Word: nicaraguan
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...overzealous aides to conduct secret and possibly illegal operations right under his nose. The White House has done little to dispute that characterization, and for good reason: an inattentive Reagan who knew little of the weapons sales to Iran and nothing about the illicit funneling of arms to the Nicaraguan rebels seemed better than a President who played an active role in the affair...
Indeed, McFarlane's account indicated that he molded contra policy to comply with the President's orders. The former National Security Adviser said that in 1983 Reagan approved a secret CIA plan for mining Nicaraguan harbors to prevent arms and supplies from reaching the Sandinista regime. When Congress learned of the operation in 1984, it passed the Boland amendment, cutting off U.S. assistance to the anti-Sandinista rebels. Yet the President, McFarlane testified, directed his aides to continue helping the contras "hold body and soul together." Said McFarlane: "We were to demonstrate, by our simple conviction and persuasion, that...
...retired Air Force general sits hour after hour behind a long table, recounting how U.S. officials created a clandestine network to ship arms to Iran and the Nicaraguan contras, conducting what in effect was a secret American foreign policy. In minute detail, he exposes the covert attempts of high officials to circumvent the law. Vinegary and unrepentant, he avows that he was carrying out the policies of his President in an appropriate manner. The President again claims ignorance, saying he is still waiting to find out what his own Administration...
...Secord heard from North that Ronald Reagan knew about the diversion of profits from the Iranian arms sales to the contras. North told Secord that "in some conversations" he had mused to the President about the irony of having the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini unwittingly finance the Nicaraguan guerrillas. But given North's reputation for embellishing or even inventing conversations between the President and himself, should what he told Secord be believed? "I did not take it as a joke," said Secord. Nonetheless, he said he was "skeptical" about North's report of the conversations, because "it did not sound like...
...Secord described his contra supply operation to William Casey, then director of the CIA, at three meetings during the period when any Government assistance to the Nicaraguan rebels was forbidden by Congress. One of those meetings was held in the White House. Casey approved of the supposedly private arms operation. In an interview with TIME last December, which turned out to be his final public comment on the affair before he was hospitalized for a brain tumor, Casey insisted, "We were barred from being involved with the contras, and we kept away from that." Secord said he doubted Casey knew...