Sunday, February 25, 2007

Iran-Contra Redux?

Read "THE REDIRECTION: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" by SEYMOUR M. HERSH in The New Yorker (Issue of 2007-03-05. Posted 2007-02-25)

This is an important article. "In the past few months," according to Seymour Hersh, "the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy." I think people in the United States have tended to consider decision in separate frames for the war in Iraq, the fighting in Lebanon, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Little attention seems to have been paid to the competition for power and influence in the oil-rich gulf region between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and less to Turkey's and Iran's concerns with Kurdish nationalism. Hersh's article suggests a framing that places these conflicts, and others, into a larger frame for consideration and decisions. The article suggests, in this larger context, that the Bush administration is consciously prosecuting a set of policies to wrench a wide region of the Middle East and Central Asia out of the previously existing balance of powers, unleashing huge and unpredictable forces in the process, in the hope of establishing a new balance more favorable to U.S. interests. Such a change in balance of power would necessarily affect the interests and probably draw the involvement not only of western Europe and Japan, but of Russia, many republics of the former Soviet Union, and China.

The thrust of Hersh's overall argument is beyond my competence, but I have extracted text from the article relating to a secondary theme:
To undermine Iran......the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government.......in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah........The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda......

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.......

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser......

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government (in Lebanon), according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.......

The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.....

I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.).....

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’.....

The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.
I also quote from an article from a couple of years ago in The Washington Post:
When Elliott Abrams stood in front of a federal judge in October 1991 and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress, few imagined he would ever return to government. At age 43, he had become one of the casualties of the Iran-contra scandal, detested by Democrats for his combative political style and mistrusted by human rights activists for playing down the crimes of right-wing dictatorships in Central America......

Abrams also had problems with Congress over the Iran-contra scandal. In 1991, he was forced to admit in court that he had not disclosed his knowledge of a secret contra supply network and his solicitation of a $10 million contribution for the contras from the sultan of Brunei. He received a pardon from President George H.W. Bush in December 1992.
Comment: This story seems to provide a very important advance in our understanding of the Bush administration. Hersh is a very highly respected journalist, who has broken several important stories in the past. I hope that a horde of investigative reporters join Seymour Hersh in investigating this story, and that they keep the heat on the Congress. Congress in turn should act vigorously to investigate the situation and take corrective actions for any infractions they discover. JAD

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