Following the Contra Trail

The Tower Commission’s report was clear, and distressing, on the Reagan Administration’s arms shipments to Iran. It was less clear, but no less disturbing, about the other end of the arms deal --funneling arms profits to Nicaragua’s contra rebels.

In reconstructing the National Security Council’s Iranian misadventure, commission members came across a series of memorandums, computer messages and anecdotes indicating that NSC staff members, primarily Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, engaged in an extensive secret campaign to provide support for the contras during the two-year period when Congress barred U.S. government aid for the Nicaraguan rebels. “Indeed,” the Tower report says, “the NSC staff’s role in support for the contras set the stage for its subsequent role in the Iran initiative.”

Thus the special committees of Congress investigating the scandal and Special Prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh must answer questions like these:

--Precisely how much money was raised for the contras, and how was it spent? The commission estimated that at least $23 million in arms profits was available, but it found no evidence that any money actually reached Nicaraguan rebel leaders. The commission did find evidence that the funds were put into an elaborate network of secret bank accounts and fake companies that North dubbed “Project Democracy.” Among the “assets” of Project Democracy were vehicles, aircraft and ships, several warehouses and leased homes, large quantities of arms, ammunition and communications gear, and even a secret airfield in Costa Rica.

--When was this private contra-aid network set up? The commission found that North was seeking a donor who could buy a helicopter for the contras in September, 1984, not long after Congress ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to stop its covert war against Nicaragua and banned U.S. government efforts to overthrow that country’s Sandinista government. The language of that law, the Boland amendment, was vague, but its intent was clear--Congress did not want the Administration running amok in Nicaragua. Just as clearly, North and other White House officials were determined to ignore Congress.

--Whose idea was it to encourage private donors and even foreign governments (apparently including Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Guatemala and Costa Rica) to give help to the contras? Was it North alone, or were former CIA Director William J. Casey and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams in on the planning? The commission even found notes written by North suggesting that President Reagan was aware of the private aid network and approved of its activities. But Reagan told commission members that he was unaware of it until last November, when U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III made the matter public.

The questions demand answers because, in prolonging a covert war against Nicaragua after Congress called a halt, NSC staff members violated the spirit if not the letter of the Boland amendment. In encouraging private U.S. citizens to help overthrow a foreign government, they may have encouraged violations of the Neutrality Act. And there have been allegations elsewhere that some of the fringe characters whom North recruited to operate his contra-aid network--shadowy figures like retired Air Force Gen. Richard V. Secord and his business partner, Albert Hakkim, and arms dealers like Adnan M. Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar--may have skimmed off some of the Iranian arms profits for themselves.

Reagan’s dealings with Iran can be criticized and faulted on many grounds, as the Tower Commission so eloquently did. But the glimpse that the report gives of Americans skulking around the world in the Iran affair may in the end seem positively innocent compared with what investigators will find as they follow the trail of money into the jungles of Central America.