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9
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Australian Security Intelligence Organization.md
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@ -5,11 +5,16 @@ tags:
- Australia
- Intelligence
category: "Foreign Government"
summary: "The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) is Australia's domestic intelligence service that, after The Sydney Morning Herald alerted it to Oscar Guerrero's attempt to sell Mordecai Vanunu's Dimona photographs, passed the information through ASIS to Israel."
summary: "The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) is Australia's domestic intelligence service, which passed word of the Vanunu Dimona photographs to Israel through ASIS."
start: 1949
location: "Canberra, Australia"
---
The [[Australian Security Intelligence Organization]] (ASIO) is [[Australia|Australia's]] internal intelligence service. It was informed by *The [[Sydney Morning Herald]]* about [[Oscar Guerrero|Oscar Guerrero's]] attempt to sell photographs of [[Israel|Israel's]] nuclear facility, provided by [[Mordecai Vanunu]]. [[Australian Security Intelligence Organization|ASIO]] then passed this information to the [[Australian Security Intelligence Service|Australian Security Intelligence Service]] (ASIS), who informed [[Israel]].[^1]
The [[Australian Security Intelligence Organization]] (ASIO) is [[Australia|Australia's]] internal intelligence service. It was informed by *The [[Sydney Morning Herald]]* about [[Oscar Guerrero|Oscar Guerrero's]] attempt to sell photographs of [[Israel|Israel's]] nuclear facility, provided by [[Mordecai Vanunu]]. ASIO then passed this information to the [[Australian Security Intelligence Service|Australian Security Intelligence Service]] (ASIS), who informed Israel.[^1]
According to [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], aircraft loaded with arms landed in Western Australia, en route to [[Tehran]], with the permission of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, as part of a smokescreen operation by the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]].[^2] He also wrote that C-130 aircraft flew from Vietnam to Western Australia from early 1986.[^3]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).
[^2]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 112.
[^3]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 120.

5
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Australian Security Intelligence Service.md
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@ -9,9 +9,8 @@ summary: "The Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIS) is Australia's ext
start: 1952
location: "Canberra, Australia"
---
The [[Australian Security Intelligence Service]] (ASIS) is [[Australia|Australia's]] external intelligence service. It was informed by the [[Australian Security Intelligence Organization|Australian Security Intelligence Organization]] (ASIO) about [[Oscar Guerrero|Oscar Guerrero's]] attempt to sell photographs of [[Israel|Israel's]] nuclear facility, provided by [[Mordecai Vanunu]]. [[Australian Security Intelligence Service|ASIS]] then informed [[Israel]].[^1]
[[Australian Security Intelligence Service|ASIS]] was aware of and gave permission for aircraft loaded with arms to land in Western [[Australia]], en route to [[Tehran]], as part of a smokescreen operation by the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]].[^1]
The [[Australian Security Intelligence Service]] (ASIS) is [[Australia|Australia's]] external intelligence service. It was informed by the [[Australian Security Intelligence Organization|Australian Security Intelligence Organization]] (ASIO) about [[Oscar Guerrero|Oscar Guerrero's]] attempt to sell photographs of [[Israel|Israel's]] nuclear facility, provided by [[Mordecai Vanunu]]. ASIS then informed Israel.[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).

196
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Iran-Israel Joint Committee.md
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@ -4,30 +4,202 @@ tags:
- Government
- Israel
- Iran
- IranContra
- ArmsDealing
- OctoberSurprise
- AriBenMenashe
category: "Foreign Government"
summary: "The Iran-Israel Joint Committee was established in the fall of 1980 by Menachem Begin 1, who ordered Yehoshua Sagi and Nachum Admoni to appoint it."
aliases:
- Iran-Israel Joint Committee
- Israeli Joint Committee
- Joint Committee
summary: "A body that Ari Ben-Menashe says ran Israeli arms sales to Iran from 1980, set beside the Israeli proposals and shipments recorded in U.S. cables, the Iran-Contra reports and the October Surprise Task Force."
start: 1980
end: 1987
location: "Tel Aviv, Israel"
relations:
- type: member_of
with: "[[Ari Ben-Menashe]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980-11-28
role: "claimed youngest member, per his 1992 account"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[David Kimche]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980
role: "claimed initial member, per Ben-Menashe; told Israeli authorities he never met Ben-Menashe"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Rafael Eitan]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980
role: "claimed initial member, per Ben-Menashe; told the Government of Israel he never met Ben-Menashe"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Moshe Hebroni]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980
role: "claimed initial member, per Ben-Menashe"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Uri Simchoni]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980
role: "claimed initial member, per Ben-Menashe"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Shmuel Morieh]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980
role: "claimed initial member, per Ben-Menashe"
fn: 1
- type: founded
with: "[[Menachem Begin]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980
role: "claimed by Ben-Menashe to have ordered its creation in the fall of 1980"
fn: 1
created: 2025-08-05
updated: 2026-10-14
---
The [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] was established in the fall of 1980 by [[Menachem Begin|Prime Minister Begin]], who ordered [[Yehoshua Sagi|Director of Israel Defense Forces/Military Intelligence Yehoshua Sagi]] and [[Nachum Admoni|acting Director of Mossad Nachum Admoni]] to appoint it. This committee coordinated the efforts of both [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence services and was assigned the task of supplying [[Iran]] with arms in its war with [[Saddam Hussein|Saddam Hussein's]] [[Iraq]].[^1]
The rationale for helping the [[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini|Khomeini]] government was that if the Iranians fought the Iraqis, their soldiers would be killed instead of Israeli soldiers. Additionally, the war diverted [[Arab]] attention away from Israel and drained [[Arab countries]] of money. From the [[Likud Party|Likud's]] perspective, the rise of Khomeini was beneficial as he was radical, anti-[[United States|American]], and anti-Arab, aligning with Israel's national security interest to support him.[^1]
The Iran-Israel Joint Committee is the name [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] gives, in his 1992 book [[Profits of War]], to a joint group of [[Israel|Israeli]] military intelligence and [[Mossad]] officers that he says supplied arms to [[Iran]] during its war with [[Saddam Hussein|Saddam Hussein's]] [[Iraq]] from 1980 to 1987.[^1] Israeli proposals to sell arms to Iran are recorded from April 1980, Israeli shipments to Iran from October 1980, and Israeli transfers of American-made missiles in 1985 and 1986.
The initial members of the Iran-Israel Joint Committee included [[David Kimche]], [[Shmuel Morieh]], [[Uri Simchoni]], [[Moshe Hebroni]], and [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]]. [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] was appointed to the committee on November 28, 1980, as the youngest member, responsible for carrying out the committee's initiatives due to his fluency in Farsi and personal contacts in Iran.[^1]
### Founding and membership
By March 1981, the Iran-Israel Joint Committee had established mechanisms for handling secret arms sales to Iran, as promised in the October [[Paris Summit Meeting]]. Israel operated under a general agreement of cooperation secretly reached in principle between Prime Minister Begin and [[William J. Casey]] in August 1980. David Kimche dealt directly with [[Robert Gates]] on the implementation of these sales. In early 1981, Gates approved the sale of unsophisticated weapons to Iran.[^1]
In Ben-Menashe's account, [[Menachem Begin]] ordered in the fall of 1980 that [[Yehoshua Sagi]] (also spelled Saguy), director of the [[Military Intelligence Directorate]], and [[Nachum Admoni]], whom Ben-Menashe calls acting director of Mossad, appoint the committee, and that it coordinated the efforts of both services.[^2] He writes that [[William J. Casey|Casey]] telephoned Begin, Sagi and Admoni before the committee was formed, and that a meeting in Amsterdam in September 1980 was attended by [[David Kimche]], [[Uri Simchoni]] and [[Shmuel Morieh]].[^3][^4] He names Kimche, Morieh, Simchoni, [[Moshe Hebroni]] and [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi Eitan]] as its first members.[^1] He writes that he was appointed on November 28, 1980, as the youngest member, responsible for carrying out its initiatives because of his fluency in Farsi and his contacts in Iran.[^5] He writes that [[Yitzhak Shamir]], prime minister from 1983, let the group expand its operations,[^6] and that after Shamir became prime minister, members including Kimche were forced out and Eitan ran the committee.[^1]
The Iran-Israel Joint Committee became self-sufficient, with its operating budget derived from the profits of arms sales, overseen by the [[Mossad]] comptroller. Profits rapidly grew into a huge extra-budgetary slush fund. Disbursements were requested from the Mossad comptroller through either the heads of the intelligence community or directly from the [[Prime Minister's Office]].[^1]
The [[House October Surprise Task Force]] recorded that Eitan, whom Ben-Menashe says confirmed to him reports of 1980 meetings in Spain between William J. Casey and [[Mehdi Karrubi]], told the Government of Israel that he did not know Ben-Menashe and had never met him, and that Saguy, in whose presence Eitan allegedly confirmed the reports, told the Government of Israel that he had never met Ben-Menashe and had no knowledge of such meetings.[^7] According to the same report, Israeli authorities interviewed Kimche, Saguy, Eitan, a Samuel Moriah, Meir Meir and General [[Yitzhak Segev]] (chief Israeli military attache in Iran until 1980), and each said that he had never met, known or heard of Ben-Menashe until Ben-Menashe began making allegations in the American media in 1991. [[Yitzhak Hofi]], whom the report identifies as head of Mossad during 1980 to 1982, told Israeli authorities that he did not know Ben-Menashe, had never met him, and that Ben-Menashe was never assigned to any mission by Mossad.[^8]
The committee used various trading companies and a flagship holding company called [[Ora Group|Ora]] to manage the slush fund. It also employed smokescreen operations involving private arms brokers like [[John Hortrich]] (alias [[John de Laroque]]) and [[Nicholas Davies]] to obscure its activities. The committee's operations included the sale of [[TOW missile]]s, [[T-80 tank]]s, and other military equipment to Iran.[^1]
### Ben-Menashe's account of the arms sales
From March 1981 to the end of 1987, Iran spent over $82 billion on equipment from the United States, Israel, [[Europe]], [[South America]], and [[South Africa]], with the Iran-Israel Joint Committee making substantial profits. These profits were used to finance activities of [[Yitzhak Shamir|Yitzhak Shamir's]] faction of the Likud Party, fund "black" operations (including those involving [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]] and the [[Achille Lauro]] attack), and finance housing projects in the [[West Bank]] and [[Gaza Strip]] for Jewish settlers.[^1]
The government of [[Sweden]] under Prime Minister [[Olof Palme]] sold military equipment to Iran through Israel until Palme refused to continue the sales.[^1]
Ben-Menashe writes that Begin secretly reached an agreement of cooperation in principle with Casey in August 1980.[^9] He writes that by March 1981 the committee had set up procedures for secret sales to Iran, as promised at the October [[Paris Summit Meeting]], and that [[Robert Gates]], dealing directly with Kimche, approved the sale of unsophisticated weapons to Iran in early 1981.[^1] He writes that the case for helping the [[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini|Khomeini]] government was that if the Iranians fought the Iraqis, their soldiers would be killed instead of Israeli soldiers,[^2] that the war diverted [[Arab]] attention from Israel and drained [[Arab countries]] of money, and that from the perspective of the [[Likud Party]], Khomeini, as a radical, anti-American and anti-Arab leader, served Israel's national security interest.[^1] In his account, Hebroni expedited the export license for tires sold to Iran in April 1980.[^1] He writes that the sale was of 300 tires at $900 each, under a SIBAT export license.[^10]
In 1984, political chaos in Israel led to a coalition government between the [[Labor Party]] and Likud. [[Shimon Peres]], as prime minister, attempted to open a competing arms channel to Iran through [[Amiram Nir]], which led to the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] scandal. The Iran-Israel Joint Committee actively worked to thwart this second channel, including leaking information about [[Jonathan Pollard]] and the [[Oliver North|North]]-Nir operation.[^1]
The 1992 report of the special counsel to the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee|Senate Committee on Foreign Relations]] summarized his claim that in the early 1980s he helped organize an international network of private arms dealers on behalf of the Israeli government in order to supply several billion dollars in American-made arms to Iran.[^11] He writes that between March 1981 and the end of 1987 Iran spent over $82 billion on equipment from the United States, Israel, [[Europe]], [[South America]] and [[South Africa]], and that the government of [[Sweden]] under [[Olof Palme]] sold military equipment to Iran through Israel until Palme refused to continue the sales.[^1]
In September 1987, Ari Ben-Menashe and three other members of the Iran-Israel Joint Committee were dismissed due to pressure on Yitzhak Shamir following the leaking of the Iran-Contra Affair story. Prior to this, some funds were set aside for their futures, and the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] money controlled by Israel was transferred to the [[East Bloc]].[^1]
### Israeli proposals and shipments, 1980 to 1982
The Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force states that during a visit to Washington on April 13, 1980, a high level Israeli official told President [[Jimmy Carter]] that Israel had contacts in Iran that could be useful in the hostage negotiations and could be developed further if Israel were permitted to sell the Iranians certain military equipment. Carter rejected the offer and asked for assurance that Israel would observe the arms embargo, and Israel agreed.[^12] On September 28, 1980, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister [[Mordechai Zipori]] said in an interview that Israel was "in a position to supply Iran with artillery shells, sea-to-sea missiles and other arms."[^12]
On October 22, 1980, Israeli officials told the American embassy that Israel had established contact with Iranians interested in buying arms and that a deal for F-4 Phantom aircraft tires had been negotiated. The Government of Israel's report to the task force states that, with the encouragement of the Israeli government, an Israeli businessman who had lived in Iran for many years renewed relations with Iranian military officials and negotiated with an Iranian procurement representative in Europe.[^13] On October 27, 1980, [[Samuel W. Lewis|Ambassador Lewis]] cabled that Israeli officials said the Iranians wanted artillery pieces and ammunition, "and we [Israel] have exactly what they want."[^13] The Government of Israel's report states that the overall scope of the proposed deals was approximately $200 million, that Begin raised the subject with Carter and Secretary of State [[Edmund Muskie]] in November 1980, and that on November 21, 1980 Begin ordered that arms and equipment not be supplied directly or indirectly to Iran until the hostages were released.[^14] On December 12, 1980, Lewis was told that Israel was receiving a "steadily mounting pile" of requests for sales of ammunition and spare parts to Iran.[^14]
After the hostages were released, Secretary of State [[Alexander M. Haig, Jr.|Alexander Haig]] cabled on February 4, 1981 that the United States did not support arms sales to Iran. The Israeli government's account of Begin's meeting with Lewis that day says that Begin replied that future arms deliveries to Iran would not include American arms or arms with American components, and that only Israeli equipment would be supplied.[^15] Lewis cabled that Israel "had been aware as early as last autumn that weapons were reaching Iran from both French and British sources via various arms dealers."[^15] When Shamir, then foreign minister, met Haig in Washington later that month, Haig said, according to his own account, that the United States could not prohibit Israeli sales to Iran of items without American components but opposed any arms deals with Iran and prohibited sales of American-origin arms. Shamir reported to Begin that the United States objected to the sale of American-origin equipment but did not object to Israel shipping its own parts.[^16]
The Government of Israel's report states that on March 20, 1981 a shipment of 60 106 mm recoilless rifles was sent by aircraft from Israel to Portugal and then to Iran, with Ahmed Heidari among the mediators, and that another delivery followed on April 13, 1981. Zipori had told a United States embassy official on February 25, 1981 that the sale of 106 mm recoilless rifles and Israeli-manufactured shells was about to be concluded.[^16] During Haig's April visit to Israel, Minister of Agriculture [[Ariel Sharon]] raised the subject of selling arms to Iran at a meeting at the King David Hotel.[^16]
A State Department memorandum of November 21, 1986, quoted in the 1987 congressional report, records that in 1981 and 1982 the Government of Israel asked the United States to approve shipments of items under U.S. control to Iran, and that no such shipment was approved. The same report states that in May 1982 Israeli officials acknowledged publicly that Israel had sold substantial quantities of American-origin military supplies to Iran.[^17]
On July 18, 1981, a Canadair CL-44 cargo aircraft of the Argentine company [[Transporte Aereo Rioplatense]] crashed about 50 kilometers from Yerevan in the Soviet Union after colliding with a Soviet Su-15 fighter sent to intercept it. The aircraft had flown two round trips from Tel Aviv to Tehran by way of Larnaca and was returning from delivering a third load; the three crew and one passenger died. The Soviet pilot said that the collision was a deliberate attempt to bring the aircraft down; Western aviation experts who examined his account believed that he misjudged a turn.[^18] The [[Christian Science Monitor]], citing the [[Sunday Times]] of London, reported on July 27, 1981 that the aircraft was returning from the third of twelve scheduled trips to Iran in a $15 million arms deal under which Israel was to supply Iran with 360 tons of American-made tank parts and ammunition, and that the Miami-based Scot hired to arrange the deal, who had chartered the aircraft, was killed in the crash, according to his Swiss partner.[^19]
### The 1985 and 1986 transfers
The documented Israeli role in the [[Iran-Contra Affair|Iran arms initiative]] of 1985 and 1986 begins in July 1985, when David Kimche, director general of the [[Israel Foreign Ministry|Israeli Foreign Ministry]], met [[Robert McFarlane]] at the White House on July 3. On August 2 Kimche asked whether it would make a difference if Israel delivered TOW missiles itself rather than the United States.[^20] The independent counsel reports that, according to [[Michael Ledeen]], [[Shimon Peres]] expressed displeasure with Israel's intelligence on Iran during Ledeen's May 1985 visit to Israel.[^21]
On August 20, 1985, Israel, working through [[Yaacov Nimrodi]], [[Al Schwimmer|Adolph Schwimmer]] and [[Manucher Ghorbanifar]], transferred 96 American-made TOW missiles to Iran by chartered aircraft.[^22] A second shipment of 408 TOWs reached Iran on September 14, and the release of Reverend [[Benjamin Weir]] followed it.[^23] A note of September 4, 1985 by [[Nicholas Platt]] records that [[Oliver North]], Ledeen and McFarlane were involved in obtaining the release of hostages, with Israel providing "equipment" to Iran.[^24] The Iran-Contra report quotes [[George P. Shultz|Shultz]]'s cable that "Israel's interests and ours are not necessarily the same," and a briefing paper Shultz brought to a private meeting with the President in November 1986 stating that Israel "obviously sees it in its national interest to cultivate ties with Iran, including arms shipments."[^25]
A shipment of HAWK missiles from Israel reached Iran on November 24, 1985. The missiles were rejected as the wrong type, and one planeload of 18 HAWKs was delivered without any hostage release.[^26] The independent counsel wrote that the failed HAWK shipment resulted in the illegal involvement of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]].[^27]
The congressional committees concluded that the arms transfers before January 17, 1986, the August, September and November 1985 shipments, were made from Israel's own stocks, and that "Israel was promised and later was given substantially identical replacements." In a December 17, 1986 memorandum, Assistant Attorney General [[Charles J. Cooper|Cooper]] wrote that "the real nature of the 1985 transactions was a bilateral sale by the United States to Iran, with Israel serving solely as a conduit or facilitator in the execution of that sale."[^28] The report describes Schwimmer as an adviser to Prime Minister Peres from September 1984, [[Amiram Nir]] as Peres's adviser on counterterrorism, and Nimrodi as an Israeli defense attache and then a consultant in Tehran for a total of 24 years.[^29]
A note of January 4, 1986 by [[Charles Hill]], a Shultz aide, records [[John Poindexter]] saying that Nir had come to see him to revive the hostage idea, and states that [[Newsweek]] had the McFarlane-Kimche meetings but did not run them, and that "Kimche seems to have leaked it deliberately."[^30] By May 1986 Nir had replaced Kimche as the Israeli official in the arms dealings. When McFarlane, North and others flew toward Tehran on May 23, 1986, by way of Frankfurt and Israel, [[Richard Secord]] and Nir joined the party in Israel.[^31]
Ben-Menashe writes that political chaos in Israel in 1984 led to a coalition government of the [[Labor Party]] and Likud, and that Peres, as prime minister, opened a competing arms channel to Iran through Nir. He writes that the committee worked against that channel, including by leaking information about [[Jonathan Pollard]] and the North-Nir operation, and that North's April 1986 sting operation, the Hashemi sting, was aimed at discrediting the committee's channel and its members.[^1] He writes that the sting was planned from the World Trade Center in New York.[^32] He writes that the committee leaked the $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei wired through [[Bruce Rappaport]] to North's group,[^33] and that Defense Minister [[Yitzhak Rabin]] did not try to impede the committee's operations.[^1] He also says that he was the first person to leak the Iran-contra scandal to the press.[^11]
### Money and smokescreens, as Ben-Menashe described them
Ben-Menashe writes that the committee became self-sufficient, with an operating budget drawn from the profits of arms sales and overseen by the Mossad comptroller, and that the profits grew into a slush fund outside the Mossad budget. He writes that disbursements were requested from the comptroller through the heads of the intelligence community or directly from the [[Prime Minister's Office]], that the committee used trading companies and a flagship holding company, [[Ora Group|Ora]], to manage the fund.[^1] He names the holding company as Ora Group.[^34] He writes that it used the private arms broker [[John Hortrich]], also known as [[John de Laroque]], as a smokescreen,[^35] and [[Nicholas Davies]], whom he identifies as the foreign editor of the London [[Daily Mirror]].[^36] Its sales, in his account, included [[TOW missile]]s, [[T-80 tank]]s and other equipment.[^1][^37]
He writes that the committee's profits financed the faction of Shamir within the Likud, "black" operations including those involving [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]] and the [[Achille Lauro]] attack, and housing projects for Jewish settlers in the [[West Bank]] and [[Gaza Strip]].[^1][^38][^39] He writes that in 1987 the committee withdrew its funds from [[Drexel Burnham]] and from the control of [[Menachem Schneerson]], whose institutions had been used to route funds for settlement housing, and redirected them to the yeshivahs of the [[Shas Party]].[^1][^40] He describes aircraft loaded with arms landing in Western [[Australia]], en route to [[Tehran]], with the permission of the [[Australian Security Intelligence Organization]],[^41] and writes that C-130 aircraft flew from Vietnam to Western Australia from early 1986.[^42] He writes that [[Mohammed Jalali]] worked with the committee and, in July 1987, met Gates at the Americana Hotel in [[Kansas City]] to seek assurances that arms supplies to Iran would continue despite the Iran-Contra scandal.[^1][^43]
### Ben-Menashe's service record and the Israeli government's position
Ben-Menashe says that he joined the External Relations Department of Israeli military intelligence in 1977 as an Iran specialist and worked alongside Kimche and Eitan there. He has also said that he was an adviser to Shamir.[^11] His book reprints letters of reference dated September 1987 on External Relations Department letterhead, which he presents as evidence of his service.[^44]
The special counsel to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, [[Reid H. Weingarten]], wrote in 1992 that Ben-Menashe "undoubtedly had real connections with Israeli intelligence and had access to some highly classified information," and that his insistence on placing himself in the middle of numerous scandals and his decision to pit himself against the sworn testimony of numerous credible witnesses and unimpeachable documents made him "a wholly unreliable witness."[^45]
The October Surprise Task Force reported that the personnel file maintained by Israeli Military Intelligence, and interviews with his superiors, confirmed that he worked in the External Relations Department from 1977 to 1987, and stated that he worked the entire time as a translator of materials of relative insignificance and low levels of classification. Seven of his ten annual efficiency reports listed him as a translator. The other three listed him as a staff officer in an armaments unit, which the task force attributed to available slots and pay in an underfunded department.[^46] It also reported that he failed the preparatory training portion of the officer's course, a fact he omitted from his testimony to the task force, and that his job did not involve travel abroad or responsibility concerning Iran.[^46]
[[Steven Emerson]] and Jesse Furman, writing in the *New Republic* in November 1991, reported that Ben-Menashe's military personnel records showed that he served as a low-level translator, and found that his allegations were fabricated, often drawing on things he read in the newspaper.[^47] At his 1990 trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Baruch Weiss]] said that Ben-Menashe was merely a translator for Israeli military intelligence from 1977 to 1987.[^48]
### Prosecution and acquittal, 1989 to 1990
Federal prosecutors in New York accused Ben-Menashe, described in the press as a man who claims to be a former Israeli intelligence agent, and the businessman [[Richard St. Francis]] of arranging, in April 1989, a $36 million deal to sell three Israeli-owned C-130E transport planes to Iran. They were charged with planning to circumvent the State Department approval required for resale of American-made military goods, and the indictment said that the scheme was revealed by an undercover Customs Service agent posing as an Iranian buyer.[^49] The first count of the indictment charged conspiracy to sell American-made C-130 military cargo planes located in Israel to Iran, in violation of the [[Arms Export Control Act]].[^50] In an opinion of August 1, 1990, Judge [[Louis L. Stanton]] of the [[United States District Court for the Southern District of New York]] denied St. Francis's motion to dismiss on due process grounds. He granted motions to sever the second count, which concerned anti-aircraft missiles located in Israel, and to sever [[Joseph O'Toole]] from the first count. Ben-Menashe joined St. Francis's motions.[^50]
On November 28, 1990, a federal jury in New York acquitted Ben-Menashe and St. Francis after a six-week trial before Stanton.[^51] At trial, Ben-Menashe's attorney, [[Thomas F.X. Dunn|Thomas Dunn]], contended that his client had been a former intelligence operative who represented Shamir in an attempted arms-for-hostages deal in 1988, which was to include the release of four U.S. hostages and fell through when Shamir insisted that three Israeli soldiers also be freed. After the verdict, Dunn said that his client claimed Israel had brokered arms deals with Iran between 1980 and 1988 that the U.S. government had covertly approved, among them the transaction that became the Iran-Contra scandal.[^51] The Senate special counsel's 1992 report states that "In 1990, Ben-Menashe was tried and acquitted in New York on federal charges of conspiring to sell U.S.-made arms to Iran."[^11]
### The October Surprise Task Force
The House October Surprise Task Force, chaired by [[Lee Hamilton]], issued its joint report on January 3, 1993. Its finding on Ben-Menashe's allegations about meetings in Spain in 1980 between Casey and Karrubi reads: "Credible testimonial and documentary evidence show Ben-Menashe to be totally lacking in credibility regarding his allegations about meetings in Spain in 1980 between William Casey and Mehdi Karrubi." The report adds: "Aside from early biographical details, virtually everything Ben-Menashe told the Task Force has been found to be false."[^52]
On his account of a meeting at the L'Enfant Plaza hotel in Washington, the task force found: "Ben-Menashe's account is demonstrably false from beginning to end."[^53] On his account of the October 1980 meetings in Paris, which he places at a meeting attended by [[George H.W. Bush]], the task force stated that the personnel records the Government of Israel supplied, with Ben-Menashe's contemporaneous handwritten answers to the questions he was required to answer for the External Relations Department when traveling abroad, showed that he did not travel outside Israel in October 1980, and that exit stamps on his civilian passport indicated the same. It wrote that his account of the October meetings, "like his other October Surprise allegations, is a total fabrication."[^54]
Ben-Menashe told the [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]], during the 1991 confirmation hearings for Gates as director of Central Intelligence, that Gates had conspired with the Reagan-Bush campaign to delay the release of the hostages and was present at meetings, including those in Paris. Gates, under oath, denied the allegations. The committee later reported that FBI and CIA inspector general investigations, including analyses of Gates's calendars and travel records, provided no credible evidence to confirm Ben-Menashe's allegations, and the task force stated that it was aware of no evidence to the contrary.[^55]
### Hersh and The Samson Option
[[Seymour Hersh]]'s 1991 book *[[The Samson Option]]* states that Ben-Menashe first contacted the author in mid-1990, that interviews began in early 1991, and that Ben-Menashe agreed "as no other Israeli would" to be directly quoted on nuclear issues. The author's note adds that Ben-Menashe left the United States for exile in Australia in June 1991, and that his allegations about Iran arms sales had been strongly denied in Washington and Jerusalem and were still under congressional review in the summer of 1991.[^56]
### The 1987 dismissal
Ben-Menashe writes that after the Iran-Contra story leaked, he and three other committee members were dismissed in September 1987 because of pressure on Shamir, and that before the dismissal some funds were set aside for their futures and CIA money controlled by Israel was transferred to the [[East Bloc]].[^1] The Israeli military file that the task force examined records a July 23, 1987 letter from [[Arieh Shur]], his superior, warning Ben-Menashe that he had taken too much personal leave; a letter of the same day in which Ben-Menashe wrote to his superiors that he wished to leave the Army and asked for help in finding new work; a September 9, 1987 complaint by him before the union of civilian employees of the Israel Defense Forces that he had served ten years as a translator without a significant promotion; and his resignation from the Israel Defense Forces on September 15, 1987.[^57]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).
[^1]: Ari Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network* (Sheridan Square Press, 1992; TrineDay reprint, 2015). https://archive.org/details/profitsofwarinsi0000benm
[^2]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 78.
[^3]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 70.
[^4]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 71.
[^5]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 79.
[^6]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 143.
[^7]: U.S. House of Representatives, *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 97 (finding on Ben-Menashe; statements of Rafi Eitan and Yehoshua Saguy to the Government of Israel). https://archive.org/details/JointReportOfTheOctoberSurpriseTaskForce
[^8]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 98 (statements to Israeli authorities of Kimche, Saguy, Eitan, Moriah, Meir, Segev and Hofi).
[^9]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 102.
[^10]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 58.
[^11]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, *The October Surprise Allegations and the Circumstances Surrounding the Release of the American Hostages Held in Iran*, Report of the Special Counsel, S. Prt. 102-125, November 19, 1992, pp. 56-57. https://archive.org/details/ReportOfTheSpecialCounselOnTheOctoberSurpriseAllegationsAndTheCircumstancesSurrounding
[^12]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, pp. 201-02 (April 1980 approach to President Carter; interview of Deputy Defense Minister Zipori, September 28, 1980).
[^13]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, pp. 202-04 (Israeli approaches of October 22 and 27, 1980; the Government of Israel's report; cable of Ambassador Lewis).
[^14]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, pp. 204-05 (the Government of Israel's report on the November 1980 Begin-Carter-Muskie discussions and Begin's order of November 21, 1980; Lewis cable of December 12, 1980).
[^15]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, pp. 205-06 (Haig cable of February 4, 1981; Israeli government's account of Begin's meeting with Ambassador Lewis; Lewis cable).
[^16]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, pp. 207-08 (Shamir's meeting with Haig in February 1981; the Government of Israel's report on the meeting of February 25, 1981 and the shipments of March 20 and April 13, 1981; Haig's April 1981 visit).
[^17]: U.S. Congress, *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair*, H. Rept. 100-433 and S. Rept. 100-216 (1987), p. 526, note (U.S. Department of State, Memorandum from Richard W. Murphy to Secretary of State Shultz, "U.S.-Israel Discussions on Arms Sales to Iran-1980-82," November 21, 1986, S3547). https://archive.org/details/Iran-ContraReport
[^18]: Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, "Crash of a Canadair CL-44D4-6 near Yerevan: 4 killed," July 18, 1981 (operator Transporte Aereo Rioplatense, registration LV-JTN). https://www.baaa-acro.com/crash/crash-canadair-cl-44d4-6-near-yerevan-4-killed
[^19]: "Plane that fell in USSR reported on Iran arms run," *Christian Science Monitor*, July 27, 1981 (reporting the *Sunday Times* of London). https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0727/072721.html
[^20]: Lawrence E. Walsh, *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters*, vol. I, Part I (1993), on the July 3, 1985 meeting of David Kimche and Robert McFarlane, and vol. I, ch. 1 ("United States v. Robert C. McFarlane"), on the August 2, 1985 meeting. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/part_i.htm ; https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^21]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, Part I, on Michael Ledeen's May 1985 visit to Israel and his meeting with Shimon Peres. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/part_i.htm
[^22]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 1, on the August 20, 1985 transfer of 96 TOW missiles by Israel working through Nimrodi, Schwimmer and Ghorbanifar, citing the Israeli Historical Chronology. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^23]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 1, on the 408 TOW missiles shipped on September 14, 1985 and the release of Reverend Benjamin Weir. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^24]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 1, n. 100 (Platt Note, September 4, 1985, ALW 0036259). https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^25]: *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair* (1987), pp. 527-28, "The Israeli Connection" (Shultz briefing paper of November 1986 and Shultz cable of July 1985). https://archive.org/details/Iran-ContraReport
[^26]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 1, on the HAWK missiles shipped from Israel on November 24, 1985 and the delivery of 18 missiles of the wrong type. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^27]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 1, n. 119 (on the failed HAWK shipment and CIA involvement). https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^28]: *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair* (1987), pp. 539-40, legal analysis of the 1985 Israeli transfers, including the December 17, 1986 memorandum of Assistant Attorney General Cooper. https://archive.org/details/Iran-ContraReport
[^29]: *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair* (1987), p. 526, "The Israeli Connection" (Schwimmer, Nir and Nimrodi). https://archive.org/details/Iran-ContraReport
[^30]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 24 ("The Investigation of State Department Officials: Shultz, Hill and Platt"), n. 206 (Hill Note, January 4, 1986, ANS 0001255-56). https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_24.htm
[^31]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 1, on the party that left Washington on May 23, 1986 for Tehran by way of Frankfurt and Israel, where Secord and Amiram Nir, who had replaced Kimche as the Israeli official in the arms deals, joined it. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^32]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, pp. 178-179.
[^33]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 182.
[^34]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 190.
[^35]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 108.
[^36]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 113.
[^37]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 119.
[^38]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 123 (the Achille Lauro operation as an Israeli "black" propaganda operation).
[^39]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 125 (the slush fund for West Bank and Gaza settler housing).
[^40]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 126.
[^41]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 112.
[^42]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 120.
[^43]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, p. 193.
[^44]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, TrineDay reprint, 2015, appendix (letters of reference dated September 4, 6 and 14, 1987, on External Relations Department letterhead).
[^45]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Report of the Special Counsel, S. Prt. 102-125, November 19, 1992, p. 114 (evaluation of the evidence offered by Ari Ben-Menashe). https://archive.org/details/ReportOfTheSpecialCounselOnTheOctoberSurpriseAllegationsAndTheCircumstancesSurrounding
[^46]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, pp. 97-98 (Israeli Military Intelligence file and interviews with superiors on Ben-Menashe's service in the External Relations Department, 1977-1987).
[^47]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 68 (summarizing Steven Emerson and Jesse Furman, "The Conspiracy That Wasn't," *The New Republic*, November 3, 1991, and their review of Ben-Menashe's military personnel records).
[^48]: "2 Acquitted of Trying to Sell Military Cargo Planes to Iran," *The Washington Post*, November 29, 1990 (dateline New York, November 28; statement of Assistant U.S. Attorney Baruch Weiss). https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/11/29/2-acquitted-of-trying-to-sell-military-cargo-planes-to-iran/2918bfd6-89a7-441a-a124-3b1916e90321/
[^49]: "2 Acquitted of Trying to Sell Military Cargo Planes to Iran," *The Washington Post*, November 29, 1990 (the charges: a $36 million deal for three Israeli-owned C-130E transport planes, April 1989; the January indictment; the undercover Customs Service agent). https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/11/29/2-acquitted-of-trying-to-sell-military-cargo-planes-to-iran/2918bfd6-89a7-441a-a124-3b1916e90321/
[^50]: *United States v. Menashe*, 741 F. Supp. 1135 (S.D.N.Y. 1990), No. 90 Cr. 010 (LLS), memorandum and order of Judge Louis L. Stanton, August 1, 1990. https://static.case.law/f-supp/741/cases/1135-01.json
[^51]: "2 Acquitted of Trying to Sell Military Cargo Planes to Iran," *The Washington Post*, November 29, 1990 (verdict, length of trial and presiding judge; statements of defense counsel Thomas Dunn at trial and after the verdict). https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/11/29/2-acquitted-of-trying-to-sell-military-cargo-planes-to-iran/2918bfd6-89a7-441a-a124-3b1916e90321/
[^52]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 97 (finding on Ben-Menashe's allegations about meetings in Spain in 1980; passage beginning "Aside from early biographical details"). https://archive.org/details/JointReportOfTheOctoberSurpriseTaskForce
[^53]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 110 (L'Enfant Plaza meeting account).
[^54]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 148 (Ben-Menashe's account of the October 1980 meetings; personnel records and handwritten travel answers supplied by the Government of Israel; passport exit stamps).
[^55]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 172 (Ben-Menashe's allegations about Robert Gates; Gates's sworn denial; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report of 1991).
[^56]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Author's Note, pp. ix-x, and the note on Ben-Menashe at p. 260.
[^57]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, January 3, 1993, p. 98 (Israeli military file: letter of Arieh Shur dated July 23, 1987; Ben-Menashe's letter of the same day; document of September 9, 1987; resignation of September 15, 1987).

15
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Safari Club.md
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@ -11,7 +11,8 @@ tags:
- 1970s
- Church_Committee
- Alexandre_de_Marenches
summary: "The Safari Club was a 1976 informal intelligence alliance organized by SDECE director Alexandre de Marenches to conduct anti-Soviet operations in Africa and the Middle East when the CIA was constrained by Church Committee oversight, with France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and Iran as core members."
summary: "The Safari Club was a 1976 intelligence alliance of France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Iran, organized by SDECE director Alexandre de Marenches for anti-Soviet operations in Africa."
updated: 2026-10-14
start: 1976-01-01
end: 1981-01-01
location: "Paris, France / Riyadh, Saudi Arabia"
@ -33,13 +34,17 @@ The core membership of the Safari Club was:
Kamal Adham led the Saudi directorate until 1979, according to Gulf News, when King Khalid replaced him with Turki al-Faisal; Arab News and the Washington Institute give 1977 for Turki's accession.[^2][^3]
[[Turki al-Faisal]], the former head of Saudi intelligence, said in a speech at Georgetown University on February 3, 2002, that in 1976, after Watergate, the American intelligence community was "literally tied up by Congress," that a group of countries got together and established what was called the Safari Club, and that it included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Iran, with the aim of sharing information and countering Soviet influence, especially in Africa.[^4]
The Egyptian journalist [[Mohamed Hassanein Heikal]] wrote in 1982 that the club, named after its inaugural meeting in Saudi Arabia, was the idea of Alexandre de Marenches of the SDECE. He wrote that an agreement among the five governments was signed by Sheikh Kamal Adham, director of intelligence, for Saudi Arabia, General [[Nematollah Nassiri]], head of SAVAK, for Iran, the director of intelligence for Egypt, Ahmed Duleimi, director of intelligence, for Morocco, and de Marenches himself for France, that its text opened with a reference to "recent events in Angola and other parts of Africa," and that a copy of the agreement was found in SAVAK's archives after the revolution.[^5]
The CIA participated as a provider of intelligence products, targeting information, and logistics coordination, with Bush maintaining the relationship through DCI channels. The arrangement exploited the fact that congressional restrictions applied to CIA operations, not to those of allied foreign services.[^1]
### Operations
The most extensively documented Safari Club operation was in Angola, where the Club supported Jonas Savimbi's [[UNITA]] movement against the Soviet- and Cuban-backed MPLA government. The Clark Amendment (1976) had prohibited the CIA from providing direct military assistance to factions in the Angolan civil war, but the Safari Club financed UNITA operations through Saudi channels. De Marenches described Angola as "a theater for revolutionary wars prompted and conducted by the Soviet Union." The Club provided an estimated $5 million in funding and logistical support to Savimbi's forces during this period.[^1]
In the Horn of Africa, the Club supported Somalia against the Soviet-backed Ethiopian government during the 1977-1978 Ogaden War, channeling arms and funds to Somali President Siad Barre. Egypt supplied Soviet-compatible weapons that could be denied as American in origin. The operation collapsed when Cuba deployed approximately 15,000 troops to Ethiopia, reversing the Somali military advance.[^4]
In the Horn of Africa, the Club supported Somalia against the Soviet-backed Ethiopian government during the 1977-1978 Ogaden War, channeling arms and funds to Somali President Siad Barre. Egypt supplied Soviet-compatible weapons that could be denied as American in origin. The operation collapsed when Cuba deployed approximately 15,000 troops to Ethiopia, reversing the Somali military advance.[^6]
The Club also coordinated intelligence sharing and low-level operations in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Sudan, and other African theaters where Soviet and Cuban influence was considered a threat. Saudi funding provided the financial infrastructure for multiple simultaneous operations that would have required substantial CIA appropriations to sustain directly.[^1]
@ -47,7 +52,7 @@ The Club also coordinated intelligence sharing and low-level operations in Rhode
The Safari Club arrangement exploited a structural feature of American oversight: congressional restrictions applied to the CIA, but not to allied services receiving American intelligence support. Bush maintained the CIA's relationship with the consortium through intelligence-sharing channels, providing targeting data and strategic assessments that guided the allied operations. The operational work was then conducted by the allied services, keeping American fingerprints off the direct conduct of operations.[^1]
The arrangement also had internal CIA consequences. CIA officers who had been forced out in the post-Watergate restructuring - including Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, and others associated with William Colby's predecessor Richard Helms - found employment and operational roles in the networks that supported Safari Club operations, operating through private channels with Saudi or other national funding. This created a persistent covert network operating outside CIA's formal chain of command.[^4]
The arrangement also had internal CIA consequences. CIA officers who had been forced out in the post-Watergate restructuring - including Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, and others associated with William Colby's predecessor Richard Helms - found employment and operational roles in the networks that supported Safari Club operations, operating through private channels with Saudi or other national funding. This created a persistent covert network operating outside CIA's formal chain of command.[^6]
### Collapse
@ -62,4 +67,6 @@ The Safari Club demonstrated that the constraints imposed on CIA by the Church C
[^1]: Trento, Joseph. *Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network*. Carroll & Graf, 2005, pp. 52-108. De Marenches, Alexandre, and David Andelman. *The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage in the Age of Terrorism*. Random House, 1992.
[^2]: Joseph A. Kechichian, "The man behind the scenes," Gulf News, February 12, 2010. https://gulfnews.com/uae/the-man-behind-the-scenes-1.581564
[^3]: Simon Henderson, "The Saudis: Friend or Foe?", Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 22, 2001. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/saudis-friend-or-foe
[^4]: Weiner, Tim. *Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA*. Doubleday, 2007, pp. 353-364. Stockwell, John. *In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story*. W.W. Norton, 1978 (on Angola operations and CIA's role in the period).
[^4]: Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abd al-Aziz Al-Saud, special address, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, February 3, 2002 (transcription by Paul Dyer). https://web.archive.org/web/20030402032839/http://www.ccasonline.org/publicaffairs/turki_02032002.html.
[^5]: Mohamed Heikal, *Iran: The Untold Story* (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 113 and author's note. https://archive.org/details/iranuntoldstoryi00hayk
[^6]: Weiner, Tim. *Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA*. Doubleday, 2007, pp. 353-364. Stockwell, John. *In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story*. W.W. Norton, 1978 (on Angola operations and CIA's role in the period).

3
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Shas Party.md
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@ -10,7 +10,8 @@ location: "Jerusalem, Israel"
---
The [[Shas Party]] is an orthodox political party in [[Israel]], which emerged as a significant force in Israeli politics. It was at odds with [[Menachem Schneerson]], the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and gained influence within the [[Likud Party]]-controlled Israeli government.
In 1987, the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] redirected funds from the Lubavitcher yeshivahs to the Shas yeshivahs, as the committee and [[Menachem Schneerson|Schneerson]] parted ways. The [[Likud Party]] considered the support of [[Ovadia Yousef]], an Iraqi-Jewish rabbi who controlled Shas, essential due to his large following in [[Israel]]'s Middle Eastern Jewish communities.[^1]
According to [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], in 1987 the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] redirected funds from the Lubavitcher yeshivahs to the Shas yeshivahs, as the committee and Schneerson parted ways, and the Likud Party considered the support of [[Ovadia Yousef]], an Iraqi-Jewish rabbi who controlled Shas, essential due to his large following in Israel's Middle Eastern Jewish communities.[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).

307
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Kerry Committee.md
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@ -1,8 +1,12 @@
---
aliases:
- Kerry Committee
- Kerry subcommittee
- Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations
- Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications
- Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations
- Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations
- Kerry-Brown Senate investigation
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- Organization
@ -10,42 +14,317 @@ tags:
- Congress
- BCCI
- Contras
summary: "Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee under John Kerry that investigated drugs and foreign policy in 1987-88 and BCCI from 1988 to 1992, with a staff of two attorneys and no travel budget."
- DrugTrafficking
- Noriega
- KerryBrownReport
summary: "Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee under John Kerry that investigated Contra-linked drug trafficking and Manuel Noriega from 1986 to 1988 and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International from 1988 to 1992."
location: "Washington, D.C."
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[John Kerry]]"
reverse: true
role: "chairman"
start: 1987-04
end: 1992-12
fn: 1
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Jack Blum]]"
reverse: true
role: "chief counsel"
role: "special counsel"
end: 1989
fn: 4
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Jonathan Winer]]"
reverse: true
role: "staff, Kerry's personal staff"
start: 1986
fn: 4
- type: member_of
with: "[[Hank Brown]]"
reverse: true
role: "ranking member for the BCCI inquiry"
start: 1991-05
end: 1992-12
fn: 67
- type: member_of
with: "[[Mitch McConnell]]"
reverse: true
role: "ranking member"
start: 1987-04
end: 1988-12
fn: 1
- type: investigated
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
start: 1988
- type: reported_to
with: "[[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]]"
start: 1987-04
end: 1992-12
fn: 1
- type: investigated
with: "[[Manuel Noriega]]"
start: 1986-04
end: 1988-12
fn: 55
- type: investigated
with: "[[Contras]]"
start: 1986-04
end: 1988-12
fn: 12
- type: investigated
with: "[[John Hull]]"
start: 1987-10
end: 1988-12
fn: 31
- type: investigated
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
start: 1988-02
end: 1992-12
fn: 65
- type: investigated
with: "[[Kissinger Associates]]"
start: 1991-07
end: 1992-12
fn: 73
created: 2026-09-23
updated: 2026-09-23
updated: 2026-10-14
---
The Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]], chaired by Senator [[John Kerry]] of [[Massachusetts]], conducted a two-year investigation of drugs, law enforcement and foreign policy in 1987 and 1988 and, from 1988 to 1992, the congressional investigation of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) that produced the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] of December 1992. Its ranking member for the BCCI inquiry was Senator [[Hank Brown]] of [[Colorado]].[^1]
The Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]], chaired by Senator [[John Kerry]] of [[Massachusetts]], produced two reports: S. Prt. 100-165, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy* (December 1988), on narcotics trafficking, the [[Contras]] and [[Manuel Noriega]], and S. Prt. 102-140, *The BCCI Affair* (December 1992), on the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), published as the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]]. The Foreign Relations Committee's drug inquiry began in April 1986; responsibility passed to the subcommittee in April 1987, with Senator [[Mitch McConnell]] of [[Kentucky]] as ranking member. Senator [[Hank Brown]] of [[Colorado]] was the ranking member for the BCCI investigation.[^1]
### Origins
### Origins of the drugs inquiry
BCCI came to the subcommittee's attention in February 1988, during a hearing on the drug trafficking and money laundering of [[Manuel Noriega]]. In March 1988 the Foreign Relations Committee authorized subpoenas to BCCI and to those at the bank who handled Noriega's assets and the accounts of others in [[Panama]] and [[Colombia]]. Service was delayed at the request of the [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] and the [[United States Customs Service|Customs Service]], which were concerned for the [[Operation C-Chase|C-Chase]] sting in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]]; by the time the subpoenas were served in late July 1988, the subcommittee's public hearings were over. BCCI officials then told its counsel, [[Jack Blum]], that the bank and its attorneys, among them [[Clark Clifford]] and [[Robert Altman]], were obstructing the inquiry. The subcommittee deposed [[Amjad Awan]] shortly before his arrest in the sting and a second former BCCI officer afterward.[^1]
The report dates Kerry's own staff investigation to early 1986, when he began examining allegations that elements of the supply network for the Nicaraguan Contras were linked to drug traffickers. In April 1986 he took the information to the committee chairman, Senator [[Richard Lugar]], who agreed to a staff inquiry. Lugar scheduled a closed session of the committee for June 25, 1986. In February 1987 Chairman [[Claiborne Pell]] continued the inquiry and widened it to the effect of Caribbean, Central American and South American drug trafficking on foreign policy; in April 1987 it was assigned to the subcommittee.[^1]
In the spring of 1989, as Blum left the subcommittee, Kerry authorized him to give his information to the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]; when the department did not act on it, Blum took it to the New York District Attorney, [[Robert Morgenthau]]. Kerry meanwhile continued the inquiry with two members of his personal staff. After failing to obtain authorization through the Banking Committee, he obtained it from the full Foreign Relations Committee, without dissent, on May 23, 1991, together with a new subpoena to BCCI; further subpoena authorizations followed on November 27, 1991, February 29, 1992, and June 4, 1992. The report recorded that the investigation's staff "remained limited, amounting to two attorneys, with no budget for travel," which particularly hampered its work outside the [[United States]].[^1]
The report's chapter on the Contras opens: "The initial Committee investigation into the international drug trade, which began in April, 1986, focused on allegations that Senator John F. Kerry had received of illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with the Contra war against Nicaragua." It states that the subcommittee uncovered "considerable evidence relating to the Contra network which substantiated many of the initial allegations laid out before the Committee in the Spring of 1986," and that in each case one or another agency of the U.S. government had information about the involvement, either while it was occurring or immediately afterward.[^2]
### Hearings and Report
The subcommittee held fourteen days of open hearings and nine executive sessions and received testimony from 27 witnesses. Its staff deposed 20 more, and thirty subpoenas were issued.[^3] The transmittal letter names [[Jack Blum]], special counsel, with Kathleen Smith and Jonathan Litchman of the committee staff, and Richard McCall, [[Jonathan Winer]] and David McKean of Kerry's personal staff and Ron Rosenblith.[^4]
The subcommittee held public hearings on BCCI on August 1, 2 and 8, October 18, 22, 23, 24 and 25, and November 21, 1991, and on February 19, March 18, May 14 and July 30, 1992, with a closed hearing on October 31, 1991. It obtained documents from BCCI and its attorneys, former officials and creditors, [[Price Waterhouse]], Clifford and Altman, [[First American Bank]], the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]], the [[Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]], the [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]], the [[Office of Thrift Supervision]], the [[Resolution Trust Corporation]], [[Abu Dhabi]], the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], the Customs Service and the [[United States Department of State|State Department]].[^1] Its report, Senate Print 102-140, was issued in December 1992. The archivist [[Steven Aftergood]] of the [[Federation of American Scientists]], which published the committee's electronic text, noted that after its release "Sen. Hank Brown, reportedly acting at the behest of [[Henry A. Kissinger|Henry Kissinger]], pressed for the deletion of a few passages, particularly in Chapter 20 on 'BCCI and [[Kissinger Associates]],'" so that the version printed by the Government Printing Office "differs slightly from the Committee's softcopy version."[^2]
### The executive branch response, 1986 to 1988
After press accounts beginning in December 1985, the [[State Department]], with the [[Department of Justice]] and the intelligence agencies, reviewed the allegations in the spring of 1986. It told Congress in April 1986 that it had "evidence of a limited number of incidents in which known drug traffickers tried to establish connections with Nicaraguan resistance groups," and that these attempts took place mostly when the resistance was receiving no U.S. funding. In a second statement of July 24, 1986 it said that "the available evidence points to involvement with drug traffickers by a limited number of persons having various kinds of affiliations with, or political sympathies for, the resistance groups."[^5]
In August 1987 the chief of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]'s Central American Task Force, [[Alan Fiers]], testified to the Iran-Contra committees that links between Contras on the Southern Front in [[Costa Rica]] and narcotics trafficking were far broader than the State Department had said in 1986. He testified that "it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people," and that "We knew that everybody around [[Eden Pastora|Pastora]] was involved in cocaine."[^6]
The subcommittee reported that in the spring of 1986 the Justice Department was adamantly denying that the narcotics allegations had substance, while the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] had significant information on narcotics traffickers in Contra operations and on Neutrality Act violations. On May 6, 1986 a bipartisan group of committee staff met representatives of Justice, the FBI, the [[DEA]], the CIA and the State Department. Justice Department officials there privately contradicted the department's public statements that the FBI had investigated the charges and found no substance, and confirmed that Neutrality Act investigations were under way. The CIA representatives categorically denied that the violations raised by the staff had taken place, citing classified documents; the report states that the FBI had by then assembled substantial information confirming them, including admissions by some of the persons involved.[^7]
In August 1986 Senator Lugar and the ranking member, Senator Pell, wrote to the Justice Department asking for information on 27 individuals and organizations associated with the Contras. The department declined, on the grounds that the matters remained under active investigation and that the committee's "rambling through open investigations gravely risks compromising those efforts." The report records that less than three months earlier the department had told the press and the committee that the allegations had been thoroughly investigated and were without foundation, and that it did not disclose in reply that the FBI had developed extensive information from 1983 through 1986 suggesting many of the allegations were true.[^8]
### Allegations of interference with the inquiry
On October 5, 1988 the subcommittee received sworn testimony from [[Jeffery B. Feldman]], the [[Miami]] assistant U.S. attorney who handled the Neutrality Act and gun-running cases, that he had been told Justice Department officials had met in 1986 "to undermine" Kerry's attempts to hold hearings. Feldman testified that on November 17, 1987 [[Thomas E. Marum]] of the Internal Security Division told him that representatives of Justice, the DEA and the FBI had met in 1986 to discuss how Kerry's efforts to hold hearings could be undermined; that a memorandum he wrote in late May 1986 recommending a grand jury had been rewritten without his knowledge to call the case a "fishing expedition"; and that files given to him by U.S. Attorney [[Leon Kellner]] included a transcript of a Foreign Relations Committee executive session and memoranda between Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Bergquist and committee staff on coordinating efforts "to basically show that what you were saying wasn't necessarily correct."[^9]
The Justice Department witnesses denied any agreement to obstruct the inquiry. Marum, in a deposition of October 25, 1988, denied telling Feldman that there had been an agreement to undermine the committee's investigation, and said it was true that the department and the other participants at the meeting opposed hearings. [[Mark M. Richard]], the Justice Department official, testified on November 7, 1988 that Feldman was wrong about any meeting he attended in which hearings were undermined; he recalled a meeting of October 15, 1986 attended by 20 to 25 people that went down the list of the committee's outstanding requests, and said the DEA did not want to provide the information requested. Kellner gave a deposition on November 8, 1988.[^10]
### What the subcommittee found about Contra-linked traffickers
The executive summary stated: "The Subcommittee did not find that the Contra leaders personally were involved in drug trafficking. There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region."[^11] The summary also stated that U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war effort against Nicaragua, and that the war "contributed to weakening an already inadequate law enforcement capability in the region" that mercenaries, pilots and others involved in drug smuggling exploited.[^11]
The concluding chapter restates the finding and adds that "the largest Contra organization, the FDN, did move Contra funds through a narcotics trafficking enterprise and money laundering operation." It records evidence that U.S. officials assisting the Contras knew that drug smugglers were exploiting the clandestine infrastructure established to support the war and that Contras were receiving assistance derived from drug trafficking, and states that "it appears that some officials may have turned a blind eye to these activities." On the question whether officials failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war, the subcommittee wrote that there were "serious questions" and urged the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Judiciary Committee to investigate.[^12]
[[Paul Gorman]], a retired general and former commander of the U.S. Southern Command, testified on February 8, 1988 that the use of narcotics profits by armed resistance groups was commonplace and that "if you want to move arms or munitions in Latin America, the established networks are owned by the cartels." The DEA's assistant administrator, [[David Westrate]], testified on July 12, 1988: "It is true that people on both sides of the equation (in the Nicaraguan war) were drug traffickers, and a couple of them were pretty significant."[^13]
### The Southern Front
The subcommittee traced drug trafficking in the region to the late 1970s, when Costa Rican airstrips near the Nicaraguan border were used by Manuel Noriega and others to ship weapons to the [[Sandinistas]], and former Costa Rican law enforcement officials told it they were instructed to keep narcotics investigators away from the border during the revolution. After 1979, surplus weapons stored in Costa Rica were sold on the black market and some were shipped to Salvadoran rebels from the same airstrips by the same pilots.[^14]
Werner Lotz, a Costa Rican pilot serving a sentence for drug smuggling, testified in closed session on April 8, 1988 that Contra operations on the Southern Front were in fact funded by drug operations: weapons came from [[Panama]] on small planes carrying mixed loads, and the pilots unloaded the weapons, refueled and flew north with drugs. He named the pilots as Americans, Panamanians and Colombians and occasionally uniformed members of the Panamanian Defense Forces. [[Karol Prado]], an officer of Eden Pastora's ARDE organization, testified that traffickers "approaches political groups like ARDE trying to make deals that would somehow camouflage or cover up their activities."[^15]
The report states that DEA officials testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime in July 1988 that Lieutenant Colonel [[Oliver North]] suggested to the DEA in June 1985 that $1.5 million in drug money, carried aboard a plane piloted by DEA informant [[Barry Seal]] and generated in a sting of the [[Medellin Cartel]] and Sandinista officials, be provided to the Contras; the DEA rejected the suggestion.[^16] The former CIA station chief in Costa Rica, Thomas Castillo, testified to the Iran-Contra committees that during June, July and August 1986 U.S. Ambassador [[Lewis Tambs]] wanted to place guards on the secret Contra supply airstrip at Santa Elena to keep drug traffickers from using it.[^17]
### The State Department contractors
The State Department used the [[NHAO|Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Organization]] (NHAO) to channel humanitarian assistance to the Contras in 1985 and 1986. The subcommittee reported that the department selected four companies owned and operated by narcotics traffickers: [[SETCO]], [[DIACSA]], [[Frigorificos de Puntarenas]] and Vortex. In each case, before the department contracted with the company, federal law enforcement had received information that the individuals controlling it were involved in narcotics. NHAO officials told investigators of the General Accounting Office that all supply contractors were to have been screened by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the GAO and NHAO were uncertain whether that had been done. The payments made to the four between January and August 1986 totaled $806,401.20 in the report's table, which lists $185,924.25 for SETCO, $41,120.90 for DIACSA, $261,932.00 for Frigorificos de Puntarenas and $317,425.17 for Vortex.[^18]
The report posed the questions it had been unable to answer: who selected the firms and on what criteria, whether any official at the CIA, the National Security Council or the State Department knew of the narcotics allegations, and why the contractors were not checked against federal law enforcement records, which would have shown them to be under investigation or, in the case of DIACSA, under indictment. The NHAO director, Ambassador [[Robert Duemling]], could not recall how the companies were selected when Kerry questioned him in April 1988, and could not recall whether they had been checked. He had recalled before the Iran-Contra committees that Oliver North directed NHAO to continue "the existing arrangements of the resistance movement" in choosing contractors.[^19] The subcommittee concluded: "At best, these incidents represent negligence on the part of US government officials responsible for providing support to the Contras. At worst it was a matter of turning a blind eye to the activities of companies who use legitimate activities as a cover for their narcotics trafficking."[^20]
SETCO had a long-standing relationship with the Honduras-based [[FDN]], and from 1984 was the principal company the Contras used in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel for it, carrying at least a million rounds of ammunition, food, uniforms and other military supplies from 1983 through 1985. The report cites U.S. law enforcement records stating that SETCO was established by the Honduran cocaine trafficker Ramon Matta Ballesteros, whose April 1988 extradition from Honduras caused riots outside the U.S. embassy in [[Tegucigalpa]], and quotes a 1983 Customs report: "SETCO aviation is a corporation formed by American businessmen who are dealing with Matta and are smuggling narcotics into the United States." One of the pilots who flew SETCO missions for the FDN was [[Frank Moss]], under investigation as an alleged drug trafficker since 1979 and investigated, though never indicted, by ten law enforcement agencies. In 1985 Moss formed his own company, Hondu Carib, which flew supplies to the Contras under a commercial agreement with the FDN's chief supply officer, [[Mario Calero]], who was to receive an ownership interest. One Moss DC-4 moved Contra goods from the United States to Honduras. A second DC-4 was chased off the west coast of Florida by [[U.S. Customs]] while, according to law enforcement personnel, it was dumping what appeared to be a load of drugs; when it landed at Port Charlotte no drugs were found, but an address book aboard contained the telephone numbers of some Contra officials and the Virginia number of [[Robert Owen]], North's courier. The DEA seized the aircraft on March 16, 1987.[^21]
Frigorificos de Puntarenas, a Costa Rican seafood company, was created as a cover for laundering drug money, according to grand jury testimony by one of its partners and testimony by [[Ramon Milian Rodriguez]], the convicted money launderer who established it. It was owned and operated by Luis Rodriguez of Miami, whom Massachusetts law enforcement officials said directed the largest marijuana smuggling ring in the state's history, and two convicted drug traffickers. Luis Rodriguez was indicted on drug trafficking charges on September 30, 1987. He controlled the bank account that received $261,937 in humanitarian assistance funds from the State Department in 1986, according to the narrative section of the report. In September 1984 Miami police told the FBI that Ocean Hunter, the American seafood company of which he was president and which bought from Frigorificos, was funding Contra activities through "narcotics transactions." Kerry told the Justice Department, the DEA, the State Department, NHAO and the CIA of the allegations in May 1986; in August 1986 the Foreign Relations Committee asked Justice whether they were true, and Justice declined to answer.[^22]
DIACSA was an aircraft dealership and parts supply company partly owned by the Guerra family of Costa Rica. Its president, [[Alfredo Caballero]], was under DEA investigation for cocaine trafficking and money laundering when the State Department chose it, and was a business associate of [[Floyd Carlton]], the pilot who flew cocaine for Noriega. DEA Special Agent Daniel Moritz, in an affidavit filed in federal court in January 1985, described working undercover as a money launderer and said the traffickers used DIACSA's offices "as a location for planning smuggling ventures, for assembling and distributing large cash proceeds of narcotics transactions, and for placing telephone calls in furtherance of the smuggling ventures." The report states that from March 1985 until January 1986 Moritz received approximately $3.8 million from members of the organization, most of it delivered at DIACSA's offices, and that during 1984 and 1985 the FDN chose DIACSA for "intra-account transfers" that concealed funds for the Contras deposited at North's direction. Carlton, Caballero and five other defendants were indicted, and the State Department made payments to DIACSA on May 14 and September 3, 1986 totaling $41,120.90 despite the indictments. Court papers of July 1986 show that the U.S. embassies in Panama and Costa Rica were clients of DIACSA, and that embassy personnel were meeting one of the defendants about purchasing Cessna aircraft while plea negotiations were under way.[^23]
Vortex was an air service and supply company partly owned by [[Michael Palmer]], whom the subcommittee described as an admitted drug trafficker. When the State Department signed its contract, Palmer, then the company's executive vice president, signed for Vortex while under active FBI investigation in three jurisdictions and facing a federal grand jury in Detroit. The contract required Vortex to receive, store, pack and inventory goods for the Contras; its principal assets were two airplanes Palmer had previously used for drug smuggling. The report states that Vortex was selected by NHAO assistant director Philip Buechler after calls among Buechler, Palmer and the president of Summit Aviation.[^24]
### George Morales and the Pastora organization
The subcommittee reported that [[George Morales]], a Colombian drug trafficker living in Miami and under indictment for narcotics trafficking, approached the organization of Eden Pastora in 1984, with discrepancies among the parties about when the first meeting took place. Pastora was wounded by a bomb at La Penca, Nicaragua on May 30, 1984; the ARDE officer Karol Prado said that U.S. aid to ARDE was cut off that day. According to a State Department report to Congress of July 26, 1986, a senior member of Pastora's Sandino Revolutionary Front agreed in late 1984 that FRS pilots would aid in transporting narcotics in exchange for financial assistance, and Morales reportedly provided the front with a C-47 aircraft, two crated helicopters and $100,000. The State Department said it knew of one incident from the arrangement, the January 1986 arrest in Costa Rica of the Contra pilot Gerardo Duran.[^25]
Robert Owen, North's courier, testified to the Iran-Contra committees that he told North he thought Prado and Pastora's pilot [[Marcos Aguado]] were involved in trafficking drugs out of Panama; the subcommittee could not validate Owen's claims, and Prado denied them, saying he believed the allegations against Pastora were a CIA effort to discredit him.[^26] Morales testified that his involvement began in 1984 at the urging of the widow of one of his drug pilots, who introduced him to Pastora's second in command, Adolfo "Popo" [[Adolfo Chamorro|Chamorro]], Aguado and [[Octaviano Cesar]] at a meeting in Miami. He was under indictment for marijuana smuggling and thought assisting the Contras would end it. He wanted to make a deal, he said: he would help the Contras with their needs, and "they in exchange would help me with my objective, which was solving my indictment."[^27]
The subcommittee videotaped depositions of Prado, Aguado and Cesar in San Jose, Costa Rica on October 31, 1987, and Chamorro testified in closed session in April 1988. Each said he had not known Morales was under indictment when they first met. All denied receiving more than $10,000 in cash from Morales; the subcommittee found that $10,000 went to Chamorro to cover the cost of flying a C-47 from Haiti to Ilopango, and that Customs records showed Morales entering the United States from the Bahamas on October 13, 1984 with Aguado, Cesar and Chamorro, carrying $400,000 in cash and checks that they said were returned to Morales after clearing Customs. Chamorro gave the subcommittee a notarized purchase order dated October 1, 1984 transferring a DC-3 (the civilian designation of a C-47) from Morales to Aguado for one dollar, and a list of 24 flights between October 1984 and February 1986 moving some 156,000 pounds of material from Ilopango to airfields in Costa Rica. The subcommittee stated that it substantiated key elements of Morales's account but did not find evidence that Cesar, Chamorro or Prado were personally involved in drug trafficking.[^28]
Aguado told the subcommittee that the traffickers used "the same connections, the same air strips, the same people," and that "maybe they said that it was weapons for Eden Pastora, and it was actually drugs." Cesar testified that he told CIA personnel at the military attache's office at [[Ilopango Airbase]] about his dealings with Morales, and answered "Yes" when Kerry asked whether they had said it was all right as long as he did not deal in the powder.[^29]
The report states that after the La Penca bombing the CIA cut off all assistance to ARDE, and that the United States said the cutoff related to the involvement of ARDE personnel in drug trafficking, while many of the same traffickers were assisting other Contra groups that continued to receive funding; Morales, for example, used the pilot Duran, who also worked for groups associated with Alfonso Robelo and Fernando "El Negro" Chamorro. Castillo testified that when the CIA learned of narcotics trafficking by Pastora's supporters and lieutenants it reported them to law enforcement. Morales continued to work with the Contras until January 1986, was indicted a second time in the Southern District of Florida for a January 1986 cocaine flight to the [[Bahamas]], and was arrested June 12, 1986. He testified that his offers to cooperate were refused by the U.S. attorney, Leon Kellner; Kellner and the head of the criminal division, Richard Gregorie, told committee staff in November 1986 that Morales's story was not credible and that he was using the "I was working for the CIA" defense, and discouraged staff from meeting him before his sentencing. After his testimony the DEA accepted his offer to cooperate, and in November 1988 it gave him a polygraph examination on his subcommittee testimony; the report states that he was considered truthful.[^30]
### John Hull and the OPIC loan
John Hull, an Indiana farmer living in northern Costa Rica, was in the report's account a central figure in Contra operations on the Southern Front when they were managed by Oliver North, from 1984 through late 1986. According to Castillo's public testimony he had earlier helped the CIA with military supply operations, and he received $10,000 a month from [[Adolfo Calero]] of the FDN at North's direction. His properties included at least six airstrips, known to pilots as John Hull's ranch. On March 23, 1984 seven men aboard a U.S. government owned DC-3 were killed when the plane crashed near the ranch.[^31]
Five witnesses testified that Hull was involved in cocaine trafficking: Floyd Carlton, Werner Lotz, [[Jose Blandon]], Morales and [[Gary Betzner]]. Betzner was the only one who testified that he was present when cocaine was loaded onto planes in Hull's presence. Betzner, a pilot for Morales's network, testified that in July 1984 he flew weapons to Hull's ranch, was met by Hull, and flew 17 duffel bags and several boxes of cocaine to Lakeland, Florida, and that two weeks later he flew weapons to an airstrip about ten miles from Hull's properties and loaded approximately 500 kilos of cocaine. Lotz said drugs were flown into Hull's ranch but that he did not personally witness the flights, and that Hull was paid for the refueling stops.[^32]
Feldman went to Costa Rica in late March 1985 with two FBI agents to investigate Neutrality Act violations. He testified that Ambassador Tambs and the CIA chief of station Castillo told him Hull had been working for U.S. interests before March 1984, that an embassy security officer told an agent the matter involved "agencies with other operational requirements and we shouldn't interfere with the work of these agencies," and that the embassy staff told Hull not to speak to him without an attorney. Feldman concluded that embassy officials were taking active measures to protect Hull, that the consul in San Jose was trying to get two jailed mercenaries to recant their statements about Hull's involvement with the CIA, and that because Hull was receiving protection from some U.S. officials he could not be interviewed. He took no further steps to do so.[^33]
The report states that Hull then prepared falsified affidavits from jailed mercenaries in Costa Rica and sent them to Kellner; the mercenaries accused congressional staff of paying witnesses to invent stories about the Contra supply network. The Justice Department concluded the affidavits had been forged. Kellner testified that he "had concerns about them" and did not believe them, and the subcommittee recorded that the department had taken no action against Hull for filing false affidavits.[^34]
On March 30, 1984 the [[Overseas Private Investment Corporation]] advanced $375,000 to a joint venture wood products factory for which Hull and two associates had applied in 1983; OPIC and the partners testified that no contributions were made to the venture. By the end of 1985 the loan was in default, OPIC found that the funds had been deposited in Hull's Indiana bank account and withdrawn in cash, and the report states that no equipment was purchased and no products shipped. In April 1987 the case was referred to the Justice Department for a criminal fraud investigation, and nothing had happened in almost two years. OPIC foreclosed and bought its own collateral at auction for $187,500. Hull was arrested by Costa Rican authorities in mid-January 1989 and charged with drug trafficking and violating Costa Rica's neutrality.[^35]
### The Frogman case and the Cuban-American connection
The San Francisco Frogman case, in which swimmers brought cocaine ashore from a Colombian vessel in 1982 and 1983, was in the State Department's words of July 26, 1986 one of the first in which allegations linked specific Contra organizations to drug smugglers. Two Nicaraguans convicted in it, including [[Carlos Cabezas]], claimed they had delivered large sums to resistance groups in Costa Rica; Cabezas said part of $1.5 million in proceeds went to help Pastora's and Fernando "El Negro" Chamorro's operations on the Southern Front in 1982 and 1983. After the trial the government returned $36,020 seized as drug money to one of the defendants after he submitted letters from Contra leaders saying the funds were theirs. The subcommittee found that the defendants' second source of supply was Nicaraguans in Costa Rica associated with the Contras, among them [[Horacio Pereira]], who was convicted in Costa Rica in 1985 and sentenced to twelve years.[^36]
The report describes Miami-based Cuban Americans who supported the Southern Front while the [[Boland Amendment]] barred official assistance, with help funded in part with drug money. The State Department said in July 1986 there was no information to substantiate allegations that the group around [[Rene Corbo]] was a source of drug money. The subcommittee reported that in August 1986 it asked Justice for information on Corbo, [[Frank Castro]], Luis Rodriguez and others and was refused, that the CIA at the May 6, 1986 meeting categorically denied that weapons had been shipped to the Contras on flights involving Corbo and suggested the contrary allegations were disinformation, and that the FBI had learned from informants that Cuban American supporters had shipped weapons from south Florida to Ilopango and onward to John Hull's airstrips. Corbo told the FBI on June 4 and 16, 1986 that he had participated in shipping weapons to the Contras in violation of the Neutrality Act. He and Castro were indicted in a Neutrality Act case in August 1988, without narcotics allegations. Robert Owen warned North that the "Cubans (are) involved in drugs," and notes of Colonel Robert Earl record the CIA in August 1986 worrying about "disreputable characters in the Cuban-American community."[^37]
In a closed session on June 25, 1987 Ramon Milian Rodriguez testified that in a meeting arranged by a Miami private detective he offered [[Felix Rodriguez]] drug money for the Contras, that Felix Rodriguez accepted, and that $10 million was subsequently provided through secret couriers; he said he also offered to help entrap the Sandinistas in a drug sting, in return for dropping the charges against him. Felix Rodriguez strenuously denied this version and said he reported the offer to U.S. government agencies including the FBI and CIA, which took no action. The detective declined to respond to a subpoena, and the subcommittee stated that it could not resolve the difference.[^38]
### Cuba and Nicaragua
The subcommittee's chapter on Cuba and Nicaragua rests on testimony. It reports testimony that Cuba was used throughout the 1980s as a transit point and haven for laundering money, that Cuban authorities provided smugglers with protection for their boats and aircraft, and that [[Fidel Castro]] mediated a dispute between Noriega and the Medellin cartel.[^39] George Morales testified that Cuban officials gave him overflight rights and sold him the radio frequencies of U.S. law enforcement agencies, and later offered him a house, a runway and banking facilities; he said he laundered over $500,000 through a bank at Cayo Largo.[^40]
Jose Blandon testified that in the late 1970s Castro decided to use the power of drug traffickers to export revolution, and that he met Castro in Havana on June 21 or 22, 1984 at Noriega's request after Noriega raided a cartel laboratory in the Darien province, arrested 23 employees and seized equipment and drugs after accepting $5 million from the cartel. Castro, Blandon said, recommended returning the money and the laboratory; Noriega and Castro met directly a week later for five to six hours, and Cuba sent a 25-soldier unit to fly back with Noriega. Blandon produced photographs of himself with Castro, which were made part of the hearing record. A witness at the Miami conspiracy trial of the Cuban Ravelo-Renedo quoted high-ranking Cuban officials as saying "We'll drown them in drugs."[^41]
Castro denounced Blandon's testimony as a fabrication in an NBC interview of February 25, 1988 and offered to prove Cuba was not involved in drug trafficking. Kerry told the Cuban Interest Section on March 14, 1988 that he would not visit unless his staff could advance the trip, Cuba agreed to discuss drug trafficking, and staff could interview [[Robert Vesco]]; the Cubans never replied and the trip did not take place.[^42]
On Nicaragua, Floyd Carlton testified that [[Pablo Escobar]] sent him there twice in 1984, once to deliver money with a business partner of Noriega and once to locate airstrips for cocaine transshipment. Milian Rodriguez said Escobar asked him to explore drug operations in Nicaragua and document them in order to bargain with the United States for amnesty. A Miami attorney who passed a polygraph told the DEA in October and November 1986 that [[Jorge Ochoa]] told him the cartel "finances both Sandinista and anti-Sandinista forces in Nicaragua by setting up drug operations there," and that cartel principals wished to supply intelligence on guerrillas in return for amnesty; the DEA and FBI broke off contact. The principal evidence for Sandinista involvement came from Barry Seal's photographs of [[Federico Vaughn]], whom U.S. authorities identified as a Nicaraguan official, and Escobar loading Seal's plane; the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime found that the telephone number Vaughn used in calls from Seal had been controlled by the U.S. embassy since 1985. The State Department's narcotics report stated there was "no evidence" of Nicaragua being used to ship drugs to the United States "since the allegations made in 1984" in the Seal case.[^43]
### Honduras and Bueso-Rosa
The Honduras chapter covers the narcotics history of the country, the case of General [[Jose Bueso Rosa]] and Ramon Matta Ballesteros, and the policy issues those cases raised.[^44] On October 28, 1984 the FBI seized 345 kilos of cocaine valued at $40 million on a South Florida airstrip; the proceeds were to finance a plot to assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova. Bueso-Rosa, then military attache in Santiago, Chile, and two others were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The Justice Department called the conspiracy the "most significant case of narco-terrorism yet discovered."[^45]
The report states, citing the government's admissions in the trial of Oliver North, that in mid-September 1986 North advised Admiral [[John Poindexter]] that Ambassador John Negroponte, General Gorman, the senior CIA official [[Duane Clarridge]] and North had worked out arrangements for support of the resistance with Bueso-Rosa, who had recently been convicted, and that North suggested efforts be made on Bueso-Rosa's behalf to deter him from disclosing details of these covert activities. One co-defendant received 30 years; Bueso-Rosa received five years at Eglin Air Force Base after senior U.S. officials intervened with a federal judge.[^46] Mark Richard testified to the Iran-Contra committees that he was adamantly opposed to the interventions and that the Pentagon had taken the initiative; he recalled a meeting at which North, Gorman, [[Elliott Abrams]] and Clarridge "all agreed that Bueso-Rosa should be accommodated."[^47]
### Law enforcement and national security
The chapter on confused priorities listed the Barry Seal episode, the law enforcement investigations of the Contras on the Southern Front, a narcotics sting directed at a high Bahamian official, the Bueso-Rosa case and the handling of Noriega as instances in which foreign policy considerations took precedence over the war on drugs.[^48] Seal, a former smuggler, was used by the DEA in an operation against the Colombian cartels and officials of the Sandinista government. The report states that the operation was disclosed prematurely by an administration official who leaked evidence to the press in an effort to influence a pending congressional vote on Contra aid, and that one individual in the government, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, "decided to play politics with the issue." Associates of Seal who operated aircraft service businesses at the airport in [[Mena, Arkansas]] were targets of grand jury probes into narcotics trafficking; the report states that despite evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges and over the strong protests of state and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped, and that the apparent reason was that prosecution might have revealed national security information.[^49]
The subcommittee reported that it was unable to find a single case against a drug trafficker operating in the war zones of northern Costa Rica that was made on a tip or report from a U.S. intelligence official, and that traffickers' names in documents released in the Iran-Contra hearings were deleted in declassification although a memorandum on the trafficking written by Robert Owen to North had been widely circulated. Gregorie testified that the case against Noriega could be jeopardized if intelligence agencies did not share information, and that he was convinced the prosecutors had not seen "even a small percentage of what we should see." He resigned in January 1989.[^50]
The chapter gives three case studies. Michael Palmer was an informant for the DEA and Customs while the State Department used Vortex's DC-6 for humanitarian cargoes. The Detroit indictment against him was dropped as "not being in the interest of the United States." Frank Camper, a Birmingham, Alabama informant for the FBI who ran a mercenary school, testified that he reported Panamanian Defense Forces dealings with the Medellin cartel to military intelligence, which did not follow up, that he trained members of the Civilian Military Assistance group who fought with the Contras and worked with Hull, and that the FBI advised him to continue training four Sikh nationalists; he said the Sikhs used plastic explosives obtained from his school in the June 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182. Richard Brenneke testified in a deposition of April 23, 1988 that he had worked for the CIA and Israeli intelligence and arranged purchases of Eastern European weapons for the Contras, and that Israeli agents in the Central American weapons project were running drugs into the United States; the subcommittee reported that its review of thousands of documents found he was never officially connected to U.S. intelligence and that no evidence showed any of his arms deals came to fruition.[^51]
### The Bahamas
The subcommittee's Bahamas chapter begins with Robert Vesco, who fled the United States in 1972 accused by law enforcement authorities of looting $240 million from the Overseas Investors Services mutual fund. He established operations in the Bahamas and developed a relationship with Everett Bannister, a political fixer close to Prime Minister [[Lynden Pindling]]. Vesco gave Bannister "carte blanche" at the Bahamas Commonwealth Bank, and Bannister and Pindling in return gave Vesco protection from extradition. Vesco returned to the islands in 1978 after establishing a relationship with [[Carlos Lehder]], who bought most of Norman's Cay. Some forty Lehder employees drove other residents and visitors away from the island at gunpoint, and Lehder built a large hangar with cocaine storage facilities.[^52]
Embassy cables led to a 1982 meeting between Vice President [[George H. W. Bush]], Admiral [[Daniel Murphy]] and Pindling, at which Pindling was shown a computer printout of surveillance of Norman's Cay and told that the island resembled O'Hare Airport. The report states there was no follow-up; with a new ambassador, [[Lev Dobriansky]], relations focused on base rights and the drug issue was relegated to a much lower priority. The State Department's 1988 narcotics report described "systematic corruption, which continues to make the Bahamas attractive to drug traffickers."[^53]
### Colombia
The Colombia chapter covers the origins of the cartels, their organization and wealth, and the cartels' war against the Colombian government. Its account of the origin of the cartels relies on the testimony of Ramon Milian Rodriguez on February 11, 1988 and of Leigh Ritch on February 8, 1988.[^54]
### Panama and Manuel Noriega
The Panama chapter describes the Noriega saga as "one of the most serious foreign policy failures for the United States." The executive summary held that each U.S. government agency with a relationship with Noriega "turned a blind eye to his corruption and drug dealing, even as he was emerging as a key player on behalf of the Medellin cartel."[^55]
Witnesses testified that Noriega arranged for [[Hugo Spadafora]], a Panamanian opposition figure who had criticized him for working with Colombian traffickers, to be tortured and murdered by members of the [[Panama Defense Forces]] in September 1985; the report states the PDF's involvement was confirmed by several sources including Noriega's personal pilot, Floyd Carlton, and Jose Blandon. [[Francis J. McNeil]], a career State Department official and former ambassador to Costa Rica, referred to Noriega early on as "the rent-a-colonel," described the U.S. approach as a "see no evil approach," and called the failure a "true intelligence failure, the accountability for which rests with the intelligence folk who had become Noriega's clients." Noriega provided the Kalish drug smuggling organization with military protection and favorable treatment and, in return, Steven Kalish received three Panamanian passports, one of them diplomatic; Noriega worked with Kalish until his arrest in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]] on July 26, 1984.[^56]
The subcommittee reported that it could not determine what U.S. agencies knew because the National Security Council had decided to prohibit General Accounting Office investigators from receiving information on U.S. policymaking on Noriega and narcotics. Gorman testified that after taking command in Panama in 1983 he tried to establish whether the rumors about Noriega were true and could not, having been assured by the U.S. embassy that Noriega was cooperating. [[Norman Bailey]], a senior NSC staff member from 1981 to 1983, testified to the House Select Committee on Narcotics that what was available to authorized officials was "not a 'smoking gun' but rather a twenty-one cannon barrage" of evidence, and that "clear and incontrovertible evidence was, at best, ignored, and at worst, hidden and denied by many different agencies." Noriega's name appeared in more than 80 DEA files between 1970 and 1987; the report states that DEA Administrator [[John Lawn]] told Admiral Murphy less than eight weeks before Noriega's indictment that no indictment would be issued, and that the Customs commissioner [[William von Raab]] testified that Customs had evidence linking Noriega to narcotics trafficking as early as 1983. Murphy, the former operations chief of the South Florida Drug Task Force, said information about Noriega was received by lower-level officials but not passed on to policy makers. Lawn had written to Noriega on May 8, 1986 to express the agency's "deep appreciation for the vigorous anti-drug trafficking policy that you have adopted."[^57]
### Conclusions of the 1988 report
The report's twelfth chapter lists conclusions on national security, federal priorities, covert activity, law enforcement, money laundering, personnel and the Neutrality Act. It states that international drug trafficking organizations are a threat to U.S. national security, that intelligence reporting on narcotics was "marginal and woefully inadequate," that law enforcement and national security agencies regarded each other with suspicion and should resolve the distrust, and that Customs preclearance be withheld from countries that do not cooperate. It recommends that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence examine why the government failed to acknowledge the cartels' threat, and that the Select Committee review the handling of Frank Camper's testimony and whether military intelligence was involved in improper domestic operations.[^58] The chapter closes with the statement that "in the end the Contras themselves became victims of the very network created to support them," and that officials who "turned a blind eye to General Noriega, who intervened on behalf of General Bueso-Rosa, and who adamantly opposed the investigations of foreign narcotics figures by honest, hard-working law enforcement officials, must also bear the responsibility for what is happening in the streets of the United States today." It quotes Gregorie: "If it was the communists that were taking over South and Central America, we would have done something about it. But it's the drug dealers and therefore they (the government) don't see that as a significant priority."[^59]
The money chapter records that a proposal by the subcommittee to have the Treasury negotiate agreements permitting foreign banks to cooperate with narcotics investigations, sponsored by Kerry and McConnell as an amendment, was included in the Omnibus Drug Bill passed at the close of the 100th Congress.[^60]
### Hearings and witnesses
The hearing record was published in four parts under S. Hrg. 100-773. Part 1 covers hearings of May 27, July 15 and October 30, 1987, held jointly with the Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Trade, Oceans and Environment.[^61] Part 2 is the Panama volume, February 8 through 11, 1988, with the testimony of Leigh Ritch, Jose Blandon, Floyd Carlton and Ramon Milian Rodriguez.[^62] Part 3, April 4 through 7, 1988, includes the testimony of Gary Betzner and George Morales and the prepared statement of Francis McNeil.[^63] Part 4, titled "The Cartel, Haiti and Central America," covers July 11, 12 and 14, 1988 and includes the testimony of David Westrate, Admiral Daniel Murphy and Frank Camper.[^64]
### BCCI and the subcommittee's 1988 to 1992 investigation
The BCCI report states that the subcommittee's investigation of the bank began in February 1988, early in the second year of what it calls a two-year investigation of drug trafficking and its relation to foreign policy and law enforcement. At a hearing on Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering, BCCI was identified as facilitating his criminal activity. In March 1988 the Foreign Relations Committee authorized subpoenas to BCCI and to those at the bank who handled Noriega's assets and the accounts of others in Panama and Colombia. Service was delayed at the request of the Justice Department and the Customs Service, which were concerned for the [[Operation C-Chase|C-Chase]] sting in Tampa; by the time the subpoenas were served in late July 1988 the subcommittee's public hearings were over. BCCI officials then told subcommittee counsel Jack Blum that the bank and its attorneys, among them [[Clark Clifford]] and [[Robert Altman]], were obstructing the inquiry. The subcommittee deposed [[Amjad Awan]] shortly before his arrest in the sting and a second former BCCI officer afterward.[^65]
In the spring of 1989, as Blum left the subcommittee, Kerry authorized him to give his information to the Justice Department. The report describes it as some 16 hours of interviews between Blum and two informants, taped by the Tampa prosecutors' office. When the department, in Blum's view, did not follow up, he took it to the New York District Attorney, [[Robert Morgenthau]], who began his investigation based in substantial part on leads from Blum and the subcommittee. Kerry continued the investigation with two members of his personal staff through 1989 and 1990. In January 1990, when the Justice Department entered a plea agreement with BCCI, the subcommittee published a report on drug money laundering that raised further questions about BCCI and its alleged secret ownership of [[First American Bank]]; in July 1990 hearings were postponed after BCCI's attorneys and the Justice Department told staff that the requested witnesses, including Altman, would decline to testify.[^66]
The Foreign Relations Committee authorized the investigation on May 23, 1991, without dissent, together with a subpoena to BCCI, and Brown and his staff then joined Kerry's. The printed report says that "staffing constraints in the offices of the Senators involved with the investigation hampered efforts to investigate matters pertaining to BCCI's activities outside the United States"; the committee's electronic text, which the Federation of American Scientists published, reads instead that staffing "remained limited, amounting to two attorneys, with no budget for travel," and adds that after efforts to obtain authorization through the Banking Committee failed Kerry decided in early 1991 to formalize the personal staff investigation. Subpoena and writ authorizations followed on November 27, 1991, February 29, 1992 and June 4, 1992.[^67]
The subcommittee held thirteen days of public hearings, on August 1, 2 and 8, October 18, 22, 23, 24 and 25, and November 21, 1991, and on February 19, March 18, May 14 and July 30, 1992, with a closed hearing on October 31, 1991, and staffed a Senate Banking subcommittee hearing on May 23, 1991. It obtained documents from BCCI and its attorneys, former officials and creditors, [[Price Waterhouse]], Clifford and Altman, First American, the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]], the [[Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]], the [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]], the [[Office of Thrift Supervision]], the [[Resolution Trust Corporation]], [[Abu Dhabi]], the CIA, the Customs Service, the State Department and the Department of Agriculture.[^68] The introduction states that BCCI "cannot be taken as an isolated example of a rogue bank, but a case study of the vulnerability of the world to international crime on a global scope that is beyond the current ability of governments to control." Brown's separate statement credits Kerry with spearheading an investigation that "no other committee in the United States Senate" conducted, and says that because many important members of Kerry's own party were involved it was a distasteful subject for other chairmen.[^69]
The report's chapter on BCCI's relations with foreign governments records that BCCI obtained the account of Noriega while he ran Panamanian military intelligence, and that BCCI official [[Alauddin Shaikh]] flew to Panama two to three times a year until 1985 to meet him, according to the BCCI officer [[Nazir Chinoy]]. Noriega opened an account in the name of the Panamanian Defense Forces in early 1982; at its height it held about $25 million, mostly from cash deposits, and he used it for political payoffs, intelligence operations and later personal expenses. After his indictment in Miami in February 1988 he told BCCI to move the funds, and in July 1988, when BCCI learned the subcommittee had subpoenaed the records, about $23 million was moved through trading accounts of BCCI's commodities affiliate [[Capcom]].[^70]
### BCCI and the CIA
The chapter on the CIA states that the CIA's official record of its use of BCCI was "by and large, accurately represented" by Acting Director [[Richard J. Kerr]] in public testimony on October 25, 1991, supplemented by classified testimony on October 31, 1991. The report states that Kerr agreed to testify publicly after Kerry told the CIA that the nomination of [[Robert Gates]] as director would be delayed until the CIA provided such testimony.[^71] Kerr acknowledged what the subcommittee had learned the day before from the former First American president Altman, that the CIA had made extensive use of First American as a repository for "normal banking" and savings accounts, and that the CIA had also used BCCI for limited and routine intelligence-gathering. He testified that the CIA had not been involved with any BCCI "black network" of thugs and assassins, had no knowledge of any use of BCCI for arms sales to Iran or the diversion of funds for the Nicaraguan Contras, and had no relationship with BCCI's head, [[Agha Hasan Abedi]]. The report adds that the CIA's early 1985 report on BCCI was missing and had been reconstructed at the subcommittee's request, and that the record had substantial gaps on the activities of contacts including the BCCI customer and Iran-Contra arms merchant [[Adnan Khashoggi]].[^72]
### Kissinger Associates and the two editions of the report
The report's chapter 20, "BCCI and Kissinger Associates," records BCCI contacts with the New York consulting firm [[Kissinger Associates]] from the fall of 1986 through early 1989. The firm's partners were [[Henry A. Kissinger]], [[Brent Scowcroft]], [[Lawrence Eagleburger]], Alan Stoga and T. Jefferson Cunningham III. Both editions state that discussions "ended in early 1989 at Henry Kissinger's personal insistence."[^73]
In November 1991 the Foreign Relations Committee authorized a subpoena to Kissinger Associates for all documents on BCCI and its client lists. The firm promised to cooperate under an agreement that the subpoena not be served, provided documents, and declined to provide its client list. The printed report says the firm declined "contending the information was confidential"; the electronic text says the firm refused on the ground that the list was beyond the investigation and told the subcommittee it would litigate "through an extensive appellate process to the Supreme Court."[^74]
The two texts of the chapter differ. The Federation of American Scientists' electronic text carries a note by [[Steven Aftergood]] describing it as the "penultimate draft" and stating that after the report's release Sen. Hank Brown, "reportedly acting at the behest of Henry Kissinger, pressed for the deletion of a few passages, particularly in Chapter 20 on 'BCCI and Kissinger Associates,'" so that the hardcopy printed by the Government Printing Office "differs slightly from the Committee's softcopy version." The electronic text names the firm's counsel, [[Lloyd Cutler]], as the source of the January 30, 1992 representations that the firm had "never represented or provided any services for BCCI, ICIC, or any BCCI shareholder" and that the only substantive contact was Abol Helmy's meetings with Stoga in late 1988 and early 1989, and adds the committee's comment that this account "is not untrue" but "does fail to characterize the full extent of the contacts." The printed chapter gives the same representations without naming Cutler, omits that comment, and says the contacts "extended over a period of 2 years." It adds a second paragraph stating that "while Henry Kissinger in December 1988, rejected the proposed relationship with BCCI," the record shows BCCI repeatedly reached out to the firm and to Kissinger as an individual and that "in each case reviewed by the Subcommittee, Kissinger declined the overtures."[^75]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 2, "Introduction and Summary of Investigation." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/02intro.htm
[^2]: Aftergood, Steven. Editorial note, "The BCCI Affair," Federation of American Scientists. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/
[^1]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165, 100th Cong., 2d sess. (December 1988; Washington: GPO, 1989), Introduction, "Origins and Methodology," pp. 5-6, on the early 1986 staff investigation, the April 1986 approach to Chairman Lugar, the closed session of June 25, 1986, the direction of Chairman Pell in February 1987, and the assignment in April 1987 to the subcommittee chaired by Kerry with Senator McConnell as ranking member. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^2]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "Narcotics Traffickers and the Contras," Introduction, p. 36. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^3]: S. Prt. 100-165, "Origins and Methodology," pp. 5-6. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^4]: S. Prt. 100-165, Letter of Transmittal (dated Washington, D.C., April 13, 1989), staff acknowledgment: "Special Counsel Jack A. Blum." https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^5]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 37, quoting State Department document 3079e (April 16, 1986) and document 5136c (July 26, 1986). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^6]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 37-38, quoting the testimony of the CIA Central American Task Force chief before the Iran-Contra committees, August 5, 1987. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^7]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 38-39, citing the memoranda of conversation of the May 6, 1986 meeting held in the subcommittee files. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^8]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 39, and ch. 5, "The Cuban-American Connection," p. 60 (which cites a letter of John Bolton to Senators Lugar and Pell, August 11, 1986). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^9]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 39, and Appendix B, "Allegations of Interference with the Committee Investigation," pp. 147-148, citing the subcommittee testimony of Jeffery B. Feldman, October 5, 1988, pp. 24 and 29, and his Iran-Contra testimony. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^10]: S. Prt. 100-165, Appendix B, pp. 148-149, citing the deposition of Thomas E. Marum, October 25, 1988, p. 56, and the deposition of Mark Richard, November 7, 1988, pp. 37-40; p. 39 states that each Justice Department deponent denied participating in any agreement to obstruct a congressional investigation. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^11]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 1, "Executive Summary and Conclusions," "Past Failures," pp. 2-3. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^12]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 12, "Conclusions," items 5 and 6, "Covert Activity Issues," pp. 136-137. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^13]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 39, citing the testimony of Gen. Paul Gorman, Part 2, February 8, 1988, p. 44, and of David Westrate, Part 4, July 12, 1988, p. 144. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^14]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 39-40, citing Kerry's interviews with Costa Rican law enforcement officials, San Jose, October 31, 1987. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^15]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 40-41, citing the closed-session deposition of Werner Lotz, Part 4, April 8, 1988, pp. 673-690, and the deposition of Karol Prado. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^16]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 41, citing DEA testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime, July 28, 1988. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^17]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 42, citing the Iran-Contra testimony of "Thomas Castillo." https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^18]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "U.S. Government Funds and Companies with Drug Connections," pp. 42-43, with table and note 35 (GAO analysis of NHAO accounts; final figures provided by the State Department to the subcommittee, January 4, 1989). The table prints the four items and a total of $806,401.20. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^19]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 43-44, citing Duemling's statement to Kerry of April 6, 1988 and his Iran-Contra deposition, Appendix B, vol. 9, pp. 47-78. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^20]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 44. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^21]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "A. SETCO/Hondu Carib," pp. 44-45. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^22]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "B. Frigorificos de Puntarenas," pp. 45-47 (the $261,937 figure on p. 45; the table on p. 43 prints $261,932), citing the grand jury statements of Carlos Soto, the testimony of Ramon Milian Rodriguez, Part 2, February 11, 1988, pp. 260-261, and *U.S. v. Luis Rodriguez*, 88-0222 (S.D. Fla.). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^23]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "C. DIACSA," pp. 47-48, citing the affidavit of DEA Special Agent Daniel E. Moritz, *U.S. v. Carlton et al.*, S.D. Fla. 85-70. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^24]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "D. Vortex," pp. 48-49, citing the subcommittee testimony of Michael B. Palmer, April 6, 1988, and the Detroit indictment of 1986. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^25]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "The Case of George Morales and FRS/ARDE," p. 49, quoting State Department document 5136c (July 26, 1986), p. 5. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^26]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 50, citing the Iran-Contra testimony of Robert Owen, Appendix B, vol. 20, pp. 849-850, and the deposition of Karol Prado, Part 3, p. 285. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^27]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 50, citing the testimony of George Morales, Part 3, April 7, 1988, pp. 297, 300. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^28]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 50-51, citing the video depositions of Aguado, Prado and Cesar, Part 3, pp. 277-286, and the closed-session testimony of Adolfo Chamorro, April 6, 1988. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^29]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 51-52, citing Part 3, pp. 282-286. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^30]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 52-53, citing the Iran-Contra executive session testimony of Thomas Castillo, May 29, 1987, pp. 83-85, the testimony of Morales, Part 1, July 16, 1987, p. 98. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^31]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "John Hull," pp. 53-54, citing North notebook entries, the Iran-Contra deposition of Robert Owen, and the Castillo executive session. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^32]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 54-55, citing the testimony of Gary Betzner, Part 3, April 7, 1988, pp. 253-267, and the deposition of Werner Lotz, Part 4, April 8, 1988. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^33]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 55-56, citing the Iran-Contra deposition of Jeffrey Feldman, Appendix B, vol. 10, April 30, 1987, pp. 77-88. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^34]: S. Prt. 100-165, p. 56, citing the Iran-Contra testimony of Leon Kellner. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^35]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 56-58, citing the Part 1 testimony of October 30, 1987. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^36]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "The San Francisco Frogman Case, UDN-FARN and PCNE," pp. 58-59, quoting State Department document 5136c. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^37]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "The Cuban-American Connection," pp. 59-61, including the account of the May 6, 1986 meeting on p. 60 and the Earl notes on p. 61 (Iran-Contra deposition of Robert L. Earl, Appendix B, vol. 9, p. 1109). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^38]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 5, "Ramon Milian Rodriguez and Felix Rodriguez," pp. 61-62. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^39]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 6, "Cuba and Nicaragua," Introduction, pp. 62-63. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^40]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 6, pp. 64-65, citing the testimony of George Morales, Part 3, pp. 294-296, and Part 1, pp. 48-66. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^41]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 6, "Ideological Use of Drugs" and "Cuba, Panama and the Cartel," pp. 65-66, citing the testimony of Jose Blandon, Part 2, February 9, 1988, pp. 101-108. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^42]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 6, "Castro Denies Involvement," pp. 66-67, citing NBC Nightly News, February 25, 1988, and a meeting of March 14, 1988 with the deputy chief of the Cuban Interest Section. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^43]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 6, "Allegations Concerning Nicaragua," pp. 67-69, citing the deposition of Floyd Carlton, December 4, 1987, the closed-session testimony of Ramon Milian Rodriguez, June 25, 1987, DEA debriefs of a Miami attorney (October 21 and November 13, 1986) and the testimony of Gen. Gorman, Part 2, pp. 104-107. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^44]: S. Prt. 100-165, Honduras chapter, pp. 73-79. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^45]: S. Prt. 100-165, Honduras chapter, p. 76. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^46]: S. Prt. 100-165, pp. 76-77, citing the agreed statements in *U.S. v. North*, 1988, para. 102, and p. 121 ("Bueso-Rosa and the Contras"), citing the testimony of Francis McNeil, Part 3, April 4, 1988, p. 52, and John C. Lawn, Part 4, July 12, 1988, pp. 134-135. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^47]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 11, p. 122, citing the Iran-Contra deposition of Mark M. Richard, Appendix B, vol. 23, August 19, 1987, pp. 122-128. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^48]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 11, "Law Enforcement vs. National Security: Confused Priorities," Introduction, p. 121. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^49]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 11, "Barry Seal and the Cartel," p. 121. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^50]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 11, "Intelligence vs. Law Enforcement" and "Misguided Priorities," pp. 122-123, citing the testimony of Richard Gregorie, July 12, 1988, and the April 1, 1985 Owen memorandum to North (Iran-Contra exhibit RWO 7). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^51]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 11, "Case Studies," pp. 126-132, citing the testimony of Michael Palmer, Part 3, April 6, 1988, the testimony of Frank Camper, Part 4, and the deposition of Richard Brenneke, April 23, 1988. Camper's account of the Air India bombing is his testimony as summarized on p. 130. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^52]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 3, "The Bahamas," pp. 14-16. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^53]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 3, pp. 18-19, citing the State Department's 1988 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^54]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 4, "Colombia," pp. 25-35, "Origin of the Cartels," pp. 27-28. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^55]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 1, pp. 2-3, and ch. 9, "Panama," pp. 79-98. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^56]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 9, pp. 88-89, citing the testimony of Floyd Carlton, Part 2, February 10, 1988, p. 202, and the McNeil prepared statement, Part 3, p. 318. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^57]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 9, "U.S. Knowledge of Noriega's Activities," "Why Did the U.S. Fail To Respond to Noriega Allegations?" and "Mixed Messages," pp. 88-92, citing the testimony of Gorman, Part 2, pp. 38-39, of Admiral Murphy, Part 4, pp. 239-242, and of Norman Bailey before the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, March 1988. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^58]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 12, "Conclusions," pp. 133-145, items 1 through 11. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^59]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 11, "Conclusion," pp. 132-133, quoting an NBC Nightly News interview with Richard Gregorie of February 22, 1989. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^60]: S. Prt. 100-165, ch. 10, "Money," "Summary and Conclusions," p. 120. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^61]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, hearings before the Subcommittees on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications and International Economic Policy, Trade, Oceans and Environment, S. Hrg. 100-773, Part 1, 100th Cong., 1st sess., May 27, July 15 and October 30, 1987. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0003
[^62]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama*, hearings before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, S. Hrg. 100-773, Part 2, 100th Cong., 2d sess., February 8, 9, 10 and 11, 1988. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0004
[^63]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy: Hearings*, S. Hrg. 100-773, Part 3, April 4, 5, 6 and 7, 1988. Betzner's testimony is cited in the 1988 report as Part 3, April 7, 1988, and Morales's as Part 3, April 7, 1988. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0005
[^64]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy: The Cartel, Haiti and Central America*, hearings before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, S. Hrg. 100-773, Part 4, July 11, 12 and 14, 1988. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0009
[^65]: Kerry, John, and Hank Brown, *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate*, S. Prt. 102-140, 102d Cong., 2d sess. (December 1992; Washington: GPO, 1993), ch. 2, "Introduction and Summary of Investigation," p. 18. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003 (GPO print); electronic text of the committee's version: https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/02intro.htm
[^66]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 2, pp. 18-19. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^67]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 2, p. 19 (printed text); electronic text of ch. 2, https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/02intro.htm, for the "two attorneys, with no budget for travel" and Banking Committee sentences. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^68]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 2, pp. 19-20. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^69]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 2, p. 17 (introductory paragraph) and pp. 20-21 ("Senator Brown's View"). https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^70]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," pp. 108-109. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^71]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 11, "BCCI, The CIA and Foreign Intelligence," pp. 289 and 324. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^72]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 11, pp. 289, 292 (citing testimony of Kerr and of Altman, S. Hrg. 102-350, Pt. 3) and 293. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^73]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 20, "BCCI and Kissinger Associates," Introduction, p. 549. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003 ; electronic text: https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/20kiss.htm
[^74]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 20, p. 550, n. 507; electronic text, https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/20kiss.htm. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^75]: *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 20, pp. 549-551 (printed text); electronic text of ch. 20 and note by Steven Aftergood, https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/index.html and https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/20kiss.htm.