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To: carol243 who wrote (75721)	10/1/2002 4:09:16 PM
From: Baldur Fjvlnisson	Respond to of 208838

Iran Contra Pardons Saved Poppy Bush Consortium News ROBERT PARRY pearly-abraham.tripod.com February 19, 2001 In marked contrast to the continuing Republican investigations of President Clinton, the Democrats eight years ago cooperated with Republicans in shutting down substantive inquiries that implicated President George H.W. Bush in a variety of geopolitical scandals. At that time, the Democrats apparently felt that pursuing those inquiries into Bush's role in secret contacts with Iran both in 1980 and during the Iran-contra affair and getting to the bottom of alleged CIA military support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the mid-1980s would distract from the domestic policy goals at the start of the Clinton presidency. That judgment, however, has come back to haunt the Democrats. Clearing George H.W. Bush in 1993 ironically set the stage both for the Republican scandal-mongering against Clinton and for the restoration of the Bush family dynasty in 2000. Certainly, the Democratic gestures of bipartisanship were not reciprocated by the Republicans. They opted for a pattern of aggressive politics that challenged the Clinton administration from its first days and has continued through the 2000 Election and into the new round of investigations of ex-President Clinton. The Democrats have found themselves constantly on the defensive, sputtering about the unfairness of it all. Historic Openings It might seem like ancient history now, but eight years ago, as the White House was changing hands from Bush to Clinton, there were promising opportunities for getting at the truth about the Reagan-Bush era. Lawrence Walsh's Iran-contra investigation was still alive, although Bush had dealt it a severe blow in December 1992 by pardoning six Iran-contra defendants. That move blocked the Iran-contra cover-up trial of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and the possible incrimination of President Bush himself. Despite that setback, Walsh's investigation had made some new breakthroughs. Walsh had exposed details of the long-running Iran-contra cover-up. He also had learned that Bush had withheld his personal diaries from investigators. Walsh was pressing Bush to sit down for an interview with the special prosecutor's office to reconcile Bush's earlier insistence of little Iran-contra knowledge with later disclosures revealing Bush's deeper role. Walsh had agreed to postpone that questioning during the 1992 campaign, with the understanding that Bush would submit to the interview afterwards. But Bush was balking. Also in December 1992, new witnesses had come forward with evidence that the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 indeed had made secret contacts with Iran's radical Islamic government while it was holding 52 American hostages. That hostage crisis in 1980 had eroded President Jimmy Carter's reelection support and guaranteed Reagan's victory. Now, there was new evidence that the Republicans had been playing games behind Carter's back to deny him the October Surprise of a hostage release before the election. Privately, some of Walsh's investigators had come to believe, too, that the Republican contacts with Iran in 1980 had been the precursor to the later Iran-contra arms sales in 1985-86. One investigator told me that otherwise the fruitless Reagan-Bush arms payoffs to Iran in the mid-1980s made little sense. New pieces of the 1980 puzzle had surfaced in a congressional October Surprise inquiry that was still underway in late 1992. A detailed letter arrived from former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr describing the internal battles within Iran's government in 1980 about how to respond to the secret Republican initiative. In another development, a biographer of French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches testified about deMarenches's private account of secret meetings between top Republicans and Iranians in Paris in the fall of 1980. Perhaps, most remarkably, the Russian Supreme Soviet sent a confidential report to the U.S. Congress recounting what Soviet intelligence had learned while tracking the secret Republican-Iranian negotiations in 1980. The Russians reported, too, that leading Republicans had met with Iranians in Paris in 1980. As Bill Clinton was about to take office, there were other lingering questions about secret Republican dealings with Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the 1980s. The CIA allegedly had assisted in arranging third-country supplies of sophisticated armaments to Saddam Hussein in his border war with Iran. President Bush had angrily denounced such charges after they were raised following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. But a number of witnesses were alleging that the CIA had helped arrange the supplies, including cluster bombs to Iraq through Chile. In 1992-93, the Democrats were in a strong position to get to the bottom of all these historic questions that had so entangled U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress as well as the White House. Walsh was furious with Bush's Iran-contra pardons and was considering impaneling a new grand jury to force Bush's testimony. [See Walsh's book, Firewall, for more details.] Getting answers to these questions also made policy sense, if for no other reason than it was important for the new administration to know where diplomatic mine fields might be hidden in this delicate geopolitical landscape.