John Kerry - Iran-contra Investigations (Part 2 of 2)

[angrydemocrat]

Terrell told Kerry and a handful of investigative reporters that North's supply network had been used to smuggle arms and drugs. Kerry's staff interviewed Terrell in New Orleans, brought him to Washington, installed him in a safe house, and obtained funding by a liberal think tank, the International Center for Development Policy. In a memo to Reagan, later obtained by the Iran-contra committee, North warned that "Terrell's accusations are at the center of Senator Kerry's investigation." North labeled Terrell a possible Nicaraguan spy, potential presidential assassin, and a terrorist threat.

The Secret Service was alerted, and the FBI placed Terrell under surveillance. Agents tailed him, combed his telephone records, searched his garbage, and pressured him into taking a polygraph test. They ultimately determined he was in fact no threat to the president, Terrell ended up not testifying. Elsewhere Republican staffers on the Foreign Relations Committee leaked details of Kerry's probe to the administration. The conservative-leaning Washington Times published stories containing allegations that Kerry's office was inducing witnesses to commit perjury. At North's insistence, the FBI began to compile information on the Kerry investigation.

Despite Kerry's work, and that of the House investigators' North's covert enterprise thrived. But on Oct. 5,1986 a C-123 aircraft was shot down in Nicaragua. Documents found in the wreckage connected the plane to a CIA proprietary airline, Southern Air Transport. A surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, said he was involved in an effort to arm the contras.

To Kerry's investigators, the operation smelled like a covert CIA plot. Suspicions about North's involvement intensified. By now the full committee at Kerry's urging, had launched its investigation, and Kerry used an Oct. 10,1986 hearing to interrogate Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams about wether the Reagan administration had involved foreign government in arming the contras.

Abrams: "I can say that while I have been assistant secretary, which is about 15 months, we have not received a dime from any foreign government."
Kerry: "We' being who?"
Abrams: "The United States."
Kerry: "How about the contras?"
Abrams: "I don't know. But not that I am aware of and not through us. The thing is, I think I would know about it because if they went to a foreign government, a foreign government would have credit for helping the contras and they would come to us to say you want us to do this, do you, and I would know about that.

This testimony, and similar statements to a House committee would result in Abrams pleading guilty to charges of withholding information from Congress.(He was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and now serves in the White House under George W. Bush)

On Oct.15, five days after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, North again fretted about Kerry's work. "John Kerry-has 8 votes," he wrote in his notebook. Kerry's name was bold and underlined.

Then, in early November 1986, a Lebanese newspaper broke the news of U.S. arms sales to Iran. A few weeks later the White House disclosed that funds from the sale had been diverted to supply the contras.

Suddenly others realized Kerry's theories didn't seem so far fetched. He hoped this would be help lead this investigation into this extraordinary episode. The Iran-contra scandal was the top story, and there was worried talk in the halls of Congress that the United States might suffer another failed presidency.

But when congressional leaders chose members of the elite Iran-contra committee, Kerry was conveniently left out. Those selected were consensus politicians, not bomb throwers. The disappointed Kerry and his staff felt that the committee members were chosen to put a lid on things. "He was told early on they were not going to put him on it. He was too juinor and too controversial..... They were concerned about the survival of the republic," Winer recalled. Even some Democrats "thought John was a little hotter than they would like," said Rosenblith

As a consolation prize, the Democratic leadership gave Kerry chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations and a charter to dig into the contra-drug connection. Although disappointed, Kerry stuck with his investigation, and the subcommittee published a report in 1989 that concluded the CIA and other U.S. agencies had turned a blind eye to drug trafficking occurring on the fringes of the contra network. In many cases, traffickers were using the same airplanes, airfields, and other resources that the contras were using.

During the investigation, an Oregon businessman claiming CIA ties, Richard Brenneke, whose testimony was taken by Kerry's committee, made a sensational and undocumented charge that Vice President George Bush's office had sanctioned a contra-drug smuggling operation. Bush told Kerry "show me some evidence and stop leaking out information." Kerry said he was not the source of the leak, and the committee dropped the Brenneke angle.