White House Verifies Reagan Did Write in Bible Sent to Iran

President Reagan did sign a Bible that U.S. aides seeking to open channels with Tehran gave to Iranian representatives last fall, the White House confirmed Thursday.

Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes acknowledged that Reagan, at the behest of his former national security adviser, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, inscribed the Bible last Oct. 3 during a meeting in the Oval Office.

A few days later, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the former National Security Council aide, presented the Bible to the representatives of Iran at a meeting in Frankfurt, West Germany, Speakes said.

“It was a gesture to indicate that those who were there were truly representing the President, and the President, too, was a man of God,” he added. He would not identify the Iranian who received the Bible.

It was North, who was not present when Reagan signed the book, who initiated the idea of a Bible presentation “because there had been discussions about the common religious heritage and background between Moslem and Christian and Jewish religions,” Speakes said.

The handwritten quotation on the front page of the Bible reads: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the nations shall be blessed in you.’ Galatians 3:8” (signed) Ronald Reagan, Oct. 3, 1986.

The Bible, which had been the subject of rumors since the Iran- contras scandal broke last November, surfaced Wednesday when Iranian Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani displayed it during a news conference in Tehran.

A Lebanese magazine initially reported that the Bible was delivered last May, when former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane made a secret trip to Iran.

North and other Americans flew to Frankfurt last fall to meet with the Iranian who became the intermediary in the sale of U.S. arms to Tehran after McFarlane and others had become disenchanted with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar.