Please forgive cross posts.
BOOK REVEALS INTERNAL WHITE HOUSE
E-MAIL AND THE CASE THAT ESTABLISHED
THE LEGAL STATUS OF FEDERAL E-MAIL.
Following Press Release
REVELATIONS FROM --WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL: THE
TOP SECRET COMPUTER MESSAGES THE
REAGAN/BUSH WHITE HOUSE TRIED TO DESTROY,
Edited by Tom Blanton (New York: The New Press, 256 pp.
plus 1.44 megabyte computer disk), distributed by W.W. Norton
& Company.
For more information, contact: the National Security Archive
202/994-7000, [log in to unmask]
SECRET SUPPORT FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN
Top Reagan administration officials, including Colin Powell,
presided over covert intelligence support to Saddam Hussein
during the Iran-Iraq War, including targeting information on
Iranian civilian infrastructure for Saddam's SCUD missiles. In
secret e-mail messages, National Security Council staffer William
Cockell recommended -- and Deputy National Security Adviser
Alton Keel agreed -- they cover-up the assistance to Saddam,
because "it is difficult to characterize this as defensive assistance."
[pp. 36-41] Subsequently, while Powell served as Deputy
National Security Adviser in 1987, the Reagan administration
discussed a "shopping list" of pro-Iraq actions in order to "stiffen
them up." [pp.235-237]
HELPING NORIEGA "CLEAN UP HIS IMAGE"
Three months after Seymour Hersh and The New York Times
exposed Manuel Noriega's involvement in drugrunning and
murder, Noriega approached the National Security Council staff
with an offer to assassinate the Nicaraguan Sandinista leadership.
Oliver North relayed the offer to his boss, National Security
Adviser John Poindexter, writing that "you will recall that over the
years Manuel Noriega in Panama and I have developed a fairly
good relationship." Poindexter replies, "I have nothing against him
other than his illegal activities" and approves a North meeting with
Noriega -- as does Secretary of State George Shultz. The
bottom line? The White House agrees to help Noriega "clean up
his image" in return for Panamanian sabotage operations against
the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. [pp. 23-25]
THE WHITE HOUSE SENDS A COCAINE CONSPIRATOR
TO CLUB FED
Top Reagan administration officials from the White House,
Pentagon, and Justice Department just said yes to a reduced
prison sentence (in a minimum security facility) for a Honduran
colonel and sometime CIA asset who was convicted of cocaine
trafficking and conspiracy to assassinate the civilian president of
Honduras, because otherwise the colonel might "start singing
songs nobody wants to hear" about covert operations in
Honduras. [pp. 42-48]
SECRET DEALS WITH LOBBYISTS ON A
CONTROVERSIAL CONGRESSIONAL VOTE
The White House struck a secret deal with the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee in the spring of 1986 to avoid an
AWACS-style all-out battle on a Saudi arms deal vote, and in
return got AIPAC's help on foreign aid funding and on the Iran-
contra scandal. But National Security Council staffer Howard
Teicher warned, "whatever one may think of the jewish
leadership, the 'masses' are rarely if ever swayed by what the
rational, reasonable leaders say. instead, it is the israel right or
wrong demagogues at the grassroots level that will try to take
advantage of the leadership's pusillanimity." [pp. 150-157]
HIDDEN FAILURES OF THE POLYGRAPH
(PRECURSORS OF ALDRICH AMES)
According to the National Security Council's top
counterintelligence official in 1985, career FBI agent David
Major, two out of the 48 individuals indicted, arrested and/or
convicted of espionage against the U.S. in the years 1975-85,
had successfully deceived the CIA's favorite screening tool, the
polygraph (lie detector) -- a 4% error rate. (Aldrich Ames
subsequently beat the polygraph twice.) [p.220]
ROSS PEROT'S EGO RIDES AGAIN
Ross Perot "sandbagged" the Reagan White House at a 1986
Congressional hearing on the POW-MIA issue, according to the
lead White House staffer on the issue, Col. Richard Childress,
who also wrote, "he has played into Hanoi's hands for his ego and
doesn't even know it." [p. 162]
MORE WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL STORIES
* Then-Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin personally
arranged with Oliver North for secret shipments of captured PLO
weapons to Central America in September 1986, with the
approval of the National Security Adviser. Rabin also
commented, according to North's e-mail, "at some length about
his low opinion of our intel service [CIA] - both in terms of
coverts ops and intelligence collecting," and promised "no more
Pollards." [pp. 119-122]
* The regular breakfast meetings in the Reagan administration of
the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of State (George
Shultz), and the Secretary of Defense (Caspar Weinberger) often
degenerated into what staffers called "slugfests." p. 193
* Contrary to claims in a recent autobiography, National Security
Adviser Robert McFarlane did not anticipate the collapse of the
Soviet Union and craft U.S. policy accordingly to pressure the
Soviets, rather, in his 1984 e-mail, McFarlane wrote "it will not
change ideologically and therefore our task is to establish a basis
for peaceful competition with them." p.189
* At the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Vice
President George Bush proposed a "7-point peace plan" during a
Middle East trip in 1986, only to have it shot down by White
House and State Department opposition back in Washington. p.
200
* While serving as Deputy National Security Adviser to President
Reagan in 1987, Colin Powell lived in an alarmed house at Fort
McNair which "scared hell out of the family initially and then
became amusing when the MPs assaulted the house every time
the alarm misfired." p. 211
* White House staffers joked about CIA Director William
Casey's renowned "mumbles," writing, "The last time he told
Goldwater we were going to 'lay some mines in Nicaragua,'
Goldwater thought he said we were going to 'pay some fines for
some joggers.'" p. 214
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