Lest We Forget (Incorporating Know Your Neocons)
I thought it timely, in the light of current events and actors, to revisit Iran Contra and the ripples it has sent through history.
The Iran Contra affair is one of the great bores of the eighties (like the endless N. Ireland negotiations) on which the eyes have glazed over long before the punchline. Oh god, boring, switch channels, is there any comedy on? Of course we now know that the obfuscation and perjury was a deliberate strategy, but that’s by the by. To the average viewer it just went on and on and on.
So – to cut things short, the last Republican administration illegally sold arms to Iran a] in exchange for the hostages and b] to secretly fund their clandestine support of the right-wing guerillas in Central America, notably in Nicaragua. That support wasn’t just monetary but practical: the US provided the guerillas with special ops soldiers, deniable mercenaries and contract thugs. Some of the current big names in Iraq ‘security contracting’ got their start then, as did some of the very charter airlines that are being used for rendition now.
Americans were complicit in some of the worst atrocities, including torture and death squads. Many of the personnel in command then, are in the upper reaches of the military now. Even if such officers kept their hands clean of actual torture and murder, they certainly aided and abetted it.
It’s also thought that members of the CIA, military and US administration colluded in cocaine smuggling to fund their Nicaraguan activities under the radar of Congress. (This in the time of the much-vaunted Republican War On Drugs. IOKIYAR is no new thing.) The blockade against Panaman strongman Manuel Noriega was, when it comes right down to it, by way of being just a drug turf war but it did provide very useful psyops practice for the US army.
And I haven’t even begun to mention the School of the Americas, that graduate school for psychopaths.
This is all very general, and of course with the usual caveat that your mileage may vary if you’re a wingnut, but that’s the affair in a nutshell. So why is it relevant now?
Because these people are the people in charge now. and they really are a bunch of criminals. They didn’t slink away in shame – they were virtually all pardoned for their crimes by the current President’s father and many are right back in there, directing America’s insane foreign policy. One of those people, Elliot Abrams, really doesn’t get enough attention. So let’s lift up the riock and see what’s underneath. His resume:
- National Security Council: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs, 2002 to present
- National Security Council: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations, 2001?02
- U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom: Chairman, 2000-2001; Commissioner, 1999?2001
- Inter-American Foundation: nominated as member of Board of Directors for the 1985?90 term
- Department of State: Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1985-89
- Department of State: Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, 1981?85
- Department of State: Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1981
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Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan: Chief of Staff, Special Counsel, 1977?79
Sen. Henry M. Jackson: Staffer/Special Counsel, 1975?76
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations: Assistant Counsel, 1975
Wooo, that’s a pretty impressive resume. Currently Abrams is the man shaping American policy in the Middle East – ie US/UK/Israel v Everyone Else, prize = all the oil. (Well, they call it a policy.)
But Mr Abrams has been a Bad Man. He’s admitted covering up illegal military action, committed perjury and hidden the evidence of massacres and human rights violations, just for a start:
Elliott Abrams in January 1981 joined the Reagan Administration as an assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs and later became assistant secretary for human rights. On April 19, 1985, Secretary of State George P. Shultz offered Abrams the position of assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs (ARA), overseeing South and Central American and Caribbean issues. Shultz explained that it would be a difficult job, but Abrams quickly accepted. Shultz promised to “manage the emergence of E[lliott] A[brams] as King of L[atin] A[merica].” 1
1 Hill Note, 4/19/85, ANS 0001039:Abrams assumed his position at ARA in July 1985. Under Shultz, he was responsible for Central American issues and became the Reagan Administration’s chief advocate on Capitol Hill for U.S. aid to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, which had been cut off in October 1984 by the Boland Amendment. During Abrams’ tenure at ARA, humanitarian aid for the contras and later lethal aid were lawfully resumed.
Abrams worked closely with Lt. Col. Oliver L. North of the National Security Council Staff and Alan D. Fiers, Jr., the chief of the CIA’s Central American Task Force. Together they comprised the principal members of a Restricted Interagency Group (RIG), which worked on Central American issues for the Reagan Administration.
In the course of his work, Abrams became aware of North’s efforts to assist the contras militarily, despite the Boland prohibition on U.S. aid.2 Abrams also was directly involved in secretly seeking third-country contributions to the contras.
2 It was Abrams’ “working assumption” that the Boland Amendment applied to the NSC staff. Abrams, Select Committees Testimony, 6/2/87, p. 8.
On October 7, 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress. Abrams admitted that he withheld from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in October 1986 his knowledge of North’s contra-assistance activities. In support of his guilty plea, Abrams admitted that it was his belief “that disclosure of Lt. Col. North’s activities in the resupply of the Contras would jeopardize final enactment” of a $100 million appropriation pending in Congress at the time of his testimony.3 He also admitted that he withheld from HPSCI information that he had solicited $10 million in aid for the contras from the Sultan of Brunei.
Why ever would a President hire an admitted criminal, Daddy’s pardon notwithstanding? Well this might just have something to do with it:
Institutional affilations:
[…]
Middle East Forum: Signatory of 2000 report urging military action against Syria (7)Project for the New American Century: Signatory of 1997 Statement of Principles and various other statements (8)
American Jewish Committee: Former member, National Advisory Council (3)
[…]
Well, well, what a surprise.
The rollcall of former Reagan staffers in the current administration is long- Cheney and Rumsfeld are givens but there are many other lesser-known names (like Abrams himself) – even Joshua Bolten, the current WH Chief of Staff, was a Reagan staffer during that period. Hhe may not have been directly involved in Iran/Contra but the rot was so deep that the whole Reagan administration is tainted by the criminality in retrospect.
Not that that is any bar to advancement – even disgraced names like Porter Goss’ and John Negroponte‘s, rather than being cause for open contempt, are now treated with respect by media commentators and foreign-policy pundits.
That tainted past is poisoning the present. The Project For The American Century types secretly had a free run at their mad theories of destabilisation, chaos and eventual US hegemony in Central America in the eighties – now they want to apply them openly in the Middle East.
