Part 125 – NOVEMBER 4 1988
That George Bush has never condemned the arms-to-Iran deal as anything worse than a ''mistake'' hardly suggests that he has learned to be wary of covert action. As President, the greater possibility is that he will once again give his old comrades of the C.I.A. the green light for their secret, dangerous, often harebrained schemes. - New York Times, Nov. 4 1988
On May 22 1989, the al Dustur Arabic paper published a very detailed account of the bombing of Pan Am 103. The author was Dr Ali Nuri Zadeh, who is well known for his high level contacts in Tehran. His source for that piece was a high rankning Ayatollah close to Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, perceived before the summer 1988 massacre as the successor of Khomeini.
According to the article, an American agent known in Iranian circles as David Lovejoy contacted the Iranian Embassy in Beirut from Junieh and informed Moshen Armin -- Iranian Intelligence Beirut -- that a group consisting of five experts from American Intelligence had arrived in East Beirut. Its purpose was to collect information on the places where hostages were held.
On June 23rd 1989, the piece was translated in English by the Joint Publication Research Service -- JPRS – and distributed to 300 top-level US government officials.
But interestingly, the translated article omits all references to a plausible link between the bombing of PA 103 and the hostage release mission led by major McKee. Why would the US government hide such information even to its top level officials?
Reported to be a onetime State Department security officer, Lovejoy, whose CIA code name was said to be "Nutcracker", is alleged to have become a double agent with CIA connections in Libya.
The American Pan Am lawyer, Lawyer Shaughnessy, had uncovered similar evidence. His affidavit, filed with the federal district court in Brooklyn, New York, asserts that in November and December 1988, "the U.S. government intercepted a series of telephone calls from Lovejoy to the Iranian charge d'affaires in Beirut advising him of the team's movements."
Bush and the CIA
Today, the New York Time asked a simple yet highly important question. "Have American voters really thought about the implications of electing a President who once was Director of the C.I.A. and who later attended all the high-level meetings at which the most damning failure of the Reagan Administration was perpetrated?"
"As for the arms-for-hostages dealings with Iran, records show that, as Vice President, Mr. Bush was present at all the high-level meetings, including the one at which George Shultz, the Secretary of State, denounced the whole disreputable scheme. Mr. Bush insists he didn't understand what was going on, but it's equally plausible, if not more so, to suggest that a Vice President who had headed the C.I.A. and given it a green light for covert action in fact supported Ronald Reagan's secret dealings with Iran and believed that they would work," the paper reminds its readers.
"Perhaps worse, involvement in such international skulduggery -even administrative, and at a distance - might make a future C.I.A. director subject to blackmail from within or without. National leaders and other important officials often have shown themselves as unprincipled and unsavory as General Noriega. The possibility exists that someone - perhaps Mr. Noriega himself - might someday be able to control or influence the actions of a President who once had been chief of U.S. covert activities." President Bush certainly made sure this would not happen.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Bush and the C.I.A. - November 4, 1988
