Word: secords
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...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...
...Only about $3.5 million of the $30 million that Iran paid for U.S. weapons was spent to assist the contras. Another $1 million was spent on other covert activities that Secord would not fully describe, and $2 million is still unaccounted for. Nearly $8 million is sitting in frozen Swiss bank accounts controlled by Secord's business partner, the Iranian-born Albert Hakim. What will eventually happen to this money is uncertain...
...When the story of the arms sales to Iran began breaking last November and Reagan had to say something publicly, Secord took it upon himself to draft a speech for the President, unapologetically laying out most of the facts about the supply of arms to both Iran and the contras (though not the money connection between the two). Secord sent the draft to North. But North told him someone in the White House -- he did not say who -- had rejected the draft as "too hard." Reagan's eventual speech, delivered last Nov. 13, was unconvincingly vague about the Iran deals...
...Attorney General Edwin Meese made public the Iran- contra connection and North was fired from the National Security Council staff, North and Secord met in a Virginia hotel room that Secord had rented to talk things over. North received two phone calls: the first from Vice President George Bush, the second from the President who had just dismissed him. (North, a Marine lieutenant colonel, stood at attention to receive the call from Reagan.) So far as Secord could tell, both expressed regret and thanked North for his efforts...
These and other portions of Secord's tale remain to be confirmed, challenged or expanded by subsequent witnesses, prominently including former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who will testify this week; Hakim, who has the most detailed records of the maze of Swiss bank accounts through which Iranian and contra arms money flowed; and eventually North. But only one or two of these witnesses will be in a position to give testimony as detailed and sweeping as Secord...