Scrubbed: Lee Hamilton And The Unbearable Baggage Of Recent History

(UPDATED below)

Guest contributor Jerry Meldon has an interesting new piece at Bob Parry's site, Consortium News dot com. It's called "Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Hyde", and it's interesting in quite a number of ways.

The "Dr. Hamilton" of the title is Lee Hamilton [photo], whose name is well-known to students of 9/11 -- not all of whom may be familiar with much of his background. Dr. Hamilton's official biography is indeed a well-connected one; here's a sample:

Lee H. Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Hamilton represented Indiana’s 9th congressional district for 34 years beginning January 1965. He served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress.
...

Hamilton served as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a forward looking, bi-partisan assessment of the situation in Iraq, created at the urging of Congress. He served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and co-chaired the 9/11 Public Discourse Project established to monitor implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. He is currently a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director’s Advisory Board, the CIA Director’s Economic Intelligence Advisory Panel, the Defense Secretary’s National Security Study Group, and the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil.

The Wikipedia page on Dr. Hamilton contains a good deal of overlap but some interesting additional information:

Hamilton was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat as part of the national Democratic landslide of 1964. He chaired many committees during his tenure in office, including the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Joint Committee on Printing, and others. As chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, Hamilton chose not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush, stating that he did not think it would be "good for the country" to put the public through another impeachment trial. He was one of the top choices to be running mate of Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton. It was specualated that Hamilton's chances were blocked by feminist organziations like National Organization for Women who didn't find Hamilton sufficantly pro-choice on abortion. He remained in Congress until 1999; at the time he was one of two surviving members of the large Democratic freshman class of 1965 (the other being John Conyers).

On March 15, 2006, Congress announced the formation of the Iraq Study Group, organized by the United States Institute of Peace, of which Hamilton is the Democratic co-chair, along with the former Secretary of State (under President George H.W. Bush) James A. Baker III. Hamilton, like Baker, is considered a master negotiator.

Since leaving Congress, Mr. Hamilton has served as a member of the Hart-Rudman Commission, and was co-chair of the Baker-Hamilton Commission to Investigate Certain Security Issues at Los Alamos. He sits on many advisory boards, including those to the CIA, the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, and the United States Army. Hamilton is an Advisory Board member and Co-Chair for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He is currently the president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was appointed to serve as the vice chair of the 9/11 Commission.

Jerry Meldon's piece fills in more of the background on Dr. Hamilton's decision, "as chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran", "not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush".

Dr. Hamilton's "justification" for his decision -- that he did not think it would be "good for the country" to put the public through another impeachment trial -- may or may not represent faulty judgment about what's "good for the country", but it undeniably puts one man's opinion -- his -- above the rule of law.

It's a neocon fascist act, thoroughly consistent with the acts of the neocon fascists with whom he cooperates today -- as "an Advisory Board member and Co-Chair for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy".

This means: As an alleged Democrat who supports neocon fascist policies, Lee Hamilton tries to make neocon fascist policies seem reasonable, and this fabricated support for the Republican agenda among the "Democrats" is then used to paint any opposition as "hyperpartisan" -- shrill, radical, and not serious.

In other words, the "Partnership for a Secure America" is one of many front groups set up to provide a veneer of legitimacy for the post-9/11 transformation of America, and Dr. Lee Hamilton, the "bipartisan Democrat", has been selected to give the "not-for-profit" group its Democratic "credibility".

As Jerry Meldon points out, Dr. Hamilton has a long history of enabling criminal abuse of the country by radical Republicans. Extensive excerpts from Meldon:

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

He probably would prefer not to revisit fateful decisions he made while chairing investigations into Republican dirty work, especially those that let George H.W. Bush off the hook and cleared George W. Bush's path to the White House.

As veteran journalist Robert Parry has persuasively argued at Consortiumnews.com, the Bush family name squeaked through the 80’s and early 90’s essentially mud-free, only because:

-- On Christmas Eve 1992, lame-duck President George H.W. Bush pardoned six of his earlier co-conspirators in the Iran-Contra affair (the Reagan-Bush White House’s diversion of profits from illegal arms sales to Iran to bankroll Nicaragua’s contra terrorists in defiance of a congressional ban). Until he was pardoned that day, former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger might have bought clemency by testifying against co-conspirator Bush.

-- After Bush left office on Jan. 20, 1993, President Bill Clinton (along with other senior Democrats, including Hamilton) cut short a congressional inquiry into Bush’s secret billion-dollar loans to Saddam Hussein and did nothing to help Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh penetrate the Iran-Contra cover-up.

-- Hamilton also soft-pedaled two key congressional inquiries. The first investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987 and the second examined allegations that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign team had struck a treasonous deal with the hostage-holding Iranian government while Jimmy Carter was still president.

Conventional wisdom has attributed the target-friendliness of those latter investigations to Mr. Hamilton's celebrated spirit of bipartisanship.

After all, what else could have persuaded Hamilton to narrow the scope of the Iran-Contra investigation in order to placate Dick Cheney and the rest of the committee's Republicans, if not his desire to appear bipartisan?

And how else to explain Hamilton’s ill-advised decision to join with the panel’s Republicans (in defiance of all but one other Democrat) and immunize the testimony of a man on whom it had the goods, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North (whose operations in the Old Executive Office Building had been exposed by reporter Parry in 1985-86)?

How much more criminal activity can we celebrate in the "spirit of bipartisanship"?

One may note here that much of Jerry Meldon's reporting depends on the excellent work done by Robert Parry in the 1980s and 1990s.

Parry has been very critical of Bill Clinton for not pursuing allegations of treason against his predecessor, George H. W. Bush, arguing that George W. Bush could never have been presented as a "serious" presidential candidate if the full extent of his father's criminal past had been well-known before the 2000 "election".

Jerry Meldon again:

North proceeded to cover up for then-Vice President Bush, and North was spared a felony record because his later criminal conviction was reversed because of his immunized testimony, which Hamilton had helped arrange.

Hamilton’s Iran-Contra performance was troubling. But he went several steps further when he chaired the October Surprise Task Force and handed the Reagan-Bush administration a deck full of get-out-of-jail-free cards.

In the lead-up to the 1980 election, Republicans feared that Jimmy Carter would pull off an "October Surprise" and talk the Iranians into releasing 52 American hostages. Carter's failure to do so led to Reagan’s landslide victory.

However, over the next several years, a parade of individuals alleged that Carter failed only because the Republicans had secretly agreed to arm Iran in exchange for a delay in the hostages’ release.

Heated Republican denials notwithstanding, the fact remained that the Iranians chose to end the hostages’ 444-day ordeal within hours of Reagan’s inauguration. To put the nasty rumors to rest more than a decade later, the House Foreign Affairs Committee formed a task force under the leadership of Henry Hyde, R-Illinois, and … Lee Hamilton.

How much do you know about this task force? How much do you remember?

Jerry Meldon continues:

The task force was charged with examining allegations that in the summer and fall of 1980 Republican heavyweights, notably the vice presidential candidate, former CIA director George H.W. Bush, and the campaign director, future CIA director William J. Casey, had secretly flown to Europe to strike the fateful deal.

The key issue was the veracity of Bush’s and Casey’s alibis.

In the heat of his 1992 re-election campaign, an angry President Bush accused the task force of waging a “witch hunt.” Obligingly, Hamilton and Hyde disclosed that partially redacted Secret Service records backed Bush's alibi, thus clearing him of suspicion.

However, Spencer Oliver, chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, objected, asking why key sections of those records were blacked out; why one crucial entry asserted a trip to a Maryland country club that Bush never took; and why the identity of a person who supposedly met with Bush was withheld from the task force.

Oliver charged that the Bush administration was stonewalling:

“They have sought to block, limit, restrict and discredit the investigation in every possible way … President Bush’s recent outbursts [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush.”

Journalist Parry adds: “The Bush administration flatly refused to give any more information to the House task force unless it agreed never to interview [Mr. Bush's] alibi witness and never to release [that person’s] name. Amazingly, the task force accepted the administration’s terms.”

Hamilton’s treatment of Mr. Bush was outrageously deferential...

Do you hear any echoes from the past?

Does Barack Obama hear those echoes? His plea for unity in the face of diversity sounds very much like the "good for the country" story under which the crimes of Bush 41 were buried.

And some of us fear that Obama -- if elected -- would follow in the steps of Bill Clinton and Lee Hamilton and bury the crimes of the preceding administration. Is it unreasonable for us to fear such an outcome?

Bob Parry doesn't appear to be concerned in the least; his support for Obama is on the order of Hollywood PR, even though Obama seems set to do the very same thing Parry rips Bill Clinton for doing. Very strange.

There's more from Jerry Meldon and you should read it all. If you do, you'll learn nothing of what Lee Hamilton has done in the past 15 years. You'll also note a subtle, ironic flavor to Meldon's introduction ...

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

... and his conclusion ...

on March 27 – as Mr. Hamilton participates in the Fares Center’s symposium, “The United States and the Middle East: What Comes Next After Iraq?” – the Tufts community will have the opportunity to ask Mr. Hamilton exactly why he has repeatedly kept Americans in the dark about critical episodes of their nation’s history in dealing with the Middle East.

Such a treatment -- implying that Dr. Hamilton may not want to talk about "yesterday" and hinting about his role in keeping "Americans in the dark about critical episodes of their nation’s history in dealing with the Middle East" -- may well be valid, but when such a treatment is applied to an article that doesn't mention anything that's happened since 1993, it's tough not to think of a word that rhymes with "aristocracy" and starts with the letter "H".

Why would an "independent investigative journalist" whose website does so much good work exposing America's hidden history be so reluctant to discuss America's recent hidden history?

Is there something controversial about the claim that Lee Hamilton was the co-chair of the 9/11 Commission?

Is there something controversial about the claim that the 9/11 Commission's report is unbelievable?

If so, we've got a problem, because one of the people making that claim is Lee Hamilton himself.

Why couldn't Jerry Meldon mention any of this? Why couldn't Robert Parry -- who wrote both an introduction to Meldon's article and a coda -- have mentioned any of this?

Did I miss a memo someplace? Are we not allowed to talk about anything that's happened in the last 15 years?

Or is this what the Consortium News masthead means where it says "Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995"??

I think I'd better stay away from "independent investigative journalism", and just keep blogging!

~~~

UPDATE: Larisa Alexandrovna praises the Consortium News piece, and adds some important details (and lots of interesting links):

Hamilton is a long time friend of both former SecDef Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
...

Remember that some of the Iran Contra folks graduated to the Bush II administration. Among them and perhaps the most notorious, Elliott Abrams (the current number two National Security Adviser). It is also widely believed that those old Iran Contra channels resurfaced to help with the delivery of the Niger Forgeries and even the same arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, had back-channel meetings with his Washington Iran Contra contacts. See my articles on this:

Cheney has tapped Iranian expatriate, arms dealer to surveil discussions with Iran

Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels

Cheney and Rumsfeld Outsourcing Special Ops in Iraq to Terror Group (MEK)

American Who Advised Pentagon Says he Worked for Magazine that Found Niger Documents

Chalabi Involved in Key US-Iran Policy Making Discussions

Pentagon Confirms Iranian Directorate

Intelligence Laundry: To Paris Again

Conversations with Machiavelli's Ghost: Demystifying Intrigue (Second installment of Michael Ledeen interviews)

Peter Tatchell: '9/11 -- The Big Cover-Up?'

Peter Tatchell has stirred up a hornet's nest, writing in the Guardian:

Six years after 9/11, the American public have still not been provided with a full and truthful account of the single greatest terror attack in US history.

What they got was a turkey. The 9/11 Commission was hamstrung by official obstruction. It never managed to ascertain the whole truth of what happened on September 11 2001.

The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, respectively Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, assert in their book, Without Precedent, that they were "set up to fail" and were starved of funds to do a proper investigation. They also confirm that they were denied access to the truth and misled by senior officials in the Pentagon and the federal aviation authority; and that this obstruction and deception led them to contemplate slapping officials with criminal charges.

Despite the many public statements by 9/11 commissioners and staff members acknowledging they were repeatedly lied to, not a single person has ever been charged, tried, or even reprimanded, for lying to the 9/11 Commission.

From the outset, the commission seemed to be hobbled. It did not start work until over a year after the attacks. Even then, its terms of reference were suspiciously narrow, its powers of investigation curiously limited and its time-frame for producing a report unhelpfully short - barely a year to sift through millions of pages of evidence and to interview hundreds of key witnesses.

The final report did not examine key evidence, and neglected serious anomalies in the various accounts of what happened. The commissioners admit their report was incomplete and flawed, and that many questions about the terror attacks remain unanswered. Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission was swiftly closed down on August 21 2004.

I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I prefer rigorous, evidence-based analysis that sifts through the known facts and utilises expert opinion to draw conclusions that stand up to critical scrutiny. In other words, I believe in everything the 9/11 Commission was not.

The failings of the official investigation have fuelled too many half-baked conspiracy theories. Some of the 9/11 "truth" groups promote speculative hypotheses, ignore innocent explanations, cite non-expert sources and jump to conclusions that are not proven by the known facts. They convert mere coincidence and circumstantial evidence into cast-iron proof. This is no way to debunk the obfuscations and evasions of the 9/11 report.

But even amid the hype, some of these 9/11 groups raise valid and important questions that were never even considered, let alone answered, by the official investigation. The American public has not been told the complete truth about the events of that fateful autumn morning six years ago.

What happened on 9/11 is fundamentally important in its own right. But equally important is the way the 9/11 cover-up signifies an absence of democratic, transparent and accountable government. Establishing the truth is, in part, about restoring honesty, trust and confidence in American politics.

... and so on. The piece is full of interesting links and has attracted hundreds of comments, many of which contain good links as well.

I wish at this point to draw your attention to one of the links in the hornet's nest. It's an MP3 file, from a radio interview by Charles Goyette with Davin Coburn, the chief researcher for the Popular Mechanics "debunking" project.

Excerpts follow:

CALLER: What about the [...] hijackers who came forward and said "We're alive. What are we doing on the FBI's list of so-called hijackers? We're alive and well." How do you explain that one?

DAVIN COBURN: Actually my explanation for that is that I have read that one BBC report...

CALLER: It's more than one BBC report...

DAVIN COBURN: But actually it's not. That's one of the things we looked into.

CALLER: Are you saying that is false?

DAVIN COBURN: I am saying that is false.

CALLER: OK, How did you verify that?

DAVIN COBURN: Have you seen any other reports, beyond...

CALLER: Let me ask you my question again. How did you verify it's false?

DAVIN COBURN: The remains of the hijackers who have been widely understood to have been on those planes...

CALLER: What remains?

DAVIN COBURN: There was DNA evidence collected all over the place.

CALLER: The building was incinerated. The concrete was turned to powder. There were molten pools of steel [...] that were still hot weeks after, and they were able to do autopsies on bodies?
...

CHARLES GOYETTE: Even if we presume that you're correct that they recovered the DNA of the 19 hijackers from the rubble, where did they get their original DNA against which to match it?

DAVIN COBURN: My point...

CHARLES GOYETTE: No, don't go to your point. Go to my point. Where did they get the original DNA of a bunch of Middle Eastern Islamic madmen? ... Where the hell did they get it? You're not even talking sensibly with me.

DAVIN COBURN: Off the top of my head I don't know the answer.

CHARLES GOYETTE: Of course you don't.

DAVIN COBURN: I'll bet back to you with it.

CHARLES GOYETTE: Is that a promise?

DAVIN COBURN: I will do my best.

CHARLES GOYETTE: Now do you understand why people scratch their head when they hear these kinds of representations are made?

DAVIN COBURN: No, actually I don't.
[...]

CHARLES GOYETTE: You don't understand? You tell us that they found the hijackers' DNA remains [...] and I ask you "Where did they get the original DNA from the hijackers to match it against?" Do you think that's bizarre to ask a question like that? Do you think it's conspiratorial just to want to know?

DAVIN COBURN: I think the way that you're framing it is ... not ...

CHARLES GOYETTE: How would you frame it? Frame it differently but get to the same issue for me. How would you frame it?

DAVIN COBURN: I think, I would take a different take on the entire question.

CHARLES GOYETTE: Well, ok, there's DNA evidence, you told me they have DNA evidence that matches the hijackers...

DAVIN COBURN: I think the entire question, however, is baseless. I think that is not even a question that is worth answering.

CHARLES GOYETTE: You're the one that told me that they had DNA evidence.

DAVIN COBURN: You're the one who wouldn't let me approach the question from the way that I would answer it.

CHARLES GOYETTE: Go ahead, then, and approach it.

DAVIN COBURN: And that is that if that report, if these men are still alive, why have we not seen any news reports?

CHARLES GOYETTE: Can I answer that for you?

DAVIN COBURN: Sure.

CHARLES GOYETTE: I don't know the answer. That's my answer.

DAVIN COBURN: Ok.

CHARLES GOYETTE: Now let me ask you a question in the same spirit. You've told me that they checked their DNA. Where did they get the original DNA to check it against?

DAVIN COBURN: Pffft!

CHARLES GOYETTE: You're the one with the answers, I'm not! I just have questions.

DAVIN COBURN: And I'm telling you that actually a seven-year-old can ask "Why?", over and over and over and there's ...

CHARLES GOYETTE: This is the worst attack on America in the history of this country. We've invaded two countries -- maybe a third -- because of it, we're gonna spend trillions of dollars. It's not a seven-year-old asking "Why?" I want to know where they got the evidence that they matched it against. What's so hard about that?

DAVIN COBURN: The way that you're framing it is intentionally difficult...

CHARLES GOYETTE: Of course it is. 'Cause it's five years later and we haven't heard the answer. And you haven't given it to us in Popular Mechanics. I swear to God, that's it. You see? It's the way I'm framing it makes it an illegitimate question. Well tell me how to reframe it. Tell me how to ask it differently.

DAVIN COBURN: I would start entirely over with the question that that gentleman asked, and I would say...

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

Click here to listen.

'October Surprise' Russian Memo Released

Some very interesting new information has appeared on this new page at Consortiumnews.com

Russian Report on 1980 'October Surprise' Case

This document -- a "confidential" cable from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow -- is a translation of a report sent on Jan. 11, 1993, from the national security committee of the Russian legislature to a U.S. House task force that was then investigating the so-called "October Surprise" controversy.

That case centered on allegations that, during the summer and fall of 1980, the Reagan-Bush campaign conducted secret negotiations with Iran's Islamic fundamentalist government, which was holding 52 Americans hostage. The lingering crisis sapped President Jimmy Carter's political strength and cleared the way for Ronald Reagan's historic victory. The hostages were freed immediately after Reagan became President.

The Russian assistance was requested on Oct. 21, 1992, by the House task force chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind. The Russian report asserted that the allegations of secret Republican negotiations with Iran were true. But the Russian report was never released by the task force, whose public findings reached the opposite conclusion.

Reporter Robert Parry found the Russian report among files belonging to the House task force in December 1994 and made these copies on a copier in a Capitol Hill storage room. For easier reading, we have typed out the contents of the Russian report, without the Embassy's coding and introduction, in a separate file.

as follows

Chairman of the Working Group of the House Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Congress, Lee G. Hamilton

Dear Mr. Lee G. Hamilton:

With excuses for the lengthy preparation of the response to your appeal, I am sending you the material in our possession which, as we hope, may help you in your work.

Secretary of the Committee, People's Deputy of the RF N. Kuznetsov

On the supply of American arms to Iran according to available information, the Chairman of the R. Reagan election campaign, William Casey, in 1980 met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership, in particular with the arms dealers Djamshed and Kurosh Hashemi. The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris. At the meeting in Paris in October 1980, in addition to Casey, R. Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration for Jimmy Carter and former CIA Director George Bush also took part.

In Madrid and Paris, the representatives of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of possibly delaying the release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, taken hostage by Iranian "students" and members of the "Corps of Defense of the Islamic Revolution" on 4 November 1979 until after the elections that took place in November 1980. In exchange for this, the American representatives promised to supply arms to Iran. This was asserted, in particular, by a former Israeli intelligence agent, Ari Ben-Menash, a Jew born in Iran and arrested in 1989 in the U.S. for supplying arms to Iran (arrested in California on charges of exporting contraband C-130 aircraft from the U.S. to Iran and who was in prison for 11 months and then freed). According to his calculation, the total value of the arms illegally delivered to Iran reached 82 billion dollars.

Data on attempts by the R. Reagan team to temporarily block the release of American hostages in Teheran are also contained in official statements of several Iranian figures, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Gotb-Zade in September 1980.

As terms for the release of the hostages Iran at that time proposed the unblocking of Iranian accounts in the USA, the return of the funds of the Shah and his family, the lifting of the economic blockade of Iran and the end of the embargo on supplies to Iran of spare parts for previously purchased American arms.

On the other hand, there has also appeared evidence that in 1980 there also took place negotiations between representatives of the Carter administration and the Iranian leadership, in the course of which the question of secret supplies to Iran of American arms and spare parts, the release of the American hostages and the unblocking of Iranian accounts was discussed. Thus, in July 1980 in the city of Athens, a delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) including Deputy Defense Minister Farivara, General Faroh-Zade, Colonel Veisi, Foreign Minister representative Etminana met with representatives of the Pentagon. An agreement in principle was reached on the supply of arms and spare parts for American weapons in Iran's possession.

In July 1980 in Athens, representatives of Washington and Teheran discussed a possible step-by-step normalization of Iranian-American relations, the provision of support for President Carter in the election campaign via the release of American hostages.

In accord with Athens agreement, in October 1980 a significant quantity of spare parts for F-4 and F-5 aircraft and also M-60 tanks were sent to Iran via Turkey. The Democrats, like the Republicans, started from the proposition that Imam Homeini, having announced a policy of "neither the West nor the East," and cursing the "American Devil," imperialism and Zionism, was forced to acquire American weapons, spares and military supplies by any and all possible means.

Military experts noted that, immediately after Islamic revolution in Iran, the government was faced with a sharp deficit of arms, spares, and military supplies with which to cut down the uprising of Iranian Kurds and carry out the war with Iraq that began in September 1980. The Iranian army in this period was based on Western, mostly American and British, arms, and the Air Force was totally equipped with U.S. planes.

The need for immediate supplies of arms and military equipment was also explained by the fact that after the revolution in Iran large orders for weapons deliveries to Iran of a total value of about 10.5 billion dollars were annulled.

In accord with the evaluation of sources in military circles, supplies of spare parts and military supplies from the U.S. through Israel which began in 1980 allowed the Iranian Air Force to carry out combat activities.

After the victory of R. Reagan in the election, in early 1981 a secret agreement was reached in London in accord with which Iran released the American hostages, and the U.S. continued to supply arms, spares and military supplies for the Iranian army. The organization of the deliveries was undertaken by Colonel of the General Staff of the IRI Domkan, and "Mossad" Colonel Yakus Marvidi. The latter played his part as the owner of a private firm buying arms of American production on the black market.

In March-April 1981, planes carried from Israel to Iran spares for the F-14 fighter and other military equipment. Through the Israeli conduit, Iran in 1983 bought surface-to-surface missiles of the "Lance" class plus artillery of a total value of 135 million dollars.

In July 1983 a group of specialists from the firm "Lockheed" went to Iran on English passports to repair the navigation systems and other electronic components on American-produced planes.

In 1985, supplies of arms from the U.S. to Iran via Israel took on a large-scale character. The arms were sent by planes and ships. 200 "Hawk" anti-aircraft missile systems and 2,000 "Tow" anti-tank missiles were sold to Iran. According to subsequent information, the Tow and Hawk missiles allowed the Iranian army to oppose the numerically superior tank units and air force of Iraq.

Normally I wouldn't quote something this long unless I wanted to comment on each little bit of it, or unless I considered it especially valuable.