more of them by arms dealer Mario DelAmico, supplier to the Contras. According to the entry in
Oliver North's notebook, they discussed particularities of the supply flights, and the operations ofFDN commander Enrique Bermudez.
Elsewhere in the diary pages for that day, Colonel North noted that DelAmico had procured a
certain 1,000 munitions items for the Contras.@s3@s0
November 1985 (cGeorge Bush sent Oliver North a note, with thanks for your dea. American Thanksgiving Day): dication and tireless work with the hostage thing and with Central America. ''@s3@s1 December 1985: Congress passed new laws limiting U.S. aid to the Contras. The CIA, the Defense Department, and any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities '' wereprohibited from providing armaments to the Contras. The CIA was permitted to provide
communications equipment and training. Humanitarian '' aid was allowed. These laws, known together as Boland III, '' were in effect from December 4, 1985 to October 17, 1986.
December 18, 1985:
CIA official Charles E. Allen, a member of George Bush's Terrorism Task Force, wrote an updateon the arms-for-hostages dealings with Iran. Allen's memo was a debriefing of an unnamed member (^)
of the group of U.S. government officials participating in the arms negotiations with the Iranians.
The unnamed U.S. official (from the context, probably NSC terrorism consultant Michael Ledeen)
is referred to in Allen's memo as Subject ''. Allen wrote: [Speaker of the Iranian Parliament
Hashemi] Rafsanjani ... believes Vice President George Bush is orchestrating the U.S. initiativewith Iran. In fact, according to Subject, Rafsanjani believes that Bush is the most powerful man in (^)
the U.S. because in addition to being Vice President, he was once Director of CIA. ''@s3@s2
December 1985-January 1986:
George Bush completed his official study of terrorism in December 1985. John Poindexter now
directed Oliver North to go back to work with Amiram Nir. Amiram Nir came to Washington andmet with Oliver North. He told U.S. officials that the Iranians had promised to free all hostages in (^)
exchange for more arms. Reportedly after this Nir visit, in an atmosphere of constant terrorism and
rumors of terrorism, President Reagan was persuaded of the necessity of revving up the arms
shipments to Iran.@s3@s3
December 27, 1985:Terrorists bombed Rome and Vienna airports, killing 20 pe (^) ople, including five Americans. The
Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG), supervised by Bush's office and reporting to Bush, blamed
Libyans for the attack and began planning for a military strike on Libya. Yet an unpublished CIA
analysis and the Israelis both acknowledged that the Abu Nidal group (in effect, the Israeli Mossad
agency) carried out the attacks.@s3@s4
Bush's CPPG later organized the U.S. bombing of Libya, which occurred in mid-April 1986.
December 31, 1985 (Tuesday):
Iranian arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi told Paris-based CIA agent Bernard Veillot that Vice President
Bush was backing arms sales to Iran, and that official U.S. approval for private sales to Iran,amounting to $2 billion, was going to be signed by Mr. Bush and [U.S. Marine Corps commandant] Gen. [Paul X.] Kelley on Friday. ''@s3@s5 Loudly and publicly exposed in the midst of Iran arms deals, Veillot was indicted by the U.S. Then the charges were quietly droppesuddenly of leukemia. ''@s3@s6 d, and Veillot went underground. A few months later Hashemi died
January 2, 1986 (Thursday):
Israeli counterterrorism chief Amiram Nir met with North and Poindexter in Washington. The Bush
report on terrorism had now been issued within the government but was not yet published. Bush's
report was urging that a counterterrorism coordinator be named for the entire U.S. government--and