NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/activism/21309

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-24 | 10.1 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!L-Bueno
From: [e-mail] (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: PROBE LINKS REAGAN DOCTRINE TO COVERT AID IN LAOS
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:17:26 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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    Copied w/o permission from:
    The Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1993

    PROBE LINKS `REAGAN DOCTRINE' TO COVERT AID TO LAOS REBELS

    By Michael Ross

    WASHINGTON - In March 1981, two months after President Reagan had
entered the White House, CIA Director William J. Casey wrote a fateful memo
outlining a covert plan to roll back communism worldwide by aiding
resistance forces in Afghanistan, Cuba, Grenada, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua,
Cambodia and Laos.
    The overt and covert dimensions of what would eventually be called
the Reagan Doctrine became a matter of record in places like Afghanistan,
Cambodia, Iran and Nicaragua.
    Now, more than a decade later, documents and other evidence
collected in a yearlong Senate investigation have uncovered what may have
been another venture to provide military assistance to anti-communist
rebels in Laos. This one may also have been conducted with White House
knowledge or direction, investigators say, without the consent or knowledge
of Congress.
    Judging from the evidence unearthed, so far, the Laotian initiative
was shorter-lived and much smaller in scale than the support effort for the
Nicaraguan Contras, in which private donations were drummed up for the
cause and later profits from secret Iranian arms sales were diverted for
their benefit.
    But if investigators' suspicions prove out, long before the
Iran-Contra affair came into full flower, a covert assistance program took
shape, which, in some ways, could have served as a prototype for Lt. Col.
Oliver L. North's later fund-raising activities on behalf of the Contras.
    The three key figures are John LeBoutillier, a former Republican
congressman from New York, Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the
National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast
Asia, and Lt. Col. Richard Childress, a colleague of North's who allegedly
oversaw the White House's interest in the POW issue from his position as
director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council.
    All three deny any wrongdoing. LeBoutillier and Griffiths say they
were involved in legitimate efforts to raise money used to gather
information about POWs in Laos and know nothing about any covert attempts
to aid rebels. Childress says he was not involved in either LeBoutillier's
activities or any private funding for the Laos rebels.
    But Senate investigators suspect otherwise. "What we are looking at
here is the precursor to Iran-Contra, an illegal, off-the-shelf operation
involving the NSC and private funds just like Iran-Contra," one Senate
investigator said.
    "All these years," he added, "the story of the White House
connection to what was secretly going on in Laos has been a time bomb
waiting to explode."
    In a letter to the Department of Justice on behalf of the Senate
Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa,
called for an investigation of the Laotian fund-raising and the National
Security Council's possible involvement in it. Intelligence laws passed by
Congress could have been violated, if, as investigators believe, the NSC
was involved in the operation or asked friendly foreign governments to
contribute to it without a formal presidential authorization known as a
"finding," which would also have had to be transmitted to Congress.
    Senate aides said the committee also wants the department to
investigate possible perjury by some participants.
    Senate investigators came across evidence of the Laotian adventure
unexpectedly while looking into possible fraud in fund-raising activities
by some POW-MIA activist groups. As pieced together from documents,
committee depositions and Los Angeles Times interviews, the Laotian
adventure stretches back to a meeting at the State Department on July 28,
1981.
    Notes from the meeting, which also involved senior officials from
the Pentagon and the NSC, show discussion of using elements of the Laotian
resistance to search for clues about servicemen missing from U.S. "black
operations" conducted in Laos during the Vietnam War. The issue was
sensitive because the United States also was pursuing attempts to account
for MIAs through the Laotian government, with whom it had diplomatic
relations.
    After the meeting, Adm. Allan G. Paulson asked the Defense
Intelligence Agency for an assessment of resistance groups in Laos. The
analysis concluded that, while the resistance groups were too small and
fragmented to pose a real threat to the Laotian government, they could move
about covertly in Laos in search of U.S. "crash/gravesites" and pass along
their findings to U.S. intelligence - provided they were "strongly
motivated."
    On Aug. 31, Paulson forwarded the DIA assessment to the State
Department, along with its recommendation that the United States secretly
pursue a two-track policy pressing the Laotian government for a POW-MIA
accounting, while at the same time undertaking "covert efforts through the
Lao resistance forces."
    It is unclear what action the White House took in response to the
DIA recommendation, although it is known that earlier that same year,
Laotian tribesmen were used for a secret CIA-backed foray into Laos to
photograph a prison where U.S. intelligence suspected POWs were being held.
    None of the evidence so far suggests a connection existed at that
point between use of the Laotian resistance for POW-related missions and
the broader aim, outlined in Casey's memo a few months earlier, of
destabilizing Communist regimes in Vietnam and Laos.
    That connection, which Senate investigators now believe did exist,
apparently began to develop a few months later after LeBoutillier, who was
also a POW activist, called Griffiths seeking help in finding a POW-MIA
family organization that could accept tax-deductible contributions on his
behalf. The money would then be transferred to a special account in
Thailand, for use in enlisting Laotians to help in the POW search.
    In return, LeBoutillier promised he would pass along whatever
intelligence he collected to the U.S. government.
    Griffiths said she agreed to help and called Betty Bartels, a
Californian affiliated with Support Our POW-MIAs, a small family group in
Los Alamitos, Calif. According to Bartels' notes, she hesitated at first,
but agreed when Griffiths assured her that the secret project had White
House support.
    During this same period, the summer of 1982, LeBoutillier said he
discussed the project with Childress.
    LeBoutillier, as well as many private donors who would later give
money to the project, all said Childress put the National Security Council
stamp of approval on the operation for hesitant contributors. LeBoutillier
declined to cooperate with the Senate committee but did agree to be
interviewed by the Los Angeles Times.
    In all, over a period of nearly three years beginning in August
1982, almost $200,000 in private donations were sent to Support Our
POW-MIAs and deposited from there into an account the organization
maintained at the Palm Desert branch of Security Pacific National Bank,
Senate records show.

    Bank records show some of the money was subsequently transferred to
an account in New York, but most - $156,000 - went to a Bank of America
account in Bangkok, Thailand, under the name of Mushtag Ahmed Diwan, who
was said by LeBoutillier to be a friend of his chief associate in Thailand,
fellow POW activist Al Shinkle.
    LeBoutillier said the contributions funneled through Support Our
POW-MIAs were the only money he knew of going to the Bangkok account, where
Shinkle used it to outfit his Laotian search teams.
    But Senate investigators, who subpoenaed the Bangkok bank's
records, reported they also found $400,000 more had been wired to the Diwan
account during this period from international sources, including the Seoul
branch of the now-infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)
and banks in the Middle East.
    The source of the international contributions has not been
established. But committee sources and former intelligence operatives told
the Los Angeles Times they believe the money came from Saudi or other
friendly Middle Eastern intelligence organizations that were also
contributing to other U.S.-run covert programs.

    According to a confidential memo by John Mattes, the Senate
committee's chief fraud investigator, the money was used to arm Laotian
resistance groups in a covert network run by "members of the NSC."
    Griffiths, who worked closely with Childress in her capacity as a
member of an inter-agency group that oversaw the government's various
POW-MIA accounting efforts, has admitted to helping LeBoutillier but said
she believed he was "legally collecting information" about possible POWs.
    Childress, interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, strongly denied
helping LeBoutillier's fund-raising activities. Childress said his name may
have been used by the former congressman in a bid "to destroy the Reagan
administration after his operation didn't work." There was "never any
private funding for the Lao resistance on my watch and it's amply on the
record that I opposed it," he said.
    But in sworn testimony, former Drug Enforcement Administration
chief Francis Mullen said Childress was involved. Mullen said he agreed to
provide DEA cover to some of LeBoutillier's operatives in Thailand in
August 1983, after LeBoutillier said the operation had been approved by
Childress' superior, National Security Adviser William Clark.
    The DEA later withdrew its cover when LeBoutillier became
implicated in a scheme to smuggle guns to Thailand - a case that the
Department of the Treasury investigated but that the Department of Justice
eventually declined to prosecute. The FBI also investigated LeBoutillier's
activities in the mid-1980s, but its findings remain classified.
    "Justice declines to prosecute the gun-running charge, the FBI
files remain classified. You have to ask yourself, `Why all the secrecy?"'
said one Senate investigator. "To me, it's now pretty clear. This was the
precursor of Iran-Contra."