George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Secretary of State George Shultz later told the Tower Commission that George Bush
supported the arms-for-hostages deal at this meeting, as did President Reagan, Casey,
Meese, Regan and Poindexter. Shultz reported that he himself and Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger both opposed further arms shipments.@s3@s9
January 9, 1986:
Lt. Col. Oliver North complained, in his notebook, that `` Felix [Rodriguez] '' has been ``
talking too much about the V[ice] P[resident] connection. ''@s4@s0
January 15, 1986:
CIA and Mossad employee Richard Brenneke wrote a letter to Vice President Bush
giving full details, alerting Bush about his own work on behalf of the CIA in illegal--but
U.S. government-sanctioned-- sales of arms to Iran.@s4@s1
Mid-January, 1986:
George Bush and Oliver North worked together on the illegal plan.
Later, at North's trial, the Bush administration--portraying Colonel North as the master
strategist in the case!--stipulated that North `` prepared talking points for a meeting
between Admiral Poindexter, Vice-President Bush, and [the new] Honduran President
[Jose Simon] Azcona. North recommended that Admiral Poindexter and Vice-President
Bush tell President Azcona of the need for Honduras to work with the U.S. government
on increasing regional involvement with and support for the Resistance. Poindexter and
Bush were also to raise the subject of better U.S. government support for the states
bordering Nicaragua. '' That is, Honduras, which of course `` borders on Nicaragua, '' was
to get more U.S. aid and was to pass some of it through to the Contras. In preparation for
the January 1986 Bush-Azcona meeting, the U.S. State Department sent to Bush adviser
Donald Gregg a memorandum, which `` alerted Gregg that Azcona would insist on
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 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--