receiving clear economic and social benefits from its [Honduras's] cooperation with the United
States. ''@s4@s2 Two months after the January Bush-Azcona meeting, President Reagan askedCongress for $20 million in emergency aid to Honduras, needed to repel a cross-border raid by
Nicaraguan forces against Contra camps. Congress voted the `` emergency '' expenditure.
January 17, 1986:
George Bush met with President Reagan, John Poindexter, Donald Regan, and NSC staff member
Donald Fortier to review the final version of the January 7 arms-to-Iran draft. With theencouragement of Bush, and the absence of opponents to the scheme, President Reagan signed the (^)
authorization to arm the Khomeini regime with missiles, and keep the facts of this scheme from
congressional oversight committees. This was the reality of the Bush counterstrategy '' to terrorism, for whose implementation his Terrorism Task Force was just then creating the covert mechanism. The official story about this meeting--given in the Tower Commission Report--is asfollows: [T]he proposal to shift to direct U.S. arms sales to Iran ... was considered by the
president at a meeting on January 17 which only the Vice President, Mr. Regan, Mr. Fortier, and
VADM Poindexter attended. Thereafter, the only senior-level review the Iran initiative received
was during one or another of the President's daily national security briefings. These were routinely
attended only by the President, the Vice President, Mr. Regan, and VADM Poindexter. There wasno subsequent collective consideration of the Iran initiative by the NSC principals before it became (^)
public 11 months later....
Because of the obsession with secrecy, interagency consideration of the initiative was limited to the
cabinet level. With the exception of the NSC staff and, after January 17, 1986, a handful of CIA
officials, the rest of the executive departments and agencies were largely excluded.The National Security Act also requires notification of Congress of covert intelligence activities. If not done in advance, notification must be `in timely fashion.' The Presidential Finding of January 17 directed that congressional notification be withheld, and this decision appears to have never been reconsidered. ''@s4@s3 January 18, 1986:Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was directed to prepare the transfer of 4,000 T (^) OW anti-tank missiles to the CIA, which was to ship them to Khomeini's Iran. Bypassing normal channels for covert shipments, he elected to have his senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Colin L. Powell, handle the arrangements for the arms transfer.@s4@s4 January 19-21, 1986:George Bush's deputy national security aide, Col. Samuel Watson, worked with Felix Rodriguez in (^) El Salvador, and met with Col. James Steele, the U.S. military liaison officer with the covert Contra resupply organization in El Salvador.@s4@s5 Bush Sets Up North as Counterterrorism Boss--and Fall Guy''
January 20, 1986:
Following the recommendations of an as yet unofficial report of the George Bush Terrorism Task
Force, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 207.
The unofficial Bush report, the official Bush report released in February, and the Bush-organized
NSDD 207, together put forward Oliver North as Mr. Iran-Contra. '' North became the nominal, up- front coordinator of the administration's counterterrorism program, hiding as best he could Bush's hand in these matters. He was given a secret office and staff (the Office to Combat Terrorism), separate from regular NSC staff members. George Bush now reassigned his TerrorismTask Force employees, Craig Coy and Robert Earl, to do the daily work of the North secret office. (^) The Bush men spent the next year working on Iran arms sales: Earl devoted one-quarter to one- half of his time on Iran and Contra support operations; Coyknew everything'' about Project
Democracy. North traveled much of the time. Earl and Coy were at this time officially attached to
the Crisis Management Center, which North worked on in 1983.@s4@s6 FBI Assistant Director