Posted on 02/14/2002 2:17:15 PM PST by rdavis84
WASHINGTON (AP) - Retired Adm. John Poindexter, who was President Reagan's national security adviser during the Iran-Contra affair, is directing a new Pentagon office that will focus on new kinds of military threats, including terrorist organizations.
Poindexter became head of the Information Awareness Office last month.
The office is one of two created recently by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which finances research into new military technology. The office was created following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Poindexter had been a consultant for DARPA for several years before his appointment.
Along with former National Security Council aide Oliver North, Poindexter was convicted as part of a guns-for-hostages deal that prompted a congressional investigation. He was convicted in 1990 on five felony counts of conspiracy, making false statements to Congress and obstructing congressional inquiries into the affair. The convictions against both men were later overturned.
I know your changing the subject, but I want to bump this thread so I will ask....Who exactly are "the presence of Soviet client states in Central America"?
As long as it is a Republican appointed Clymer that will lie for whatever reason, that makes national security better?
Nicaragua was the only one that actually came into being, but these Congresscritters were working to see more come into existence. Remember ol' Ron Dellums sending the Congressional report on Grenada to Maurice Bishop to make sure any embarrassing details were adequately whitewashed?
Makes me wish REX-84 had been a real-world op instead of a CPX...
Last time I checked. Gen. Al Haigh (sp?) was on the board of AOL
It's folks like you that make a dictatorship inevitable. You strain at gnats and swallow camels.
I think it still remains to be seen.
They learned from their mentors and Poindexter set the example on how to get away with the crime, They even expanded on it once they got into power.
"It's folks like you that make a dictatorship inevitable. You strain at gnats and swallow camels."
LOL So when all else fails the lets get personal argument gets thrown in now. Here you are endorsing the executive branch of governmet to lie under oath and that folks like me are the ones that is going to make this a dictatorship!!?? Wake up. No, It is you and people like you that are going to do it and not those who expect the rule of law to be followed, even by the executive branch of government
I haven't been able to tell the difference in criminality between the two since Iran-Contra. :-)
Navy Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter was appointed as President Reagan's national security adviser on December 4, 1985, succeeding Robert C. McFarlane, whom Poindexter had served under as deputy for two years. Poindexter's White House career ended November 25, 1986, when he was forced to resign in the wake of the public disclosure of the Iran/contra diversion.
Poindexter, Lt. Col. Oliver North and McFarlane were the three individuals Attorney General Edwin Meese III identified on November 25, 1986, as knowledgeable of the diversion. Poindexter's supervision of North and his own participation in the Iran and contra operations were early focuses of Independent Counsel's investigation.
As in the case against North, criminal evidence against Poindexter had to be gathered quickly before he was compelled to testify on Capitol Hill in the summer of 1987 under a grant of limited immunity. Otherwise, the prosecution of Poindexter was likely to be challenged on the grounds that it was derived from or in some way influenced by his immunized congressional testimony.
On March 16, 1988, Poindexter was indicted on seven felony charges arising from his involvement in the Iran/contra affair, as part of a 23-count multi-defendant indictment. He was named with North, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim as a member of the conspiracy to defraud the United States Government by effecting the Iran/contra diversion and other acts.
After the cases were severed and two of the original charges dismissed, Poindexter was tried and convicted in April 1990 of five felonies, including: one count of conspiring to obstruct official inquiries and proceedings, two counts of obstructing Congress, and two counts of false statements to Congress.
1 U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene sentenced him to a six-month prison term. In November 1991, Poindexter's convictions were overturned on appeal. In December 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
1 The Poindexter case was tried by Associate Counsel Dan K. Webb, Christian J. Mixter, Howard M. Pearl, and Louise R. Radin.
Poindexter joined the National Security Council staff in June 1981, following a distinguished naval career that included battleship command and high-ranking Pentagon posts. In October 1983 he became deputy to National Security Adviser McFarlane; among his subordinates was North. During Poindexter's one-year tenure as national security adviser, which began in December 1985, he oversaw the Iran/contra operations in which North was directly involved.
In November 1986, as the secret operations were becoming publicly exposed, Poindexter became the senior Administration official responsible for briefing the President's other top advisers about the Iran arms sales. In a series of White House meetings with other officials and members of Congress throughout the month, he repeatedly laid out a false version of the transactions that distanced President Reagan from the legally questionable 1985 arms shipments made through Israel, particularly the November 1985 HAWK-missile transaction.
Although Poindexter was the spokesman, he was not alone responsible for knowing the facts. Virtually every other senior official, including President Reagan, who heard his version of the arms sales in briefings throughout November 1986 had reason to believe it was wrong. Yet no one, according to contemporaneous notes of those briefings, spoke up to correct Poindexter.
Poindexter along with North and others in November 1986 attempted to shred and alter the paper trail reflecting their Iran/contra activities. Among other things, Poindexter destroyed the only existing signed presidential covert-action Finding that was intended to authorize retroactively CIA involvement in the November 1985 HAWKs shipment.
Poindexter and North were less successful in eradicating the computer-message trail of their Iran/contra activities. Poindexter and North often communicated through a special channel that Poindexter, a computer expert, had set up on the NSC computer system. This channel, known as ``Private Blank Check,´´ allowed Poindexter and North to relay messages to each other without their being routed through channels in which others on the NSC staff could screen them.
Between November 22 to 29, 1986, North deleted from his computer file 736 messages, and Poindexter deleted 5,012 messages during the same period.2
Despite these deletions, the White House routinely saved back-up tapes containing all data in the system for two weeks to protect against inadvertent loss
When the Iran/contra affair was exposed in late November 1986, the White House Communications Agency, which manages the NSC computer system, retained the back-up tapes dating from November 15. Investigators, therefore, were able to retrieve copies of all messages that were in the Poindexter-North computer files in mid-November 1986 before most of the deletions occurred. These computer messages became important evidence in both the Poindexter and North trials.
2 Williams, Poindexter Trial Testimony, 3/15/90, pp. 1752-65.
Rest HERE
Also, it never seems to be mentioned in these accounts that some months later, in a case which I believe had a "Sullivan" in the style, that the statute in question was defective as used by the prosecutors of Ollie North inasmuch as it did not apply to, and was never intended to apply to, communications from the Executive to the Legislative, an issue not raised in North's trial which presumably would have applied to Poindexter on at least one of the counts.
Even when I have questioned DOJ people rendering their expertise on this case and I bring this up they tell me that "the statute should be amended??" I confess that I am not familiar with the doctrine that a statute which is so defective and applied so defectively is OK because it "should be amended."
I am, however, familiar with the attitude exhibited by the jurors in DC when they decide that, as one candid one was quoted as saying: "We had to find that white boy guilty of something." On balance I find the whole business to be less than a shining example of justice in operation and the assumption that we should except it as well done to be disturbing at least. The real sin here seems to have been effective anti-communist actions under difficult circumstances by a press and public doting on Marxist lies and infatuated with communists and their prisons and secret police provided that they talk about how "progressive" they are and have celebrities on their side.
In the case of Admiral Poindexter he would have been left out to dry if a group of his fellow officers, mostly retired, had not privately raised the money for his appeal for the sake of preventing what seemed the unwarranted destruction of a man whose record was good and who had served his country well in a proceeding that often had the air of a lynching in Yankee Stadium by waves of public hatred as in the short story.
IMHO opinion the people that should have been prosecuted were people like Chris Dodd and others who so knowingly supported a brutal communist regime in every way that they could think of, often using their position in the U.S. government to do so. Their sins are worse than anything Poindexter did. The cries of the tortured in the numerous Sandinista prisons should have been heard and their memory should be honored. It is especially bothersome that the crude anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews by the Sandinistas got and gets such a free ride.
man! talk about antiquated pre-clintonian laws that have atrophied from lack of use. was poindexter the last gummit official convicted of these former crimes?
Part of the Iran-Contra arms sales were for this purpose. My opinion is that the aid given to the Contras probably saved Central America and the United States bloodshed in later years in order to remove the Communists.
Of course the liberals thought otherwise; they said the sandinistas were fine.
Valid point. Seems to be non-issues these modern days.
Before it goes much farther on this thread, I'd like to mention that my original comment about Poindexter's new job is on the line of "Bringing Back that Old Gang" of characters from daddy Bush's reign.
I was anti-Communist back then, and I'm anti-Communist now. But we've been loudly reminded on this Forum that we must work within the peaceful framework allowed us by the Constitution to achieve change. That MUST go for government officials as well. Iran-Contra was a blatant example of the powerful players deciding those rules don't apply to them.
Look at the Mess we're facing now. Both Partys make their own "in-your face" rules without regard to the Constitution now when they "get the Power".
right, hutchinson wampoa & cosco appreciate all the effort.
I believe it does matter. Clinton lied to cover his own ass. Iran-Contra was about funding an anti-Communist insurgency.
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