Word: shipments
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite the botched delivery, the next month, an American hostage, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, was freed. In his press conference last week, Attorney General Edwin Meese contended that Reagan did not know about the Israeli shipment until after it had occurred, but he did not specify when the President was told. Reagan telephoned Peres to thank him for his help in winning the clergyman's release. Thus the mold was cast for future swaps involving arms and hostages...
...July 1985 with David Kimche, then director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry. Kimche informed him that Iran was prepared to improve relations with the U.S. and help win the release of American hostages in Lebanon on one condition: if the Reagan Administration provided Iran with a "good faith" shipment of weapons. In September McFarlane told Kimche that Reagan opposed any arms-for-hostages deal, but some U.S. officials assert the NSC chief did not object explicitly to Israel's supplying Iran on its own. Israel delivered a planeload of arms to Iran that month; just days later, Hostage Benjamin...
...President's image had barely faded from the TV screens when he admitted that he had been wrong on one important point. Three times during his Wednesday-night news conference Ronald Reagan had denied approving arms shipments by any other country to Iran, even after reporters reminded him that his staff had revealed that the U.S. had condoned at least one such shipment, by Israel in August 1985. Yet almost as soon as the President was off-camera, aides told him he had erred. Within 15 minutes the White House press office rushed out a statement in Reagan's name...
Once the cameras rolled, the President's demeanor was appropriately somber. Though he claimed that all the aides who knew about the secret diplomatic contacts with Iranian officials approved of them, he acknowledged in his opening statement that "several top advisers opposed the sale of even a modest shipment of defensive weapons and spare parts to Iran." He had weighed their advice and rejected it, said Reagan. "The responsibility for the decision and the operation is mine and mine alone . . . I was convinced then and I am convinced now that while the risks were great, so too was the potential...
...Iran, and running them without the advice or knowledge of Congress, or even most of the Executive Branch. The arms transfers were so secret that some top Administration officials are still hearing significant details for the first time; Donald Regan learned only last week about an Israeli arms shipment to Iran in November 1985 that the U.S. had condoned. Oklahoma Democrat David Boren, who will take over chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee when the next Congress convenes in January, pledges a "careful and thorough study of the NSC" aimed at returning it to its original role as a body...