FEATURE

By CARL BLOICE

Barbara Honneger-Britain was working
as a policy analyst in the high level opera-
tions room of the Reagan-Bush campaign
in October, 1980 when the place was astir
with fears of a possible “October surprise”
coming from the opposition Carter cam-

paign.

Fifty U.S. citizens were being held hos-
tage in Iran and the Republican campaign
had done its best to discredit the incumbent
president because of it. Clearly, the Repub-
licans’ concern was that the hostages might
be freed before the election, robbing them of
an issue.

One October day, Richard Allen, cam-
paign national security adviser, and other
campaign officials, including now recently
resigned Central Intelligence Agency chief
William Casey, were approached by Robert
McFarlane. He said it was possible to
approach high level Iranians who had the
power to gain the release of those being held
in the U.S. Embassy in Teheran.

Honneger-Britain says she didn’t know
about this discussion at the time. She
learned of it this past Nov. 29 from the
Washington Post. 5

“Even before 1981, sources said, McFar-
lane proposed dramatic covert initiatives
involving Iran,” wrote Bob Woodward and
Walter Pincus in the Post. “In 1980, while
he was on the staff of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, McFarlane approached
the Reagan campaign’s foreign policy advi-
sor Richard Allen with an Iranian exile who
proposed to deliver the American hostages
then held in Teheran to the Reagan camp
before the November election. The initiative
went nowhere.”

That it went nowhere is the contention of
Woodward and Pincus’s sources — who
have been known to be self-serving. They
appear to be the same sources who told a
similar story to the Wall Street Journal the
same time.

Honneger-Bnitain doesn’t think it “went
nowhere.” She believes that back in
October 1980 “Ronald Reagan made a
deal.” It provided that, once elected, he
would send to Iran over a period of time,
through Israel, the $300 million worth of
weapons and spare parts which the Shah of
Iran had already purchased but which Pres-
ident Carter impounded when the hostages
were taken in 1979. In return, the hostages
would be freed — but after the election.

Honneger-Britain says the mood in the
campaign headquarters became upbeat
after McFarlane entered the picture.

The hostages were released on the day of
President Reagan’s inauguration. »

Honneger-Britain’s suspicions have direct
bearing on one of the central pressing ques-
tions of the Irangate affair: who was in on
the deal? If the arms-for-hostages man-
oeuvres began before the 1980 elections,
most of the principals are not telling the
truth and the larger story is being kept from
the public.

The Israelis continue to insist they
shipped arms only with the approval of the
U.S. government.

Whether the shipments began before the
inauguration is not clear. If not, the first
load was certainly on its way by Feb. 20,
1981, when then Secretary of State Alex-
ander Haig was briefed on the Israeli sales im
preparation for meeting with then Israeli
Foreign Minsiter Yitzak Shamir.

The proposition that the Irangate
scandal — far from what it seems today in
public — is really the result of more than
six years of secret dealings between Teheran
and Washington got a boost two weeks ago
from the original Iranian “moderate,”
former Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani
Sadr. Diana Johnstone, European corres-
pondent of the newspaper In These Times,
interviewed him in Paris and reported,
** ‘Trangate’ merely confirms a ‘connivance’
that Bani Sadr has seen all along between
the Iranian radical right of (Ali Akbar) Raf-
sandjani and the American right behind
Reagan.”

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 25, 1987

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There has been considerable evidence
for the contention that secret
collaboration between the Reagan
administration and the Khomeini
government involving former National
Security Adviser McFarlane, dates
back over six years.

Bani Sadr, who was forced to flee Iran in
July, 1981, sees the original underlying pur-
pose of the administration’s dealing with
Iran as a conspiracy to manipulate oil prices
set by the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries.

The former Iranian leader mentioned to
Johnstone secret “‘visits” McFarlane made

to Iran in 1986. He has previously insisted
McFarlane made more than the one offi-
cially acknowledged visit in May.

When the Irangate story originally
broke, mention was made of two or three
McFarlane trips to Iran during the year.
When the administration admitted only
one, the major media began to speak of only

the one visit. The discrepancy has yet to be
explained; and the confusion over when the
gift of a bible was presented has raised the
question anew.

As recently as Dec. 4, Bani Sadr told the
Associated Press that his highly placed
sources in Iran say the former national
security advisor was in Teheran in Sep-
tember.

* Recently, the New York Times revealed
the existence of a secret “Demavand,” a
project involving arms shipments — known
to the Pentagon — of a far greater volume
than ever before reported. The report indi-
cated government assistance to the opera-
tion dating back at least as far as 1983. In
the story, the Times stated matter-of-factly
that McFarlane “made a trip to Teheran in
September with a planeload of arms.”

The earlier references to a trip in the fall
had raised speculation that it was related to
the then upcoming congressional elections
and a possible last-ditch effort to free hos-
tages being held in Lebanon before Nov. 3.

Last November, Bani:Sadr told the
French newspaper Le Monde that in Sep-
tember 1986, McFarlane met in Teheran
with military leaders and discussed their
weapons needs. Three days after he left, two
U.S. cargo planes arrived in Teheran from
the Phillippines carrying 23 tons of spare
parts. Parts received at that time were not
available through other sources, Bani Sadr
said, and were meant to affect the Iran-Iraq
war.

There has been considerable collaborat-
ing evidence for the Honneger-Britain and
Bani Sadr contention that secret collabora-
tion between the Reagan administration
and the Khomeini government dates back
over six years. Indeed, Rafsandjani has said
so.

Allen himself has spoken of a conversa-

tion with Reagan before the inauguration -

about a “deal” with the Iranian authorities.

Columnist Jack Anderson has placed the ~

first Israeli shipments of arms to Iran in
1980. ABC-TV’s bureau chief in Paris, Pie-
rre Salinger, mentioned it as fact on the
Nightline show in December.

Evidence now suggests that efforts were
begun six years ago to establish what 1s
referred to in the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee report as “a strategic relationship.”

What is now being examined publicly
appears increasingly to be the rather bizarre
twist the effort has taken over the past two
years under the direction of the inept little
junta that took up residency in the base
ment of the White House. That the effort
was exposed might well be related to the
haste motivated by the president’s yearning
to see the hostages free at any cost.

The U.S. policy toward Iran executed
secretly through the National Security
Council has been the opposite of what was
portrayed. Current developments in the
Middle East alarmingly suggest that the
consequences of that policy are even more
far-reaching than the domestic political cr-
sis it has rightly engendered.

Last week, the White House massed wal-
ships in the Eastern Mediterranean amid
signs of discord between Teheran and
Washington over the conduct of the wat
with Iraq and administration concern over
the U.S.’s rapidly decaying relations with
that Arab nation.

While the naval moves are ostensibly 4
response to the taking of further hostages 1?
Lebanon, the administration is also thought
to be worried that, equipped with deadly
U.S. supplied hardware, the Iranian Rev
lutionary Guards might actually try to take
Baghdad or attempt to dismember Iraq:
This would have serious consequences for
the peace and stability of the region an
could raise the threat of wider war.

Carl Bloice is associate editor of the U.5:
People’s Daily World and writes from
Washington, D.C., where he is covering the
developments in the Irangate scandal.

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