Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-04-mn-10201-story.html

Iran Arms Dealers May Use Secret CIA Links as Defense
BY WILLIAM C. REMPEL
AUG. 4, 1988 12 AM PT
TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON — Secret CIA dealings with a fugitive Iranian arms dealer, recently disclosed in congressional documents, are expected to be used as a key line of defense by 10 international businessmen accused of plotting to sell Iran $2.5 billion in weapons in 1985 and 1986.
The businessmen were arrested in April of 1986 at the end of a four-month sting operation in which the Iranian weapons dealer, Cyrus Hashemi, now dead, acted as a government informant.

The defendants, who say they expected to obtain U.S. government approval for their transactions, were conducting their negotiations during the same period that the White House was trading arms for hostages.

The federal case, the largest arms conspiracy prosecution ever brought by the Justice Department, was the result of an undercover operation in New York by the Customs Service, which had agreed to drop arms-smuggling charges against Hashemi in exchange for his informant role.

But before making his deal with the Customs Service, according to newly declassified CIA and State Department memos, Hashemi approached then-CIA Director William J. Casey with an arms-for-hostages plan of his own that was strikingly similar to the one that would soon be embraced by the White House as its secret Iran arms initiative.

The Hashemi plan collapsed before it got far enough along to require formal action. However, defense lawyers say the Casey-Hashemi dealings support arguments that their clients had reason to believe they would get U.S. approval for an arms deal with Iran. Lead defendant Samuel L. Evans, an attorney for Hashemi, who died of cancer in the summer of 1986, says he was aware of his CIA contacts at the time.

Casey directed his staff to explore the Hashemi proposal despite concerns within the agency that Hashemi was “a sleazy and slippery character,” according to an internal CIA memo whose author was unknown.

The CIA director was “very anxious to move ahead” on the proposal, according to a State Department memo from Richard W. Murphy, then assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, to Michael Armacost, then undersecretary for political affairs.

‘Hashemi Escapade’

In light of new details about what another State Department memo called “the Hashemi escapade,” defense attorneys are expected to argue in part that Evans was lured into the undercover arms deal because he knew that Hashemi had been actively trying to arrange an officially authorized sale through the CIA.

CIA officials also acknowledged in one of the now-declassified memos that the CIA’s relationship with Hashemi would almost certainly be an issue in the criminal case--noting that it was “relevant to an entrapment defense.” That memo, written before the Iran-Contra scandal broke, also warned that care had to be given so that court disclosures about Hashemi did not expose details about U.S. efforts to free American hostages.

A Manhattan federal judge today will set a date for the trial, expected to be early next year. That will end two years of delays that resulted primarily from confusion over whether the case was related to the Iran-Contra scandal. Prosecutors say they are satisfied that the case is unrelated to the White House-sanctioned arms initiative.

Seeks Casey Phone Logs

On Wednesday, however, an attorney for defendant William Northrop filed a motion asking the government to turn over the late CIA director’s telephone logs, asserting that Northrop--an American businessman based in Israel--was in frequent contact with Casey, using the code name “Sasha,” and had received approval from the CIA chief to pursue arms deals with Hashemi.

“William Northrop has maintained a running dialogue over the telephone with . . . Casey, from approximately 1981 to April of 1986. They spoke on the average of once a month,” attorney Michael H. Sporn said in a discovery request filed in District Court in New York.

“Among their many topics of conversations, Mr. Northrop specifically discussed with the former DCI (director of central intelligence) his contacts with Cyrus Hashemi . . . and the propriety of transferring military articles,” Sporn told the court. “Mr. Northrop’s activities in this case were carried on with the full knowledge and consent of Mr. Casey.”

Sporn said the Northrop-Casey contacts were not previously disclosed because of concern that they might embarrass “another country"--a reference to Israel--and because Northrop only recently learned that Casey’s telephone logs may exist to confirm his assertions.

Memos Offer New Details

The latest disclosures provide a new detailed look at the complicated network of negotiations that the CIA was pursuing at the time and the frantic atmosphere in which the Iran-Contra scandal originated. Because U.S. officials from various agencies were exploring a number of avenues to obtain the release of American hostages, it remained unclear for months whether the Manhattan case was related in any way to the Iran-Contra affair.

Apparently, even the White House was unsure about how the cases might be related. According to notes kept by former Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan during a meeting in the Oval Office in November, 1986, the President’s top aides wondered whether Israel--which had helped in the arms initiative--was involved in the New York case. Retired Brig. Gen. Avraham Bar-Am, an Israeli war hero, was among those arrested.

Regan’s notes report the following exchange in the meeting attended by Reagan, Vice President George Bush, National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and other top Cabinet members:

“BUSH: Is NY case a private or public endeavor to sell arms to Israel?”

“ANS (unknown speaker): Probably private with govt. knowledge.”

“BUSH: Israel may try to squeeze us.”

The CIA-Hashemi contacts were made in the summer of 1985, weeks before Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar became secret agents of the covert White House arms initiative with Iran.

Contacts Casey Friend

According to a June 17, 1985, memo from Casey to the CIA’s Near East division chief, Hashemi had phoned a longtime Casey friend and business associate, John Shaheen. The call was made from Hamburg, the West German city where, it has since been learned, Hashemi was meeting with Khashoggi, Ghorbanifar and others, including his attorney, Evans.

Shaheen told Casey that Hashemi’s Iranian contacts were looking for TOW anti-tank missiles, the release of Kuwaiti-held DAWA terrorists and improved relations with the United States, for which they were willing to help “spring the (American) hostages” in Lebanon. For his role, Hashemi wanted his pending federal indictment on arms-smuggling charges quashed.

The effort finally was abandoned in August, 1985, when Hashemi apparently was unable to set up meetings for representatives of the United States with Iranian officials, one of whom would have been Ghorbanifar. The name of another “important (Iranian) official” mentioned by Hashemi is consistently blacked out of the documents.

It now is clear that while Hashemi was trying to interest the CIA in meeting with Ghorbanifar, Khashoggi was making a similar offer to Poindexter’s predecessor, former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane. Apparently, the two middlemen--Khashoggi and Hashemi--were competing with each other to make deals with separate U.S. agencies, offering access to the same key contact, Ghorbanifar.

Hashemi Bid Collapses

Eventually, Ghorbanifar’s association with Khashoggi led to the collapse of Hashemi’s bid--and the beginning of the Iran arms initiative. In August, the first White House-sanctioned shipment of Israeli TOW anti-tank missiles arrived in Iran, arranged by Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi.

The unsuccessful CIA-Hashemi negotiations appear to lend some support to the core defense argument in the New York arms conspiracy in which the accused businessmen have argued from the outset that they planned to ship arms to Iran, but only with the prior approval--overt or covert--of the United States.

One defendant, former Khashoggi business associate Nico Minardos of Beverly Hills, met with U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Rabb in Rome early in 1986 and was secretly videotaped by federal agents telling Hashemi that he was waiting for Rabb to confirm for him whether an arms deal with Iran would be authorized. Rabb, who acknowledged meeting Minardos, has denied that Iran arms shipments were discussed.

And on an earlier undercover tape recording, defendant Evans told Hashemi in December, 1985: “The (official) approval has to be there or it’s not going to happen. It just can’t.” Evans, a London-based American attorney, worked for Hashemi and Khashoggi at the time that both middlemen were negotiating their separate arms-for-hostages deals with U.S. officials.

In an interview Wednesday, Evans’ defense attorney Lawrence Bader said: “It’s clear on the tapes that they believed they could obtain official approval” for arms sales to Iran. He said Evans was aware of Hashemi’s contacts with Shaheen.