Secret Agent Man
Iran-Contra operative Richard Armitage is now Colin Powell's No.2
By Jim Naureckas
http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2507/naureckas2507.html
The last time a Republican administration was put together, there were only
two political appointees who didn't make it through the confirmation process.
One was John Tower, the elder President Bush's ill-fated pick to head the
Defense Department. The other was Richard L. Armitage.
Armitage, who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President
Reagan, was to be the new administration's secretary of the Army. Before his
nomination could come to a vote, however, he withdrew his name, citing the
traditional need to spend more time with his family. Perhaps more relevant
was the draft of an article of mine that had just been shown by a right-wing
Republican senator to a top Pentagon official. Co-authored by Richard Ryan,
this article never appeared in print, but the threat that it would soon be
published apparently convinced Armitage and the administration that the
confirmation process would not be worth the trouble.
The article was about Armitage's relationship with a woman named Nguyet Thi.
O'Rourke, a Vietnamese immigrant convicted of running a gambling operation in
Northern Virginia. Armitage had already attracted the attention of the
President's Commission on Organized Crime by writing a glowing character
reference for her in conjunction with her trial, on Pentagon stationery no
less. What our article added was the juicy personal angle that has become a
requirement for killing a nomination. It seemed that when the Arlington
Police raided O'Rourke's house, they discovered some unusual photographs:
They showed a nude O'Rourke holding another photo, which depicted her and
Armitage wearing swimsuits.
The most obvious motive for taking such photos was to give O'Rourke some kind
of leverage over Armitage; even though they didn't prove anything in
themselves, they certainly implied an intimate relationship between a
high-ranking government official and an organized crime figure. At the very
least, they raised the question of why the official had put himself in a
position where a mobster might think she could blackmail him.
Why was a Republican senator showing this article to the Pentagon? There were
people on the right, like Ross Perot, who were deeply suspicious of Armitage
and his involvement in MIA negotiations. Many conservatives believed that
Vietnam still held U.S. prisoners in secret camps, and Armitage's failure to
press the Vietnamese harder was seen as evidence of collusion.
Ryan and I, who personally thought it likely that the MIAs were all dead,
nonetheless cultivated these conservative sources because their distaste for
Armitage was much more intense than any liberal politician's. Perhaps
unwisely, we shared an advance copy of our article with them, which became
exhibit A in the senator's case against Armitage.
We were interested in Armitage because of his prominent role in the Christic
Institute lawsuit. The lawsuit--which was eventually thrown out of court,
with sanctions that crushed the nonprofit law firm--alleged that members of
the secret Contra resupply effort like Richard Secord were part of a
long-standing "Secret Team" of military and intelligence operatives that had
been involved in various illegal activities going back at least to 1959.
According to the Christic Institute's affidavit, Armitage was a key player in
this team, helping to funnel drug profits from Laos and Thailand into
assassination programs in Vietnam and Iran. The Christic Institute's charges
have never been proven, or fully investigated, for that matter. But
Armitage's documented history and associations do tantalizingly track the
Christic allegations (see "Pentagon Aide Linked to Drug Ring," July 8, 1987).
Armitage did come under investigation for his role in the Reagan
administration's Iran-Contra scandal. Though he testified that he didn't know
about the administration's secret sale of arms to Iran until November 1986,
when they became public knowledge, independent counsel Lawrence Walsh's
report laid out extensive evidence that he knew about them a year earlier.
In fact, Armitage apparently opposed the arms sales as early as December
1985, on the grounds that Iranians were "sleazebags." Secord later testified
that he met with Armitage then in an effort to change his mind. Armitage
claimed not to remember meeting with Secord, though Armitage's own meeting
logs show that he did. Armitage kept a December 6, 1985 document describing
the legal ramifications of the Iran arms sales, entitled "Possibility for
Leaks," locked in his Pentagon safe until June 1987, when it was belatedly
turned over to Walsh and the congressional Iran-Contra committee.
Armitage also attended a Pentagon meeting in August 1986 in which Oliver
North outlined the covert activities in support of the Contras that he had
been supervising through the National Security Council. Armitage denied
remembering anything about this meeting as well. In his final report, Walsh
said he declined to prosecute Armitage for his numerous dubious statements on
these issues because he could not prove they were knowingly false.
The withdrawal of Armitage's nomination as Army secretary was by no means an
exile. He went on to become a sort of trouble-shooter for the first Bush
administration, serving as a special liaison to the Philippines and the
Middle East. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he oversaw U.S. aid
programs to the former Soviet republics as a special ambassador. With the
change to a Democratic administration, he moved into the role of Clinton
critic and eventually an adviser to the Bush dynasty's heir.
Now Armitage's loyalty is being rewarded with a new post: He has been tapped
as the new deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell, a longtime friend.
It's unlikely that he'll run into trouble this time around. MIAs are no
longer the issue they once were among the right, and, then as now, Democrats
who are willing to ask the right questions are hard to find.
Jim Naureckas, the editor of Extra!, covered the Iran-Contra scandal for In
These Times.
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