What Did Bush Know?

By Jay Peterzell/Washington

Whenever George Bush is asked about his role in the Iran-contra affair, his standard reply is that he has said all there is to say. In fact, Bush has said little on the subject -- and much of what he has said is not true. A newly released memo by former Secretary of State George Shultz directly disputes a key Bush claim: that he had no idea Shultz and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger had bitterly opposed arms deals with Iran. "It's on the record," says the 1987 memo, which recaps an angry telephone call Weinberger made to Shultz after Bush told the Washington Post he had been in the dark about this. "Why did he say that?" the Shultz memo asked. Last week Bill Clinton challenged reporters to examine Bush's truthfulness about Iran-contra as carefully as they had probed Clinton's statements about the draft.

Bush's fullest public account of his role appears in his 1987 autobiography, Looking Forward, in which he claims to have been "excluded from key meetings" on the Iran operation. He later told a TV interviewer that he would have opposed the deal if he had known "what was going on." But the fact is that Bush attended key meetings at which the Iran arms deal was discussed and authorized. He was briefed by National Security Adviser John Poindexter on the finding that authorized covert aid to Iran. There was even discussion in the White House about sending Bush to meet the Iranians personally.

Bush also claims in Looking Forward that he didn't know that Shultz and Weinberger "had serious doubts" about the Iran deal; otherwise, he says, he might have opposed it. But here is what Shultz told the Tower commission about the crucial January 1986 meeting at which he and Weinberger made their last stand against the operation: "I expressed myself as forcefully as I could . . . Everybody was well aware of my views." Bush, Reagan, William Casey and Poindexter "all had one opinion, and I had a different one," Shultz said.

Bush has said he thought arms were being sold to Iranian "moderates." But Amiram Nir, Israel's point man for the arms sales, told him in July 1986 that the U.S. and Israel were dealing with "the most radical elements" in Iran. Bush told the Tower commission that he had discussed counterterrorism in general terms with Nir but that there had been no talk about arms sales to Iran. The commission later published a memo on the Bush-Nir conversation, written by a Bush aide who was present, showing that the Israeli had indeed given Bush a detailed briefing on the Tehran arms deal.

Though there is no evidence that Bush knew that proceeds from the arms sales were being funneled to the contras, his claim that he didn't know other U.S. funds and personnel were being illegally used to support the contras is not plausible. A key operative in this supply network, Felix Rodriguez, was sent to Central America with the backing of Bush's office. Documents released in the trial of Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, moreover, show that the U.S. government offered Honduras increased economic, military and covert support in exchange for Honduran military aid to the contras. This quid-pro-quo arrangement, whose existence Bush explicitly denied in 1989, violated the congressional ban on indirect U.S. military assistance to the rebels. Documents obtained by TIME show that Reagan approved the deal and that a copy of the memo authorizing it went to Bush. Bush "concurred" in the stepped-up CIA funding that was part of the deal. And he personally gave the President of Honduras the good news about U.S. aid.