North contradicts Reagan, Casey and others

By WILLIAM M. WELCH
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - In two days of testimony, Lt. Col. Oliver North has contradicted key assertions by major figures in the Iran-Contra affair, including President Reagan, Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and late CIA Director William Casey.

He also disputed a number of lesser figures including Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and Duane Clarridge, a senior official of the CIA's clandestine service.

North said Wednesday that it was Casey who knew perhaps before anyone else of North's plan to divert money from the sale of arms to Iran to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, saying the late director praised the idea as "the ultimate covert operation." Before his death early this year, Casey had told investigators he learned of the diversion only last October.

North also testified that Meese had known virtually since the time of the November 1985 shipment to Iran arranged by North that the contents were deadly HAWK missiles. Meese, however, has said he did not know until he conducted an inquiry into the unraveling affair on behalf of Reagan a full year later, in late November 1986.

North contradicted McFarlane's earlier testimony that he instructed North not to solicit money for military aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels from third countries and private U.S. citizens, and said it was McFarlane who suggested making misleading entries in the White House chronologies of events.

McFarlane's attorney Leonard Garment, asked about the contradictions, said Wednesday that McFarlane "emphatically adheres to his previous testimony."

Testimony by North also called into question statements by Reagan himself, even though North pointedly said he could not recall seeing written presidential approval for diversion of money from the Iranian arms sales to the Contras.

North said he had seen in the office of then-National Security Adviser John Poindexter a copy of the earliest intelligence "finding" signed by Reagan in November 1985.

That document _ a signed version of which never has been found _ was drafted hastily to cover the clandestine HAWK anti-aircraft missile shipment from Israel to Iran that had already taken place that month, possibly in violation of the law.

The November finding, a draft of hich has been introduced in evidence, was a flat statement of an arms-for-hostages deal with no rationale for it as an opening to "moderate elements" in Iran, which appeared in a finding which Reagan signed two months later, in January 1986.

A year after the November 1985 finding, in his November 1986 address to the nation on the unraveling affair, Reagan said: "We did not, repeat, did not, trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we." Later, in March 1987 after release of the highly critical Tower board report, Reagan acknowledged the deal had "deteriorated" into trading arms for hostages.

North named Abrams, head of the State Department's Latin American division, as among the officials who he believed were aware of this activities.

The Marine officer said he discussed those activities with Abrams and that Abrams called North to have him arrange death benefits for the crew killed in the Oct. 5 downing of a U.S.-backed cargo aircraft that was supplying the Contras inside Nicaragua. "Why would he have turned to me if he didn't know what I was doing?" North asked.

Earlier, Abrams swore under oath before the investigating committees that his public statements and private testimony last October that the plane had no links to the U.S. government were all "completely honest and completely wrong." He said he was lied to about U.S. links to the plane by those government officials he checked with.

North also said he believed Meese was aware of the November 1985 Israeli arms shipment at the time it took place, and that the assertion the plane carried oil drilling parts was merely a cover story.

Meese contends he did not learn about the shipment until Nov. 17, 18 or 19 last year, when informed by one of his aides, Charles J. Cooper, who had read National Security Council chronologies of the Iran initiative.

North's assertion raised new questions, however, about the inquiry that Meese undertook last November at Reagan's request into the Iran arms-for-hostages transactions.

North also disputed what appeared to be a statement gained by the committee counsels from one of North's former NSC assistants, Marine Lt. Col. Robert L. Earl. Committee counsel John Nields asked if it was true that on the day he was fired last Nov. 25, after receiving a complimentary call from the Reagan, he told Earl that the president had said "it's important that I not know" about the diversion of money.

"I don't recall the conversation that way," North said, insisting that Reagan had said he did not know of the diversion.

Earl has received immunity from the congressional committees but has not yet testified in public. His attorney, Dennis Dean Kirk, refused to take a reporter's calls.

North's testimony was at odds with the CIA's version of when its former director Casey, who died in May, first learned of the diversion.

North said Casey knew as early as January 1986 of the plan, perhaps before Poindexter was informed and 10 months before Casey ever acknowledged learning of the diversion.

"He referred to it as the ultimate irony, the ultimate covert operation, and he was very enthusiastic," North said of Casey.

North said that it was shortly after the downing Oct. 5 in Nicaragua of the U.S.-backed aircraft that Casey told him former client Roy Furmark had alerted him that "a lot of people happen to know that Ollie North has been using money from the Iranian arms transactions to support the Contras."

North said Casey told him the events were coming unraveled and "clean things up." North said that was when he began shredding documents.

Casey died in May of a cancerous brain tumor without testifying before the Iran-Contra investigating committees.

However, according testimony by CIA officials in earlier investigations by the Tower board and the Senate Intelligence Committee, Casey told them that Furmark's first meeting with him on Oct. 7 was confined to a discussion of the financial arrangements of the arms deal. The CIA officials said Furmark first mentioned the diversion in a follow-up meeting with two CIA officers on Oct. 22.

The deputy CIA director, Robert Gates, has said Casey appeared startled when he told the director on Oct. 7 of agency suspicions about a diversion.

In another revelation, North said that he wrote five memos outlining plans to divert money to the Contras. So far only one has been found, and North said he had sought to shred the documents.

North also testified that he told the CIA's then chief of European operations Duane Clarridge of the contents of the HAWK shipment within 48 hours of the delivery in November 1985.

Clarridge has told the congressional committees in a sworn statement that he believed the cargo was oil drilling equipment and did not learn the true contents until later. Clarridge's version was previously disputed by sworn statements of CIA field agents.

McFarlane, who testified in May without a grant of limited immunity, saidthat when national security adviser he told his staff not to solicit military assistance for the Contras from foreign leaders or private U.S. citizens after Congress had cut off U.S. aid. "I never heard those instructions," North said.