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as special assistant to the attorney general from February to April 1977.
Pottinger had then joined the law firm of Tracy, Malin and Pottinger of
Washington, London, and Paris. After the 1980 election, Pottinger was being
considered for a high-level post in the Reagan/Bush administration.
This same Pottinger was now the representative for gun-runner Cyrus
Hashemi. Given Pottinger's proven relation to Bush, we may wonder to what
extent was Bush informed of Hashemi's proposal, and of the responses of the
Carter administration.
Relevant evidence that might help us to determine what Bush knew and when
he knew it is still being withheld by the Bush regime. The FBI bugged Cyrus
Hashemi's phones and office from August 1980 to February 1981, and many of
the conversations that were recorded were between Hashemi and Bush's friend
Pottinger. Ten years later, in November 1991, the FBI released heavily
redacted summaries of some of the conversations, but most of the summaries
and transcripts are still classified.
"EIR"'s Special Report thoroughly documented how Pottinger was protected
from indictment by the Reagan-Bush Justice Department. For years,
prosecution of Hashemi and Pottinger, for illegally conspiring to ship
weapons to the Khomeini regime, was blocked by the administration on
"national security" grounds. Declassified FBI documents show that an
indictment of Pottinger had been drawn up, but that the indictment was
killed at the last minute in 1984 when the FBI "lost"crucial taped
evidence. The FBI conducted an extensive internal investigation of the
missing "Pottinger tapes" but the results have never been disclosed.
Other information on the intentions of the Khomeini regime and secret
dealings may have reached Bush from his old friend and associate Mitchell
Rogovin, the former CIA general counsel. During 1976, Rogovin had
accompanied Bush on many trips to the capital to testify before
congressional committees; the two were known to be close. Rogovin was
credited with having saved the CIA after it came under major congressional
and media attack in the mid-1970s. In the spring of 1980, Rogovin told the
Carter administration that he had been approached by Iranian-American arms
dealer Houshang Lavi with an offer to start negotiations for the release of
the hostages. Lavi claimed to be an emissary of Iranian President Abol
Hassan Bani-Sadr; Rogovin at this time was working as the lawyer for the
John Anderson GOP presidential campaign.
Bush's family friend Casey had also been in direct contact with Iranian
representatives. Jamshid Hashemi, the brother of Cyrus Hashemi (who died
under suspicious circumstances during 1986), had told Gary Sick, a former
official of Carter's National Security Council, that he met with William
Casey at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in March of 1980 to
discuss the hostages. According to Jamshid Hashemi, "Casey quickly made
clear that he wanted to prevent Jimmy Carter from gaining any political
advantage from the hostage crisis. The Hashemis agreed to cooperate with
Casey without the knowledge of the Carter administration." / Note #2 / Note
#3
Casey's "intelligence operation" included the spying on the opposing
candidate that has been routine in U.S. political campaigns for decades,
but went far beyond it. As journalists like Witcover and Germond knew
during the course of the campaign, and as the 1984 Albosta committee
"Debategate" investigation showed, Casey set up at least two "October
Surprise" espionage groups.
The first of these watched the Carter White House, the Washington
bureaucracy, and diplomatic and intelligence posts overseas. This group was
headed by Reagan's principal foreign policy adviser and later NSC chairman,
Richard Allen. Allen was in touch with some 120 foreign policy and national
security experts sympathetic to the Reagan campaign. Casey helped Allen to
interface with the Bush campaign network of retired and active duty assets
in the intelligence community. This network reached into the Carter NSC,
where Bush crony Don Gregg worked as the CIA liaison man, and into Carter's
top-secret White House situation room.
Another October Surprise monitoring group was headed by Adm. Robert
Garrick. The task of this group was the physical surveillance of U.S.
military bases by on-the-ground observers, often retired and sometimes
active duty military officers. Lookouts were posted to watch Tinker Air
Force Base in Oklahoma, Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, McGuire Air
Force Base in New Jersey (where weapons already bought and paid for by the
Shah were stockpiled), and Norton and March Air Force bases in California.
Garrick, Casey, Meese, Wirthlin, and other campaign officials met each
morning in Falls Church, Virginia, just outside of Washington, to review
intelligence gathered.
This group soon became operational. It was clear that Khomeini was keeping [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]