Word: iran-contra
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...Powell's success seems to be a combination of scrupulous efficiency and disarming charm. His tenure at the NSC is a case in point. Powell is given a good deal of the credit for restoring order and collective confidence to an organization that was fractured and demoralized during the Iran-contra scandal. As Weinberger's de facto chief of staff from 1983 to 1986, Powell knew early on of the Administration's secret arms sales to Iran. Weinberger told the Washington Post last spring that Powell "was the person I used to carry out the President's directions to make...
...support evaporated when the Iran-contra scandal broke last year, says Hull, and now el Patron is the target of major investigations and a controversial lawsuit in the U.S. "In the news media and absolutely nowhere else, I have been accused of being a CIA agent, a drug smuggler and an assassin," declared Hull in a statement he says he made last summer to the office of Iran-contra Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. "I can assure you that if the assassination charge were true, there are people walking the streets today that would have long since been six feet under...
...congressional investigators expect their probe to tie up some of the loose connections of the Iran-contra affair. Hull greatly admired former National Security Council Aide Oliver North, the contras' aggressive champion. When North's associate Robert Owen appeared before Congress's Iran-contra committees last spring, he read a treacly ode to the Marine colonel penned by none other than John Hull. The contras gain sustenance, the poem read, from the "knowledge that on this troubled earth there still walk men like Ollie North . . . In our lifetime, you have given us the legend...
Hull, never summoned to appear before the Iran-contra committees, says he did talk to Walsh's investigators under a grant of limited immunity. Hull told them that in 1984 and 1985 he received $10,000 a month from Contra Leader Adolfo Calero to finance rebel support activities. Though he insists he answered the independent counsel's questions honestly, Hull is concerned that Walsh might try to indict him for perjury...
Reviews of The Crimes of Patriots, as well as the book's own jacket, make much of its revelations about the Iran-Contra affair. But they shouldn't. As is the case with Bob Woodward's Veil, portions of this book that deal with the arms for hostages swap are somewhat afterthoughtish. After appearing on the jacket, the name Richard Secord does not come up again until page 273; Ollie North comes up at about the same point but figures even less prominently in Kwitny's narrative...