropriate Senators' offices? Have you tried getting it to some of the high-powered bloggers who maybe have shown interest in the Roberts thing?

DU is great -- and welcome, btw! :bounce: -- but if we're your publicity strategy, let's go back to the drawing board, shall we?

[sans-culotte]

12. I've emailed this, or an abreviated version to more than 25...

...blogs, er online magazines, and only left coaster has picked up on it. I'm sure that the senators know about the roberts doc tying him to Iran contra, but no one seems to know, or care to follow up as far as I can tell, that the released emails and memos last year nail North and the whole gang for their involvement in the drug smuggling claims. North is still denying it to the media to this day, and a lexis nexis search only found 2 articles that confirmed it, buried in the NYT. Even my professor, whose book I was doing work on when I ran across this for has been bewildered by the lack of attention to it. He has written opinion pieces that several newspapers, that regularly print his other work, have refused without elaboration to print! nuf said.

[sans-culotte]

13. I have been burning up the comment threads with this everywhere though

I do imagine Kerry knows all about it.
I would hope so. But after he let himself get swiftboated by the draft dodging chimperor, I honestly don't know what to expect from him.
That and to find out that he actually graduated 1 point below bush is just friggin embarrassing.
Still, I liked Kerry and I'd vote for him again if he ran the ticket.....

[karynnj]

14. He then did exceptionally well as a naval officer,

went to law school, was selected to work in the prosecutor's office in his senior year, was on moot court, was an very good prosecutor, lawyer, lt Governor, and Senator. If you doubt his intelligence, listen to him in any hearing or replay the debates. He is well prepared and brilliant.

He was an excellent student in elementary school and in prep school and this was one factor in his being an outsider. With the freedom of college, he (in his late teens) chose to be very involved in the Political union and became the youngest President in his Junior year, he was the star on their debating team which won every debate, he played in 4 varsity or junior varsity sports. As if that wasn't enough he had a part time job, a girl friend (In his freshman year and in part of prep school, he dated Jackie Kennedy's step sister.) Oh, he learned to fly a plane. It's a wonder he didn't flunk out! As it was, it seems that Yale was ok with his grades as they didn't push him to drop any activities. He told Brinkley he was a distracted student who shouldn't have had so many extra curricular activities. As a comparison, Bush was frat President and drunk.

Given how well he wrote in his journal and in letters quoted extensively in Tour of Duty, he was a very talented writer and from the references he was very well read. He speaks French well, but got a "C". Sounds like someone was penalized for no showing up.

There has been a huge amount of grade inflation - both he and Bush would have been B students now. Kerry obviously continued to learn over his life . Bush seems to have forgotten much of what he must have once known. They clearly were not equal last year in their three oral exams (debates).

[sans-culotte]

18. I totally agree with you. i was just lamenting the irony of it all.

I'm aware, as everyone is I'm sure, that Bush is no match for Kerry on any playing field. Even Bush's supporters know he's not too bright. Somehow, Bush packaged his mediocrity as likability, which is now pretty evident to most that that was but a lie, along with all of the other lies now associated with him.

Kerry himself let them pull the rug out from under him.
by labeling him a 'flip flopper'. They managed to convince America that intelligence was a flaw.

I truly believe that 'flip flopper' is a derogatory term as bad or worse than nigger or fag.

How many more today would still be alive if America hadn't bought into this bigotry against the enlightened??

Anyone who would not change their mind or admit error in the face of new or competing info that warrants it, is not someone I could respect. Boneheaded and weakminded is what that is, and Kerry should have pointed it out.

On that note, the DLC needs to figure this out and quick. I believe they're still reeling from the flip flopper flak today.

I like and respect Kerry. I meant no implied disrespect towards him. I would vote for him again.

[gratuitous]

8. It's so easy

Just ask that Roberts' entire record be made available to the Senate before it votes on his nomination. If you're going to hire someone for life, wouldn't you like to see everything in his record? This is like someone asking for a job, but demanding that you give him the job without doing a criminal background check.

The White House nominated Roberts; the White House can produce his entire record, without redaction or withholding. Otherwise, Bush shouldn't have nominated him.

[LittleClarkie]

9. Oh yeah, that worked so well with Bolton

Well, it did force them to recess appoint him, but still.

If there is anything to this accusation, you KNOW the WH will stonewall and stall. It's what they do.

Not so easy. Not with these people.

[gratuitous]

11. Bolton WAS a shoe-in, remember

The Bush administration had to go to the unprecedented step of recess appointing our UN ambassador to put Bolton in position. And now he's confirming all the worst predictions made about his non-diplomatic style of diplomacy. That episode should buttress the Democratic spine for working on the Roberts nomination.

Ordinarily, I hate the argument that if someone has nothing to hide, they shouldn't be afraid of a little official inquiry. But in this case, the administration has nominated Roberts for high office and he has voluntarily placed his name in nomination; if there's nothing in his record to hide, the administration shouldn't be hiding anything. The Senate has a constitutional duty to advise and consent on presidential appointments, and Senators can insist that they get Roberts' full record without appearing too political -- they're just doing their jobs.

[mopinko]

10. oh, yes. please.please

let's talk about iran contra. i would love to go back over all that.

[sans-culotte]

16. On the flipside: I did just run across this over at talk left....

Dems Seek Roberts' Documents on Iran-Contra Aid
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012001.html

"Yale Law Prof and blogger Jack Balkin explains why the Administration should turn over memos from Judge John Roberts to then-Reagan aide Patrick J. Buchanan in March 1986 on the subject of aid to Nicaraguans who were fighting the leftist Sandinista government. Background from the Washington Post is here. Balkin writes:

We do not know what Roberts' role was in any of this. For example, he might simply have been asked to set up the NHAO for purely humanitarian purposes and then North infilitrated and twisted the organization for his own illegal ends. If so, there's nothing in the file on the NHAO that should be problematic for Roberts. He simply did what any good lawyer would do for his client.

On the other hand, if Roberts was asked to justify circumventing the Boland Amendment in any way, he would have been a hitherto unknown part of the Iran-Contra scandal. If that were so, it would be inappropriate for someone who had participated in fomenting a serious constitutional scandal to be rewarded with a Supreme Court appointment.

And that's why the files should be turned over."


My thoughts on this are,
1. I agree we don't know what Robert's involvement, if any, is.
2. If Roberts had "set up the NHAO for purely humanitarian purposes", as he hypothesizes, I don't believe they would have withheld the document. Think about it this way. There is no way they would have wanted to bring up Iran Contra if they could have avoided it. If the document vindicates Roberts, they would have made sure it got out. Wouldn't they??

My one concern with that is Rove. If he somehow could figure that we would raise a whole lot of hullabaloo about it, and then he could spring a document (I worry, how will they ever know that they are getting the real doc anyway??) that vindicates him, he might be able to shut up/sidestep the whole ugly Iran contra thing altogether. A Dan Rather type of effect.

I don't give this worry much cred though, because it will generate a lot of rekindling of iran Contra, at a time when the whitehouse is already mired in ethical issues. And, that is why I believe it is so important to link the Roberts doc to Iran Contra and that to the Drug smuggling and stay on message so there will no way to control the damage, not only to Roberts, but to the GOP in general because via Delay, Cunningham, Thune, Taft,...not to mention whatever comes from Fitzgerald towards the CIA leak case, the repugs are facing an ethical crisis of unprecedented proportion.

We need to stay on this message big time.
And linking Roberts to Iran Contra to the drug smuggling is exactly that.

Corrupt GOP lying Hypocrites!
Corrupt GOP lying Hypocrites!
Corrupt GOP lying Hypocrites!
over and over

Use Rove's tactics against him...(to quote Bush)

You should be getting it now cuz that’s the "third time I've said that. I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."


Only our side is actually armed with the truth in the first place.

My only worry is that the truth doesn't seem to matter to their base so much, as you can tell by listening to the applause following Bush's admitting that he's full of BS in this clip.

[DeepModem Mom]

17. kick

[bleever]

19. Kick.