Word: iran-contra
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Until last week the Iran-contra scandal seemed ready to fade from the courts, the news and the mind. After costing more than four years and $25.5 million, the investigation headed by special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was limping to a close. A federal appeals court had overturned Lieut. Colonel Oliver North's felony conviction, and a retrial seemed unlikely. The same outcome seemed possible for former National Security Adviser John Poindexter's conviction...
...Iran-contra affair may be only part of a broader and previously undisclosed pattern of illegal activities by intelligence agencies during the tenure of Ronald Reagan and his CIA chief William Casey. Sources close to the unfolding investigation of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International told TIME that U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, maintained secret accounts with the globe-girdling financial empire, which has been accused of laundering billions of dollars in drug money, financing illegal arms deals and engaging in other crimes...
...that the Senate intelligence committee will call Fiers and George as witnesses at Gates' confirmation hearing. Last July a federal appeals court set aside North's 1989 conviction on the ground that some witnesses who testified against him may have been influenced by his congressional testimony about Iran-contra. That testimony could not be used against North in court because Congress had granted him immunity. Concerned that future Senate testimony by Fiers or George might also be put beyond his reach by a grant of immunity, Walsh last week issued a pointed warning to the committee not to imperil...
...ALSO Iran-Contra: The scandal that will...
...next month makes provocative disclosures about the tangled relationship between U.S. and Israeli intelligence services. According to Major General Avraham Tamir, a retired senior Israeli defense official quoted in Dangerous Liaison, the REAGAN ADMINISTRATION approved Israeli arms shipments to Tehran for use against Iraq in 1981, long before the Iran-contra affair. Authors Andrew and Leslie Cockburn say the transfers were part of a strategy to head off Soviet influence in the gulf region. The book also describes in detail Operation KK Mountain, in which the CIA secretly paid Israel as much as $20 million annually throughout the 1960s...