Word: covert
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...North. Shortly thereafter, the National Security Agency, which is in charge of providing international electronic intelligence, began intercepting communications between North and Israeli officials. As the months wore on, the NSC, the CIA and the Pentagon got wind of messages suggesting a connection between the Iran arms sales and covert aid to the contras. But sources in the Reagan Administration say the evidence was "fragmentary," and none of the agencies apparently followed...
...title at the NSC was innocuous: deputy director for political-military affairs. But North's derring-do style and can-do effectiveness put him at the center of a series of strategic covert actions: he helped plan the mining of Nicaraguan harbors by CIA agents; his office was the nerve center for the invasion of Grenada; he masterminded the hijacking of the plane carrying the Achille Lauro terrorists; and he has been the principal adviser behind a private network designed to fund and arm the contras. "His role was to go right up to the limit of the law," says...
...past few years these tendencies have combined with two others that were almost bound to cause trouble sooner or later. One is a penchant for covert actions that fit in with Reagan's gung-ho activism. Finding some legal justification for them was another of those details that the President left to aides. The other tendency was to delegate disproportionate authority to subordinates who took a can-do approach, and then to let them operate with little supervision. In retrospect it seems absurd that so ostensibly minor a functionary as North would have been entrusted with such delicate matters...
...identified Iran as such a country. The laws do provide waivers that allow the President to skirt them in the event of a crisis, but they generally stipulate that the White House notify Congress, which it did not do. More generally, the Intelligence Oversight Act requires prior notice of covert operations to the House and Senate intelligence committees...
...government of laws, run by officials who can be held accountable. This moral principle, more than even its arsenal of nuclear missiles, accounts for the fundamental strength the U.S. exerts in its dealings with people around the world. That is why any operation -- whether it be the covert shipment of arms to Iran or the secret diversion of funds to the contras -- that is run in a manner designed to skirt legal accountability represents such a deep danger...