Faulty Intelligence Deceived Reagan, Weinberger Says

WASHINGTON —  Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, the last public witness of the three-month-long Iran- contra hearings, said Friday that President Reagan made his decision to sell arms to Iran based on erroneous intelligence that contradicted all other official U.S. assessments of the situation in that country.

Weinberger, who will conclude his testimony Monday, said the arms-for-hostages swap was based on assumptions that Iran was losing the war with Iraq, that there were “moderates” in authority in Tehran and that those moderates could help free American hostages in Lebanon--all notions that he knew to be false from his own intelligence briefings.

In fact, he said, it was on the basis of more accurate U.S. intelligence estimates that he consistently opposed the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran from the first time it was proposed to him in mid-1985 until it was exposed in November, 1986.

He Never Wavered

Weinberger said he never wavered from his initial reaction to the arms sale idea recorded in a memo dated June 19, 1985: “This is almost too absurd to comment on. . . . The assumption here is (1) that Iran is about to fall and (2) we can deal with them on a rational basis. It is like asking (Libyan leader Moammar) Kadafi over for a cozy lunch.”

As a result of his opposition, Weinberger said he was cut out of the decision-making process by National Security Advisers Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter, as well as by other “people with their own agenda who did not want the President to hear these arguments.”

Even his own Defense Department employees helped deprive him of information, Weinberger said. When he inquired about a report he received from within his department in late 1985 that referred to high-level talks between U.S. and Iranian officials, he was told he had received it by mistake and was not supposed to be on the “distribution list” for that report.

Yet, despite his clear opposition to the policy, Weinberger refused to join those critics in Congress who contend the ill-conceived Iranian arms sale is responsible for drawing the United States into the current war of nerves in the Persian Gulf.

When Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.) suggested that the Administration agreed to provide Navy escorts for Kuwaiti oil tankers in the gulf to compensate for selling arms to Kuwait’s enemies in Iran, Weinberger replied: “I’m absolutely convinced that there was no connection.”

Weinberger’s testimony lent credence to the long-held suspicions of many members of the Iran-contra committees that the President was persuaded to sell arms to Iran based on false intelligence reports supplied to him by his national security advisers.

Earlier, Secretary of State George P. Shultz told the committees he was stunned to learn in late 1986 that the President was being told by White House aides that the arms deal had achieved a lull in hostage-taking--a contention that Shultz strongly disputed.

“He (Reagan) was getting slanted briefings and cooked-up intelligence,” Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) said after hearing Weinberger’s testimony. “Who in their right mind would tell the President that Iraq was winning the war?”

Weinberger expressed surprise when the committees showed him a memo written by Poindexter that went to the President along with a document Reagan signed on Jan. 17, 1986, approving direct U.S. arms sales to Iran. Among other things, it referred to “Iran’s deteriorating position in the war with Iraq.”

‘Quite the Contrary’

“It wasn’t anybody’s opinion that I talked to,” the defense secretary said. “I certainly did not have the view that Iraq was winning or anything of the kind. Quite the contrary . . . it’s Iraqi military strategy not to pursue any kind of decisive military end. . . . They’ve been trying to get a cease-fire and trying to get the war ended by negotiation. They have specifically eschewed the idea of military victory, as far as I can tell.”

Although Weinberger and Shultz opposed the initiative, Weinberger’s stance differed sharply from that of the secretary of state, who supported the idea of seeking an opening to Iran while opposing the sale of arms. Weinberger even challenged the basic idea that there was any chance of achieving a new relationship with the Islamic fundamentalists who control Iran.

“I was . . . against the whole idea,” he declared. “I did not think and do not think there’s any moderate element in Iran that is still alive and I think that it was not a good idea in any sense of the term. . . . I didn’t think there was anybody we could deal with that was not virulently anti-American.”

Weinberger recalled that when McFarlane first proposed a change in U.S. policy toward Iran in mid-1985, his recommendation was based on CIA intelligence reports that directly contradicted intelligence Weinberger was receiving from the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time. He noted that, while McFarlane’s proposal referred to “moderates,” it mentioned no names.

‘None of It Rang True’

“It was just contrary to everything that I had heard, all of the other intelligence that I had seen, my own personal views and the knowledge that I had of the way various battles of war had gone, what they said about us (and) their support of international terrorism,” he said. “None of it rang true, as far as I was concerned.”

Unlike Shultz, however, Weinberger did not blame the CIA for the erroneous information.

“I had a very high regard for the CIA and for their analysts and their analytical capability,” he said. “And one of the reasons that I disagreed with this particular estimate was that it seemed to me quite at variance both with the daily briefings that I have from CIA as well as from their special reports.”

One of the chief reasons Weinberger claims to have opposed the arms sale was his fear that the Iranians eventually would try to “blackmail” the United States by threatening to publicly divulge the initiative. As late as last Nov. 10, after the Iran initiative became public, his notes of a White House meeting show that he still was expressing that fear.

Not Entirely in Dark

Despite his opposition to the sale, Weinberger was not kept entirely in the dark about it, as Shultz claims to have been. In fact, the defense secretary played a small role by arranging for the Defense Department to sell the weapons to the CIA that then went to Tehran.

Nor did Weinberger lack other sources of information about the arms sales after he was cut out of the policy-making loop by Poindexter. He continued to receive intelligence reports from Defense Department sources and on two separate occasions learned of developments in the arms-for-hostage initiative from unidentified “foreign intelligence sources,” presumably in Israel.

In his testimony, Poindexter sought to explain his advocacy of the arms initiative by arguing that neither Weinberger nor Shultz had ever proposed any policy alternatives for freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Weinberger took strong exception, arguing that the Defense Department had devoted much of its energy to developing ideas of how to free the hostages.

It was ironic, Aspin noted, that the Reagan Administration, which claims to support a strong military, failed to consult the Joint Chiefs of Staff before embarking on a policy that ultimately had military implications for the United States and the Persian Gulf region.

Taft’s Denial Told

According to Aspin, Deputy Defense Secretary William H. Taft IV has told the committee that he was asked by Kuwaiti officials in October, 1986, about a month before the Iran initiative became public, whether the United States was selling arms to Iran. Taft denied it.

Aspin noted that this incident preceded by only a month the Kuwaiti requests to both the United States and the Soviet Union to protect their oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

It was Taft’s story that convinced Aspin of a link between the Iranian arms sales and the Kuwaiti request for U.S. naval escorts in the Persian Gulf. He said news of the arms sales, particularly after Taft denied it, must have caused “enormous unease” among those gulf states like Kuwait that are aligned with Iraq.

“I mean, they wanted some kind of proof positive that . . . we did, in fact, side with Iraq and Kuwait in the crunch,” Aspin added.

Just as Weinberger denied any connection between the Iran arms sale and the current tense situation in the Persian Gulf, he also refused under questioning by Aspin to side with those who claim that Poindexter, a Navy rear admiral, and his aide, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, embarrassed the military services by their roles in the Iran-contra affair.

Praises North’s Heroism

Weinberger praised North’s heroism on the battlefield in Vietnam but refused to judge the Marine’s performance at the White House. He said he was not concerned that other military officers would follow the example that North set by destroying White House documents and lying to Congress.

Earlier in the day, former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan concluded his second and final day of testimony before the panels with a continuation of his blunt appraisal of what occurred and the people with whom he worked at the White House.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) suggested to Regan that top Administration officials should have taken more time before making public last Nov. 25 their discovery that arms sale profits had been diverted to the Nicaraguan rebels.

By taking “another half-day, even maybe a day getting more of the facts,” Hatch said, top Administration officials might have “received basically the whole story” from Casey, North and Poindexter.

“It may be taking things a little bit too much for granted that they would have told the truth and nothing but the truth at that particular moment,” said Regan, who had offered a vivid account of how he said the President and his senior advisers were misled by North and Poindexter.

Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) charged that, by usurping the policy-making functions of Cabinet officers such as Shultz and Weinberger, Poindexter and North had become “a junta within the government of the United States.” He added: “A coup in effect had occurred in the White House.”

Regan offered several suggestions that would make it more difficult for top officials to be left in the dark on future secret operations. Among other things, he said, the President’s legal counsel should always be consulted about any covert action “before it starts, before a decision is made as to whether we should go into one or not.”

Even after the arms sales became public last November, Regan recalled, Poindexter had refused to include then-White House counsel Peter J. Wallison in meetings at which the National Security Council staff was trying to reconstruct the events that surrounded the deals.

Further, Regan said, the flow of White House paper work “should be restructured so that that has to flow from A to B to C, so that we’re sure we know under what circumstance the President is getting it, how he’s getting it and what he does with it.”

Reagan’s Authorization

Regan, Weinberger and Shultz have all said they were not informed until last November that Reagan had signed an authorization for the Iranian arms sales in January, 1986. According to Poindexter’s testimony, that was almost a year after the President signed a preliminary draft.

But the former chief of staff said there is no way to ensure that future national security advisers will keep their Presidents informed, as Poindexter apparently failed to on the diversion of funds to the contras. He said the only solution is: “Pick the right people.”

Regan’s relaxed and direct manner before the committees appeared to have helped repair a reputation on Capitol Hill that had been damaged by almost non-stop confrontation with Congress during his two-year stint as chief of staff. Regan had been sharply criticized for his handling of the White House after the scandal broke and was ousted from his job last February.

“Frankly, I have been impressed that some of the witnesses that appeared before this committee have had a convenient loss of memory. I think you’ve impressed the vast majority of the committee with your forthrightness and candor,” Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) told Regan.