Casey Ignored His Warnings, Aide Testifies

WASHINGTON —  CIA officers repeatedly warned that attempts to free U.S. hostages through a deal with Iran would fail, but their advice was ignored, the agency’s chief of secret operations told Congress in testimony released Wednesday.

Clair George, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, told the committees investigating the Iran- contra affair that he declared Iranian middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar untrustworthy, advised against using retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord as a go-between, warned that a 1985 hostage-ransom plan was a “scam” and argued that giving the Tehran regime intelligence about neighboring Iraq could have “cataclysmic results.”

But President Reagan’s national security advisers and CIA Director William J. Casey paid no heed, George said in testimony given Aug. 5 and 6 and released in censored form Wednesday.

“We are talking about hostages, and the emotionalism of the hostage issue throughout the entire affair--with Bill Casey, with the President, with me--people didn’t want to stop,” George said. “They wanted to get the hostages, and it led to . . . operations that are now, after the fact, foolish.”

George said he could only tell the White House: “This is what your spies think about it. I certainly have no veto power on it.”

The 32-year CIA veteran has become a controversial figure because agency officers who worked under him have given conflicting testimony about the CIA’s role in both secret U.S. arms sales to Iran and clandestine weapons airlifts to the Nicaraguan rebels.

May Lose His Post

Congressional sources say new CIA Director William H. Webster has told them he intends to remove George from his post as the chief of clandestine operations, although Webster has publicly denied making such a decision.

George defended himself against charges of misconduct in the Iran and contra operations. He insisted he did not know that a CIA-aided cargo flight to Iran in 1985 carried Hawk anti-aircraft missiles instead of oil-drilling equipment, as the agency later claimed. And he denied charges from other intelligence officials that he had advised his field officers in Central America to withhold information about their actions from the CIA’s inspector general.

Joe Fernandez, the CIA’s former station chief in Costa Rica, told the committees that George advised him to “limit” his testimony and Fernandez admitted that he deliberately concealed information from the inspector general. George acknowledged that he told Fernandez to avoid divulging CIA sources and methods to the presidential commission investigating the affair but said he gave Fernandez no such instructions about the CIA’s internal investigation.

“I would never in a million years say to an officer: ‘Don’t discuss this, that and that,’ ” George said.

‘Beyond My Understanding’

Another agency officer told congressional investigators that George had been aware of CIA helicopter flights ferrying weapons for the contras in Honduras during a period when such military aid was prohibited. “This story is totally beyond my understanding,” George replied. “In fact, if you had asked me--which goes to show how little we know sometimes in life--if all was well in (Honduras), I would have told you it is.”

George admitted, however, that he gave misleading answers to Congress’ intelligence committees last October, when he told them the CIA had no involvement or concrete knowledge of the secret contra airlift.

“My intent, which may or may not excuse me, was . . . almost to the point of megalomania, to make the point that the Central Intelligence Agency as an entity was not involved,” he said. “I don’t lie, and I did not mean to lie.”

George disclosed also that independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh is investigating the mysterious disappearance of two key CIA cables that would have alerted the spy agency in late 1985 that U.S.-made missiles were being shipped to Iran, apparently illegally.

According to investigators and documents, Secord, who was organizing the shipment, told two CIA agents in Portugal that the aircraft contained Hawk missiles as part of an arms-for-hostages swap with Iran. The agents reportedly told the committees that they immediately reported Secord’s information to Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, then head of covert operations for the CIA’s European division.

But the cable telling Clarridge about the missile shipment has disappeared from the CIA’s files. Clarridge has testified he believed the shipment contained only oil-drilling equipment and that he did not learn about the missiles until much later.

George said the agency investigated Ghorbanifar, the key Iranian middleman in the arms deals, several times. “Over and over . . . it became evident to us that Mr. Ghorbanifar’s information, intelligence, regardless of the subject, was inaccurate, incomplete and dishonest,” he said.

“I think Mr. Ghorbanifar is a recruited agent of the government of Israel,” he added.

But he said that Casey and the National Security Council staff decided to work with Ghorbanifar without asking the CIA’s judgment and ignored the agency’s advice when it was given.

“I sent a cable around the world saying Ghorbanifar is a crook, you will have nothing to do with him, and two days later I am in the White House . . . . Surprise, surprise, the guy I am going to be dealing with, or supporting the National Security Council to deal with, is Ghorbanifar,” George said.

“I said, ‘Bill, I am not going to run this guy any more,’ which means in our language, ‘I will not handle him, he is a bum,’ ” he said.

George said Casey came under pressure from White House officials who “outflanked him to the right, charged him with being less than adventurous.”

“Bill Casey fell afoul to a charge in the White House that, ‘Come on Bill, we have had enough of those . . . shoe salesmen,” meaning the CIA’s cautious career officers, George said.