United States. ''@s4@s2 Two months after the January Bush-Azcona meeting, President
Reagan asked Congress 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 the encouragement 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 as follows: [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 was
no 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 bein 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 TOW
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''