Reagan Held Unaware of 1st Israeli Shipment : U.S. Official Reportedly OKd Transfer

WASHINGTON â€”  President Reagan was not informed of--and did not approve--the first shipment of U.S.-made weapons and share parts that Israel delivered to Iran in August, 1985--the shipment that set in motion the Administration’s controversial arms-and-hostages operation, government officials have told The Times.

To the contrary, those sources said, Reagan explicitly rejected a proposal for Israel to ship arms to Iran when it was first presented to him at a closed meeting of top White House advisers in the late summer of 1985.

But without Reagan’s knowledge, such an Israeli shipment was sent to Iran. And, according to one knowledgeable government source, Israel acted after receiving an unauthorized signal to proceed from a lower-level Administration official.

An Administration spokesman, speaking on condition he not be named, Thursday denied emphatically that an unauthorized signal had been sent. But senior Israeli officials, while not directly admitting a role in any arms shipments, have stated publicly that they sent no weapons to Iran without high-level White House approval.

Release Was Persuasive

When the Israeli shipment was followed a few weeks later by the release of an American hostage, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, White House aides used the successful swap to persuade Reagan to reverse himself and approve direct arms shipments by the United States.

Thus it appears that Reagan may have been persuaded to approve the plan that produced the most damaging controversy of his six-year presidency without realizing the wheels had been set in motion by a possibly unauthorized signal to Israel that Reagan did not know about at the time and had explicitly rejected.

About four months after Weir’s release by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon, sources said that Reagan on Jan. 17, 1986, gave final approval for establishing the U.S.-Iran arms pipeline at a White House meeting from which the most persistent critic of such overtures to the Tehran government--Secretary of State George P. Shultz--had been deliberately excluded.

Weinberger Opposed

Of the four Reagan advisers present at that January meeting--national security adviser John M. Poindexter, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, CIA Director William J. Casey and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger--only Weinberger voted against proceeding with the U.S. shipments, the sources said.

The sources, interviewed by The Times this week, had intimate knowledge of the White House negotiations. They insisted on anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject. One said that word of the unauthorized Israeli shipment, which only recently began to seep out from a tight circle of White House officials, could trigger a “revolt� within the Administration, from the State Department to the White House itself.

“This is about as serious a situation as I have ever seen,� one government source said of the disclosures. “There are a lot of people--and I mean a lot of people--who hope desperately that this (news) will get out.�

While it could not be definitively established whether someone in the White House gave Israel unauthorized approval for its initial arms shipment to Iran, the sources said that Israeli officials who ordered the shipment sent to Iran acted in the mistaken belief that their actions were sanctioned by Reagan himself.

Ban Vigorously Enforced

At the time the first Israeli planeload of U.S.-made arms went to Iran, on Aug. 19, 1985, the United States was vigorously enforcing a ban on weapons shipments to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s radical Islamic regime. And at that point Reagan had not yet taken his secret action to waive the embargo--a step that would not come until Jan. 17, 1986.

“The Israelis ostensibly broke it,� one source said of the embargo. But “the Israelis did not ship those arms without a tip of the hat from the United States.�

As recently as this past September, Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin told The Times in an interview that his government “is committed not to resell any American arms or even American components of Israeli-made arms without explicit U.S. permission.

“If you can give me one example through the history of our relations that Israel sold (even) a wing that was produced in the United States without American approval,� he said then, “I’ll eat it.�

Furor May Intensify

The disclosure of the unapproved arms cargo appears certain to heighten the furor over White House foreign policy and its decision to run secret operations--including the Iranian arms shipments--through Poindexter’s National Security Council.

It was unclear Thursday whether the new details of how the Administration’s clandestine arms-and-hostages operation came into being were being given to all members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, which were to meet with Poindexter this morning for their first full-scale briefing on the Iran affair.

One source said Reagan’s own belief that he did not authorize the first Israeli shipment was what prompted him to deny, at his televised Wednesday news conference, that the United States had secretly condoned the first Israeli shipment of arms in contravention of the embargo then in effect.

“No, I’ve never heard Mr. Regan say that,� the President said, after a questioner said that the White House chief of staff had revealed the U.S.-backed Israeli role in the first arms shipment.

‘Clarification’ Issued

After the news conference, the White House issued an unusual statement of “clarification� quoting Reagan as saying that a third nation was involved in the shipments, but asserting once more that the total volume of the approved shipments was minuscule.

Sources across the U.S. government say that the idea of shipping weapons to Iran was seriously raised for the first time in June, 1985, in a secret memorandum prepared by the National Security Council. The memorandum, which never progressed to the stage of serious consideration, nevertheless became a talking point for advocates of a secret overture to Khomeini’s regime.

Those advocates, led by then-national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane, his aide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, and Washington anti-terrorist expert Michael Ledeen, pressed the matter both inside and outside the government until it was debated at a closely held, late summer meeting with Reagan.

The meeting is said to have been preceded by meetings between Ledeen and Israeli government officials, who offered their services as a secret arms conduit and at least one secret McFarlane session with unnamed Iranian intermediaries.

Officials Gather

McFarlane, his successor Poindexter, Shultz and Weinberger were among those who gathered that summer to discuss the idea of shipping arms to Iran.

But according to one source, “the President said ‘no’--he wasn’t going to provide any arms.� The meeting broke up with no plans approved for weapons shipments by Israel or anyone else to the Iranian regime, and that position was restated at subsequent meetings.

But at least one Israeli planeload of weapons went to Iran anyway that summer, “despite the President’s disapproval,� sources said.

Less than a month later, on Sept. 9, Reagan announced that Weir had been freed from captivity by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad group in Lebanon.

Accounts pieced together this week left it unclear when Reagan learned of the disallowed Israeli shipment and how his previous opposition to further arms shipments was turned around. Nor is it certain when the Israeli government actually ceased serving as a conduit for secret U.S. arms shipments and the United States began direct shipments from its own stockpiles of arms and spare parts.

Senior White House officials, speaking to reporters in background briefings this month, have admitted to only one arms shipment taken from the stocks of a third country. They have said further that all weapons deliveries made after Reagan’s Jan. 17 directive were made directly from United States arms supplies.

A senior Administration official, briefing reporters on the secret operation last week, said the White House considered that the Israeli shipment had been sent “in our interest.�

However, sources said this week, the Israeli government in fact delivered three U.S.-approved shipments of arms and weapons parts from their own stocks to the Iranians. Those shipments were said to include, but apparently were not limited to, Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and more than 2,000 TOW anti-tank missiles.

When U.S.-originated shipments began in 1986, they were flown to Israel on American aircraft and offloaded onto unmarked Israeli planes, after which they were flown to Iran.