Playboy Interview: General Richard Secord

a candid conversation about profiteering, patriotism and 25 years of covert adventures with the toughest player in the iran/contra affair

It begins like a Robert Ludlum novel. The President secretly dispatches two of his most trusted aides on a mission to a fanatical and despised enemy regime that holds a number of our citizens hostage. Canning false passports, they arrive unexpectedly at the enemy capital, in an unofficial airplane. Aboard the aircraft is a cargo of lethal missiles that they intend to barter for the lives of the hostages. They also bring a cake.

The rest of the story reads like a Mel Brooks screenplay--"Spyballs," perhaps: Nobody shows up at the airport to meet them, somebody eats the cake, then they go home.

The story, however diverting, is not fiction, and it is not light summer fare at the neighborhood theater. It is, instead, the stuff of a joint committee of the Congress that held the nation captive this past summer with televised hearings on the Iran/ Contra scandals. Spies, Presidential, advisors, Contra leaders, beautiful secretaries--all have done their part to make this the most significant and colorful Government investigation since the Watergate hearings.

It was no mere happenstance that the Congressional committee's considered choice aside first witness was Major General Richard V. Secord. Perhaps no individual, aside from Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, was more intriguing to the public than Secord; it was he who set the stage for what was to follow. Described by the press alternately as a rigid, Strangelovian general and as a slavering arms dealer, Secord has a resume that reads like contemporary history of American covert operations, from Southeast Asia to the Persian Gulf.

In fact, from his West Point graduation in 1955 to the present, Secord's life has been an enigma. As part of a top-secret operation in the early Sixties, he was one of the first American combat pilots in Vietnam. He flew an astonishing 285 combat missions during his several tours in Southeast Asia. Detailed to the CIA early in his career, he singlehandedly ran an army and air force for the CIA's secret war in Laos, some details of which have remained secret until this interview.

If that were all, it might be enough for any one career; but Secord managed to squeeze in a few more adventures. He was part of a top-secret American effort to subdue rebellious tribesmen in Iran. It was Secord who was selected by President Jimmy Carter to "go back in and gel the job done right" after the United States' failed attempt to rescue the hostages from Iran.

But Secord's military career ended abruptly. He resigned from the Air Force in 1983, embittered, under a cloud of scandal. He says today, at 55, that he was a shoo-in for Air Force. Chief of Staff. Instead, his relationship with ex-CIA agent Edwin Wilson, the man convicted of selling arms to Qaddafi and then plotting to murder the prosecutors who brought him to justice, ensnared the once-proud general. Secord says it was guilt by association, but investigators maintain that lie got off lightly.

Whatever the truth, of the charges against him, Secord embarked on a career dealing legally in arms. Using contacts he had developed over the years, he and Iranian-born Albert Hakim began a business with the lofty-sounding name of Stanford Technology Trading Group. Two years later, in 1985, a young lieutenant colonel working at the White House called Secord about a problem he was having with a confidential arms deal out of the Middle. East. When Secord heard the details, he shook his head at the "sloppiness" of the deal but agreed to help out. And cut himself in for a profit. His critics later said that profit--which some estimated at as much as $8,000,000--was outlandish, not to say illegal. Secord merely says that he and his partner earned it.

Oliver North may have known what happened at the White House, but it was the field-smart Secord who turned their vague plans into reality. As he makes dear in this, his most extensive interview outside the hearing room and the special prosecutor's office, Secord implies that had he been in complete control, the Iran/Contra operation would have succeeded without a ripple of public knowledge.

As it was, Secord made possible the Tehran trip by National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. He personally diverted the money from the Iran arms sale and sent it down to the Contras. He ran the air-supply effort for the entire Contra operation. In fact, whatever competence may be attributed to the Conlras as a military force--and even the Sandinistas concede that they have had some victories--it is Secord who is given credit for helping whip them into shape. He is, despite any charges that may be made against him--and his enemies have made many--a capable man. A can-do, no-questions-asked sort of guy. But the question that remains to be asked of him is, simply, Is he a patriot or a profiteer?

To find out the answers to this and other questions, Playboy dispatched journalistMorgan Strongto Washington during the weeks following Secord's testimony. Strong has conducted "Playboy Interviews" with such fearsome subjects as Druse war lord Walid Jumblatt (July 1984) and five correspondents and the producer of "60 Minutes" (March 1985). Here is Strong's report:

"Richard V. Secord has a grueling schedule these days. Between his sessions with the committee and the Special Prosecutor, there seemed to be little time for us to engage in lengthy discussions. After a week of uniting by the phone in a Washington hotel, I made my first appointment with him--a preliminary meeting to nail down a commitment. In the midst of the pandemonium of that week, he had to decide on the wisdom of telling all--or, at least, his side. He had his walk-away money, assuming he gets to keep the profit he says is rightfully his from the arms deals; he had been vilified in the press; he had endured months of grilling by the committee lawyers and the prosecutor's office. What did he need this for?

"It was in that first meeting that I had an inkling of how Richard Secord thinks: quickly. After a brief discussion of the interview format--no holds barred, no ground rules, and so forth--I put the question to the short, powerfully built former West Point boxer: Yes or no? He stared off briefly. He got up and motioned me toward the door. 'Tomorrow morning. Ten o'clock. Here at my office.' From then on, he was punctual, nonevasive and cooperative, true to his word.

"Secord is the essence of a covert operative. He has experienced the world not as seen by the policy makers, from a distance, but in ground battles and in the cockpits of fighter planes. And his philosophy of life has clearly been formed from that experience.

"He is a guarded man, of course. But he is not as rigid as he is described or as he appears on television. He is a man who from his teens has spent his life in the military, including the finishing school for stoics, West Point. He holds a startling number of decorations--the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and others. He is not a gregarious man, and he has not given much time, it seems, to pondering life's imponderables. He is a man given to action.

"We spent the better part of two weeks, several hours a day, going over his career and the Iran/Contra affair. Up to presstime, with all the breaks in the story, he made time to answer new questions.

"I'll say one thing: He doesn't back off."

[Q] Playboy: We've been told that we're about to talk with the ultimate Cold War warrior. True?

[A] Secord: [Laughs] No, I was never a Cold War warrior. I was a hot-war warrior. But that was just because I was the right age and grew up at the right time and in the right chain.

[Q] Playboy: Since there's been so much speculation about you, let's begin with your official biography. Where are you from originally?

[A] Secord: I was born in a small town in central Ohio. When I'd finished high school, the Korean War came along and I received my draft notice a few weeks before I heard that I had passed the entrance exams to West Point. I was going one way or the other. [Laughs] I graduated from West Point in 1955.

[Q] Playboy: How did you like the Point?

[A] Secord: Nobody liked it. At least in those days. It was very, very tough.

[Q] Playboy: But you experienced the West Point tradition of duty, honor, country?

[A] Secord: Totally immersed in it. I'm very proud of West Point.

[Q] Playboy: From there you went right into flight school, didn't you?

[A] Secord: Yes, and I was commissioned in the Air Force. Eisenhower presented the diplomas at my graduation. The last two years at West Point, Captain Al Haig was my tac officer. That's like the company commander.

[Q] Playboy: What was Haig like then?

[A] Secord: Mean as hell. Like all of them. Iron men. But we all thought Haig to be pretty sharp. No dummy. I didn't run across him again for many years. Until he was on the National Security Council staff, in fact, many years later. It's a small world at the top of the National Security structure. They tend to be the same guys moving in and out.

[Q] Playboy: You took up flying after flight school, right?

[A] Secord: Yes. I just had normal assignments. I was a flight instructor in Laredo, Texas, for a few years, in jets. Jets were quite new then. In 1961, a top-secret draft--a levy, actually--came down from Headquarters Air Force seeking volunteers for temporary duty. T.D.Y., we called it. It was an assignment that involved combat operations, and they wanted a certain category of people. My name popped up. I volunteered for it.

[Q] Playboy: But you didn't know what it was?

[A] Secord: No, nobody knew what it was. We were sent off for psychological screening in San Antonio. In later years, we joked that they had picked the crazy ones. We also went through a special survival school up in the High Sierras that lasted 22 days. Then we were sent to Hurlburt Field, Florida. By then, we all assumed we were going to Cuba, because--remember the timing--it was 1961, just after the Bay of Pigs disaster. We figured they were putting together some special units to just go and knock over Cuba.

[Q] Playboy: And?

[A] Secord: We were wrong. Obviously. [Laughs] We ended up in Vietnam.

[Q] Playboy: All U.S. activities in Vietnam were covert at that time, weren't they?

[A] Secord: Oh, it was T.S. [top secret] at the time. In fact, our wives didn't even know where we were. We had an APO box. A dead drop, I guess you could call it.

[Q] Playboy: You were flying missions against----

[A] Secord: Viet Cong.

[Q] Playboy: Air strikes, right? No aerial combat.

[A] Secord: Not at that time. A tremendous number of air strikes--285. We operated out of forward operating locations all over the country, from Da Nang to Soc Trang.

[Q] Playboy: How long did you spend over there?

[A] Secord: The first tour, I was there for six months, and then I went back to Hurlburt, which was then my home. In 1963, I was sent to Iran.

[Q] Playboy: What was happening there?

[A] Secord: A Special Forces team had been sent to the northwestern part of Iran to help the Iranian armed forces combat the Kurdish insurrection. They wanted combat veterans. So, because I'd spent six months in Iran, I became [laughs] an expert. I got to go back again in '64 and '65. Those tours became a major reason I was selected to command the Air Force Military Assistance Advisory Group in Iran in 1975. There were a limited number of guys who had single-engine-fighter attack experience in combat.

[Q] Playboy: Your bio says your next assignment involved the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[A] Secord: Yes. I returned to the States from Vietnam just in time to participate in Cuba II-the October Missile Crisis of '62. And again, because there were only a few combat-ready pilots available, I was recalled from leave and told that ten of us would lead an air strike against Cuba.

[Q] Playboy: Which never came off.

[A] Secord: But we were within 11 hours of going. We were briefed in isolation and everything else.

[Q] Playboy: But Kennedy canceled the plans.

[A] Secord: Right. Reached an accommodation with Khrushchev. So. But then I went on to spend a lot of time in Iran, as I said, and finally was sent to the Air Command and Staff College. I made major in '66.

[Q] Playboy: Where did you meet your wife?

[A] Secord: Oklahoma. We were married in '61, just before I went to this special survival school I told you about. I took off immediately. That was my present to her. [Smiles] Then, after the Air Command and Staff College, I went back to Vietnam.

[Q] Playboy: For another tour?

[A] Secord: A couple of tours. I was detailed to the CIA.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you object to that at first?

[A] Secord: Yes, because I was just a driver, a high-class driver for one of the CIA's so-called living legends, an old China hand who was down there in a senior position.

[Q] Playboy: Who was that?

[A] Secord: Well, I can't give the names. But he was head of all CIA air, which was all logistics stuff in Vietnam. You know, Air America, and so forth. The CIA had a big, big presence in South Vietnam, as you know, and they had their own support and supply mechanisms. Didn't use the U.S. military. So that was the situation that I was in there. But I was there for only a short time. I was misplaced.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Secord: I was a warrior. I wasn't a driver.

[Q] Playboy: So you went to headquarters and complained.

[A] Secord: Yes. And they decided that I was, indeed, correct. So they sent me to Laos.

[Q] Playboy: Your biography says Thailand.

[A] Secord: It may show that I was in Thailand, but I was assigned to Laos. After a few months, I was in charge of all the tactical air operations in support of the CIA.

[Q] Playboy: Same fellows who wrote your biography?

[A] Secord: [Smiles] Yes. We were supporting guerrillas all over the country [Laos], north and south. And that included all the infiltration and exfiltration missions by helicopter, the night airdrops to the troops, the coordination of tactical air support, the fighters-we actually used U.S. fighters in support of guerrillas. The first time that's ever happened on a sustained basis.

[Q] Playboy: So it was just luck that you got involved in the CIA.

[A] Secord: It was pure luck. I fit the right age group and flying-hour profile. Laos was probably the most challenging assignment I ever had. It was a ferocious war going on in Laos. The CIA's mission was to run that war.

[Q] Playboy: The U.S. was never officially in Laos, of course.

[A] Secord: Well, I lived there. You talk about a cuckoo war--all these artificial barriers we erected. To say that we couldn't go into Laos was asinine. We had a lot of Americans on the ground in combat in Laos. So why we just didn't take a couple of divisions and drive across to the Ho Chi Minh Trail and interdict their support lines, I don't know. With air support, we'd have shattered the North Vietnamese army.

[Q] Playboy: You knew what to do?

[A] Secord: We knew exactly what to do. You didn't have to be a West Point graduate to figure it out. It was very simple. The terrain was easily understood, and we had plenty of intelligence. Ground troops and air support, interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Instead, we just kept it all divided up like pieces of pie. Laos belonged to the CIA. North Vietnam belonged to the MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam]. Cambodia, oh, when that opened up--we ran that like it was Guatemala.

[Q] Playboy: Were you frustrated by not being able to do things the way you wanted to?

[A] Secord: All of us were tremendously frustrated. There were some really good CIA officers there. These were the old paramilitary types. They'd been around a lot. But some of them were cuckoo, of course. They just liked it because a fight was going on. But those I classify as pros--I count myself as one of those--always knew we were going to lose on this course.

[Q] Playboy: Then you feel that the war was lost by the politicians. What would your solution have been?

[A] Secord: I teach a course at the Special Operations Staff School these days. One of my pitches to them is that you cannot win battles without facing the enemy. You have to be willing to step up to them. All the focus on high technology as a way of reducing casualties is mistaken. Vietnam proved this. Despite [former Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara's high-tech barriers and all our equipment, in the long run, we lost 50,000 K.I.A. [killed in action]. That's a lot of people. You've got to be willing to look at the elephant. You have to be able to stare him down.

[Q] Playboy: You took a desk job in the Pentagon after your Vietnam tours. How did you feel about what you found?

[A] Secord: Well, it wasn't until I had served awhile in the Pentagon that I finally came to understand why we are so inept. It's such an enormous problem that it's hard to understand. It has to do with the interplay of the press, now aided by TV, which has become so important, and the Congress. Today, the Congress is virtually a tool of the press. There are exceptions, of course, but mostly the key to politics is a good press and as much free television as you can get.

[Q] Playboy: The Air Force made you a full colonel in 1972.

[A] Secord: I was exactly 40 years old. Normally, in the Air Force, you would not be promoted to full colonel until about the age of 45. And I was selected for brigadier general in 1975.

[Q] Playboy: That year, you went back to Iran a general and became chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group. What did you do?

[A] Secord: I was responsible for training and assimilation of all the Air Force and for some Navy and Army equipment the Iranians bought.

[Q] Playboy: There was supposedly billions of dollars' worth of equipment, most of which Iran could not use.

[A] Secord: It was an enormous problem. And I was supposed to slow down the pace of the deals, so that adequate training could take place, and so forth. I came onto the scene in 1975, just when the stuff was being delivered. All the really big-buck programs were done in those days.

[Q] Playboy: That must have been where you first saw the kind of money that was being made by the middlemen, right?

[A] Secord: They were bribing everybody, just everybody. The defense contractors were my greatest critics there. They always complained about me, because I was on their case all the time. It was a scandal; you should have seen it: just to fly over all this equipment on the docks, the loaded tankers in the harbor, billions of dollars' worth of arms--startling.

[Q] Playboy: Did you profit from anything in that period, as has been alleged?

[A] Secord: Listen, I could have become enormously wealthy. If I wanted to beat my own drum and produce bona fides that I am not a crook, all I'd do is refer to that period.

[Q] Playboy: Still, a lot of military people end up working for the defense contractors and make a lot of money. Didn't some of the officers who left the Service use your name to get their jobs?

[A] Secord: [Excitedly] Hundreds of them, hundreds. They used my name everywhere, no question about it. "Secord? Oh, yeah, he's a good friend of mine." And they continued to use my name after I left Iran. You see, for six straight years, I was a key figure in the military-sales business-first in Iran and then as the head for world-wide Air Force security systems. I was Jesus Christ as far as those defense contractors were concerned. And anyone can tell you I didn't come out of there with any money. But it would have been so easy.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you tempted? A general's salary compared with those millions?

[A] Secord: The defense contractors did not like me. Most of their chief executive officers were so pissed off at me that they couldn't see straight. They claimed that I cost them tens of millions of dollars. No one could bribe me. When they tried to hit me, they hit a brick wall. It just infuriated them. [Smiles broadly] I knocked an American defense contractor's proposals for a three-year contract in Saudi Arabia from 1.4 billion dollars to $900,000,000 with the stroke of a pen. Just like that. Whish! I had so many of their vice-presidents calling me about contracts. And that really used to piss me off. I threatened to send auditors out to look over their factories. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Were you offered any jobs after you left the military?

[A] Secord: You know how many of them offered me a job? None. Not one. I was known as a very conservative guy, and I grew to hate our industry leaders. I mean literally to hate them. Because they were always taking the short-term buck, even though they knew that clown the line, it would be to this country's detriment.

[Q] Playboy: The shah was known to be a generous man to his friends. Did he ever reward you for your efforts?

[A] Secord: [Laughs] The only thing the shah ever gave me was his son to take care of. I had to oversee his pilot training in Texas, toward the end of the shah's reign.

[Q] Playboy: What was your personal opinion of the shah?

[A] Secord: I liked him. I thought that he was very intelligent and a good leader.

[Q] Playboy: Do you dispute claims that his regime was a brutal one?

[A] Secord: I'd been watching Iran since '62 or '63, when the shah announced the White Revolution. That gave the women the vote and redistributed land among the peasants. There were dramatic liberal innovations, not just notions, things actually implemented. So I don't call it a brutal regime. I personally never saw any signs of it.

[Q] Playboy: You never saw any signs of the shah's secret police, the Savak?

[A] Secord: The Savak were supposed to be particularly brutal, and I suppose they were from time to lime. Police forces around the world are sometimes brutal. But, in any case, I'll flatly state it wasn't on any large scale in Iran.

[Q] Playboy: Even though the revolution that overthrew the shah was precipitated by his government's excesses?

[A] Secord: If you had spent any time at all in Iran in those days, you'd have come away with the idea, I think, that there should have been more regimentation, not less. Iran was almost anarchic. There were swarms of people everywhere, driving was unbelievable and nobody was regulating. So I always react negatively when I hear it described as a brutal regime.

[Q] Playboy: After three years in Iran, you returned to the Pentagon in 1978 as director of military assistance and sales in the Defense Department. What happened next?

[A] Secord: Well, after the Desert One failure-the attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran in '80-I was assigned by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to another top-secret operation. President Carter had directed that a new task force be formed to go back to Iran and get the job done right.

I was appointed deputy commander of the new joint task force, and I also commanded all aircraft. The Army officer who had commanded Desert One was kept on. I served as his deputy, but he was testifying and being investigated about the failure of Desert One, so I was acting commander a good deal of the time.

[Q] Playboy: The operation never came off, but we understand you assembled a formidable force.

[A] Secord: [Gleefully] We ended up with 95 helicopters, both existing battalions of Rangers, the Delta Force and the entire-First Special Operations Wing of the U.S. Air Force under our command: four F-14s from the Navy, AWACS, a squadron of AC-130 gunships, tankers-you name it. All kinds of goodies-plus a little extra.

[Q] Playboy: What little extra?

[A] Secord: We had another force besides Delta Force. Quite good, specialists. And their existence has not yet been blown.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't that constitute a small full-scale invasion of Iran?

[A] Secord: On more than one occasion while I briefed the Joint Chiefs, they questioned the slow expansion of our force. I told them it was necessary because of the expanding options we came up with. But in no case were we going in without what we regarded as overwhelming force. A small invasion? Exactly!

[Q] Playboy: Where were you going to invade?

[A] Secord: We wanted to seize Mehrabad Airport in Tehran.

[Q] Playboy: The principal airport in Iran? You thought you could do that?

[A] Secord: We could do it like gangbusters! We practiced in the Western mountains for that and a dozen other scenarios. 1 tell you, we would have shattered anything that got in our way. We had the best light infantry in the world and we had tremendous air support. We were just going to cap three of their airports--circle them with the AC-130 gunships, and if anybody started to taxi, he'd be shot down. And if Murphy's Law got in the way and planes did get airborne, the F-14s would get them. [Flies the mission with his hands] They wouldn't have a prayer; we would just kick the crap out of them!

[Q] Playboy: You were really into it, eh?

[A] Secord:[Loudly] We had our knives sharpened, I'll tell you! Everybody wanted to get even. But we couldn't go without targets. We had to know where the hostages were. Can you imagine the catastrophe if we'd gone against a dry hole and lost a few men?

[Q] Playboy: But with all its resources, the U.S. intelligence community didn't know where the hostages were?

[A] Secord: The intelligence was awful. There was a flash in October by the CIA; I call it the Eureka Briefing. Suddenly, they had found the hostages. But our own intelligence people couldn't accept the CIA findings, and they turned out to be bullshit. Later, the hostages were debriefed after they came back and it was clear that the CIA report had been false.

[Q] Playboy: You also dealt with Saudi Arabia during that period.

[A] Secord: I headed the drive for the sale to the Saudis of the AWACS aircraft in 1981. And I was also appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Near East, North Africa and South Asia, a big chunk of territory.

[Q] Playboy: Your career was on the fast track. In fact, some thought you might someday command the Air Force or, perhaps, head the Joint Chiefs.

[A] Secord: Yes, it still haunts me that some people have said I would have been Chief of Staff of the Air Force. It would have been either me or Jim Ahmann, and he had a heart attack. There were no others who had my experience. I was only 43 when I got my first star. So I outranked the current Chief of Staff, Larry Welch. And [smiles] Larry Welch couldn't hold my goggles.

[Q] Playboy: But it all ended suddenly in May 1983, when you retired-or were forced to-from the Service. What happened?

[A] Secord: If there's ever been a casebook study of guilt by association, this is it. And, of course, I'm so biased that it's hard for me to give an unemotional appraisal of the whole thing.

[Q] Playboy: The "thing" being your alleged connection to Edwin Wilson, the ex-CIA agent sentenced to 52 years for selling arms to Qaddafi and plotting to kill U.S. prosecutors. How did you meet Wilson?

[A] Secord: The facts are that I first met Wilson, I think, in the late Sixties through CIA operative Tom Clines. They were longtime close associates. I don't know where they started, but it was back in the agency. Wilson was still in the agency and was, as far as I could determine, a highly regarded operative. Clines and Wilson had been involved with some pretty interesting things.

[Q] Playboy: You began to visit Wilson's estate in Virginia frequently.

[A] Secord: I--like half of Washington, as it turns out--went out to his farm. But no more than a couple or three or four times in a period of two years that I lived there. In the book Peter Maas wrote about Wilson, Manhunt, he had me out there every weekend lounging around the pool. There was no pool at Wilson's. I told Maas that and he said, "Oh, that was just cosmetic."

I know I didn't go out there after '74, ever again. We just weren't that close; he was a casual acquaintance.

[Q] Playboy: Wilson claims you were a silent partner, along with others, in a company Clines formed and headed-EATSCO, the Egyptian American Transport and Services Corporation. That was the firm Clines later admitted was used to defraud the Government of some S8,000,000 by overcharging on shipping military equipment to Egypt. Your position in the Pentagon during this time-1978-would have placed you in an ideal position to award the contract for the shipping to your old friend Clines.

[A] Secord: Tom borrowed several hundred thousand dollars from Wilson to start his company, but he repaid him. It wasn't the first time he had borrowed money from Wilson. Tom then asked me about shipping things to Iran, because he had heard that there was a shipping contract going up for weapons for the Iranian air force. He asked me how the Iranian air force worked. This was in 1978, and things were a little unsettled there. I told him to talk with Dick Helms [former director of the CIA] and get his advice, because he was highly respected there. [Helms was formerly Ambassador to Iran.] He was then a consultant.

[Q] Playboy: Helms is a friend of yours?

[A] Secord: Yes, he is. I used to see him from time to time.

[Q] Playboy: As you said earlier, it's a small world at the top. Clines saw Helms?

[A] Secord: He did, yes. Then I advised him to get an appointment with the commander of the Iranian air force, General Rabi'i. I told Tom 1 didn't mind his using my name but not to say I was in business with him or anything like that, because I wasn't. My name was being used by every damn aerospace manufacturer in the country, anyway. And Tom did that. He went to Iran and took along with him his joint-venture partner, who runs a very large freight-forwarding outfit.

[Q] Playboy: Did they get the contract?

[A] Secord: No. They were prepared to compete for the contract, but then the lid came off in Iran, so nothing ever came of it. Then the, Justice Department people, who were investigating the EATSCO case, kept asking how in the hell Clines could suddenly be involved in freight forwarding with no experience. Well, he had a lot of experience. He had worked several deals, including the one in Iran.

[Q] Playboy: The Justice Department charged that you interceded for Clines from your post at the Pentagon.

[A] Secord: When I was first accused of being implicated in this thing, I laughed, because the Pentagon can't pick the forwarder and had nothing to do with it. Since the days of lend-lease, our Government policy has always been that it is the recipient country's responsibility to provide transportation. The Justice Department didn't know that when they came after me. But it's a regulation.

[Q] Playboy: You're saying you couldn't have given the contract to Clines and company even if you'd wanted to?

[A] Secord: Every country in the world hires its own freight-forwarding contractor. And, by the way, it's one of the dirtiest businesses in the world and always has been. There are things that are illegal in other businesses that are perfectly legal in ocean shipping. Kickbacks are legal in the ocean-freight business.

[Q] Playboy: Yet the episode ended your career.

[A] Secord: Yes, it was a nice conspiracy and it got into the press, and then along came this piece on CBS Evening News and bam!

[Q] Playboy: You retired under a cloud, washed up. Why, if you were innocent, didn't you stay on and fight it out? You're a warrior.

[A] Secord: I was terribly compromised. It bothered me so much that I decided to retire. Plus, I owed a lot of lawyers a lot of money that I couldn't pay without going out to work. 1 owed about $22,000. Plus, I was totally disgusted with the Pentagon defense counsel, Will Taft.

[Q] Playboy: You've said you felt that the Pentagon abandoned you when the charges were made. Why do you think your colleagues turned their backs on you?

[A] Secord: They're pansies, I guess. They just dropped me. I don't know; they don't think loyalty is a two-way street. How can you work for guys like that? That's the way I look at it. I was very discouraged.

[Q] Playboy: Nobody encouraged you to stay and fight?

[A] Secord: [Defense Secretary] Cap Weinberger asked me six times to stay on during onc-on-one meetings in the months before I left. I kept putting it to him, "You get rid of Will Tall and I'll stay."

[Q] Playboy: But Weinberger played hardball and refused to get rid of him?

[A] Secord: Weinberger just talks a good game. He ain't that tough, I'll tell you. I said, "Let's step up to the plate." But he wouldn't. Anyway, that's why I chose to retire. After months had gone by, the Justice Department had produced no evidence that I was involved with the scheme. 1 told them to put up or shut up.

[Q] Playboy: Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci--now NSC advisor--reinstated you pending a polygraph test, right?

[A] Secord: I offered to take a polygraph test if they promised to put me back to work when I passed it, but Federal prosecutor Theodore Greenberg objected to that. There's an exchange of letters on the subject. And the Maas book on Wilson inaccurately reported the whole thing.

The Wilson affair ruined me, as I saw it, and I wasn't going to stick around. Because every time somebody wanted to smear me, he would pull Wilson out of the hat. When the Iran/Contra scandal broke, Maas saw the opportunity to really pin the rose on me and market the book.

[Q] Playboy: But, as Maas points out, it's very curious that you testified in Wilson's behalf at his trial. Why do that if you had so limited an involvement with him?

[A] Secord: I was subpoenaed. Both the defense and the prosecution subpoenaed me for the trial. 1 was really appearing as a Government witness, not as a witness for Wilson, and Maas twisted that around.

[Q] Playboy: You gave Clines a check for $30,000 to help pay his $110,000 fine. Wilson alleged that that was the one third of the fine for which you were responsible as the silent partner. How do you explain it?

[A] Secord: Clines came to me for a loan. He needed the money and I lent it to him. He paid me back, and I have the canceled check. And he paid me back with interest. Clines will tell you that.

[Q] Playboy: Wouldn't it have been better just to have stayed away from Clines after the scandal broke?

[A] Secord: We served together in the war in Laos. We were foxhole buddies. I won't leave my friends hanging if they need help.

[Q] Playboy: In any case, you left the military and went to work for Albert Hakim, forming a business called Stanford Technology Trading Group International-an arms dealership. When did you meet Hakim?

[A] Secord: I had met him in Iran. That's how he knew to look me up-he had observed some of my operations in Iran.

[Q] Playboy: And you went into the arms trade to make money?

[A] Secord: I told the Congressional committee that I was in the arms trade to make money. But when 1 first went into business with Hakim, we didn't deal in arms. We dealt in security systems.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning what?

[A] Secord: To me, arms arc the things that go "Bang!" We broadly defined security to include not only security devices but aircraft shelters, ammunition, and so forth.

[Q] Playboy: Did you make any money before the Iran/Contra deal?

[A] Secord: You seldom do immediately. It was going to take a long time for start-up.

[Q] Playboy: And how, finally, did you get involved in the Iran/Contra scandal?

[A] Secord: It's a complicated story. I was one of several special-operations experts that [Oliver] North contacted after the May 1984 phase-down of the Contra operation----

[Q] Playboy: Before we go any further, did you personally support the Contra movement to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua?

[A] Secord: Before I left the Pentagon, I was sitting in on all the meetings and I was well aware of what was going on down there militarily. Yeah, I felt that they were trying to do what was right-that is, supporting the Contras. I did not feel it was the CIA's job to do it. You should not have a covert operation that is actually overt.

Anyway, later, when I was in business, I was just one of several people Ollie North contacted. He arranged for me to meet with [Contra leader] Adolfo Calero. Calero asked me to broker weapons for him. It had never occurred to me to try to broker weapons to the Contras.

[Q] Playboy: Why would that surprise you? You were in the arms trade.

[A] Secord: Not then. I was dealing only with security systems.

[Q] Playboy: But you agreed to broker weapons and made arrangements with Calero?

[A] Secord: By our second meeting, he brought up his big problem: He had very limited funds and he wanted to spend the money for high-quality weapons and ammunition. He had already bought some hand grenades from Brazil, and the Contras were having a problem.

[Q] Playboy: What was the problem with the Brazilian grenades?

[A] Secord: They were blowing up in the faces of the troops. There was a well-known quality-control fault in the fusing. And sometimes just by pulling the pin, not even releasing the handle, the things would go off. How would you like to be carrying those around?

[Q] Playboy: And you corrected the problem?

[A] Secord: Now, Calero had gotten some advice from a former U.S. Army general and Contra supporter. The great infantryman-and this really gives you something to think about--had suggested putting tape around the grenades! He said they could fix the problem simply by taping around the handles and the pins. [Laughs] Can you imagine that? And when they needed to throw a grenade, they should just unwind the tape and toss the grenade! Even as an airman, I stood gasping in disbelief.

[Q] Playboy: At the Iran/Contra hearings, Calero claimed that you made incredible profits from this trade, with as much as 60 percent markup, and that you had sold hand grenades for nine dollars when they could be bought for three.

[A] Secord: Even department stores mark up things 100 percent. But, no, we did not. The markup was in the vicinity of 30 percent. And if you calculate freight and other expenditures, the markup was less, about 20 percent, which is a very good deal. We never sold hand grenades for nine dollars. The first ones we sold were for $8.50 and later for S7.95, never for nine dollars. And you can't buy a hand grenade for three dollars, not even the ones that blow up in your face. Calero was fed this information by Felix Rodriguez, who worked for a rival arms dealer.

[Q] Playboy: His testimony before the committee was that he would have nothing to do with you once he discovered you were running the operation, because of your past involvement with Wilson.

[A] Secord: He was trying to pressure us by threatening to withhold his influence with the Salvadorans so he could take over the operation and make some more money. Talk about amateurs! He was a walking security violation. Here we had this top-secret life-or-death operation, and he took his cousin down from Miami on what amounted to a guided tour. Then he took the mayor of West Miami down. These guys talked to every Cuban in Miami about the operation. This guy is nuts.

[Q] Playboy: In your experience, are all covert actions this haphazard?

[A] Secord: I don't know. Not many are as screwed up as this was.

[Q] Playboy: You didn't end up thinking much of the Contra leadership, did you?

[A] Secord: That's a fair statement. It didn't take me too long before 1 realized that Calero, the head guy, didn't know what he was talking about. He wanted to buy a lot of ammunition--some of this kind, some of that. The Contras had a hodgepodge of rifles and ammunition. Some Russian AK-47s, some Ml6s, Belgian rifles, a smattering of Jewish submachine guns----

[Q] Playboy: You mean Israeli-made Uzis?

[A] Secord: Yeah, they had a mixture of East and West Bloc stuff and no spare parts for the guns, and they had little training in using the weapons.

[Q] Playboy: Why was Calero so insistent on a variety of weapons?

[A] Secord: I was always saying, "Look, Adolfo, you've got all this crap. Why not stick with one weapon, say, only Russian AK-47s?" He'd say, "No, no, because this rifle is good for this, and this rifle is good for that." I said, "Wait a minute; a rifle is a rifle." And what he had was a logistical nightmare of broken weapons and different brands and spare parts.

[Q] Playboy: So you suggested that he get some expert advice.

[A] Secord: I got Tom Clines to help. In addition to being an infantryman, he was familiar with the racket from his CIA days. And he got Rafael Quintero to assist him. Quintero was a Cuban who had been with the CIA since the Bay of Pigs. He was an expert on guerrilla warfare. His mission was to get close to Calero and into the Contra organization. It was like an intelligence operation. He started checking around and, after some months of work, came up with a complete list of weapons the Contras needed.

[Q] Playboy: And you agreed to provide them?

[A] Secord: I was working with the Canadians and the Portuguese and came up with a list of prices. This was a pure business transaction as far as I was concerned. So we fooled around until November or December '84, when I made the first deal for a shipload of stuff-from the Far East, rather than from Europe, because we found some tremendous prices.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning Taiwan? When you testified in committee, you referred to the country by only a number.

[A] Secord: It was China. The People's Republic of China. At just about this time, the People's Republic made the decision to enter the international arms market.

[Q] Playboy: The Sandinistas should be happy about that.

[A] Secord: Yes. Before this, the Chinese weren't in the arms market for money, but they had a lot of good stuff and cheap. They even had NATO ammunition that they had made for American Ml4 rifles. High-quality stuff. Anyway, we finally assembled a boatload.

[Q] Playboy: And your involvement deepened from there. Did Calero realize that you were making a profit?

[A] Secord: Calero came back to me for more weapons, in spite of being unhappy with the first deal with respect to delivery. He says he didn't know we were making a profit, but he knew I was dealing with dealers and that it was a business for me.

[Q] Playboy: At that time, you also were in close touch with North, weren't you?

[A] Secord: I'd developed quite a close relationship with North by that time. I was feeding him information. I didn't have to; he asked me if I would and I did. He was trying to monitor the whole thing and provide some guidance to Calero. North was supposed to be watching the Contra account till the CIA took it over again.

[Q] Playboy: Did you report any of your reservations about the Contras to North?

[A] Secord: Well, the CIA had been running the show. I didn't get into this to criticize the CIA. But after many months, I was sitting with Ollie and I told him, "Look, Ollie, I haven't been down there, but I've been in the military long enough to know that this whole thing is screwed up like Hogan's goat. You can get it firsthand. I'll introduce you to Clines and Quintero." I continued, "If we want to have any chance of scoring some victories over the Sandinistas, who I understand are well organized and well led, we've got to get these boys' acts together."

[Q] Playboy: How did North react?

[A] Secord: In July of'85, we had this famous meeting down in Miami-which Calero seems to have had amnesia about. It was a very tough meeting. Ollie arrived late, and Enrique Bermudez, the Contra military commander, was there, as well as Clines, me and Quintero. Ollie started the meeting by heavily criticizing Calero in front of Bermudez about recent reports of corruption in the Contra organization. He all but pistol-whipped Calero. Ollie can be volatile at times. I thought it was a bad move.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Secord: The Latinos have a big macho image, bigger than ours. None of us said anything--we just sat there while North went on--but you could tell that Calero was tremendously embarrassed. That's possibly why he forgot about the meeting.

[Q] Playboy: But wasn't North's point that the Contras were ripping off the money supplied by Congress as well as being militarily inept?

[A] Secord: Sec, not only had I told North that it was falling apart where the rubber meets the road but he had gotten reports about the corruption and all sorts of bad stuff'. All this stuff was just falling on Ollie's head. He raised the subject of Calero's brother, Mario, who was the procurement official in New Orleans, buying all sorts of nonlethal stuff, from boots to belts; you name it. Some of the stuff was rotten--unusable ponchos and boots. This kind of thing really pisses off the troops in the field, giving them crappy stuff like that. Mario Calero was just rotten; everybody knows that. Adolfo denied it, of course. I've got my reservations about Adolfo, but I can't prove them.

[Q] Playboy: Was North reporting this unsettling information up to the White House?

[A] Secord: It did go up. And also, I think, it went up to the intelligence community.

[Q] Playboy: This was also the meeting at which you became involved in the Contra air-supply operation, wasn't it?

[A] Secord: Well, we got around to the fact that the most important problem was the lack of airdrop capability, because by December of'85, the last of the Contra air force had been junked. They had seven or eight pilots and they could operate only in daylight. They couldn't get into the drop zones in Nicaragua. So they had no air capability. If their capability didn't improve, the troops would soon disappear from the field.

[Q] Playboy: What did North recommend at the meeting?

[A] Secord: At dawn, Ollie jumped up, went out to his Air Force jet and flew to Washington so he could be back in time for the staff meeting, having been awake all night as usual. We were left in Miami. Calero and Bermudez went their ways, and it was just me, Clines and Quintero.

[Q] Playboy: The old crew that had run the secret war in Laos.

[A] Secord: [Smiles, bemused] Yeah! I'll never forget it.... If there is one moment I can point to as when I got sucked into this whole mess, that was it. I was talking about how to get this airlift going, and they said, "Don't get involved, don't get involved. It will be nothing but misery. There's no money to be made there." And I said, "I know there's no money to be made there, but that's not the point. Shit, the whole thing is going down the tubes."

[Q] Playboy: Altruism rears its head. And so you decided you should run the airlift?

[A] Secord: Well, it was some time later that Ollie was pushing me about it. I said, "Look, if you can find the money, I'll do it." He said, "How much money?" I said, "It will cost a lot of money." He asked, "How much is a lot?" He always wanted quantification. I said, "I don't know. We'll have to study the matter."

[Q] Playboy: And he said he'd find funds for the operation. How?

[A] Secord: Private donations.

Anyway, I didn't want to operate the airlift. I agreed with Clines that it was going to come to grief and cause a lot of trouble. I didn't want anything to do with it other than be sort of a founding father.

[Q] Playboy: But you became more than that; you ended up running the Contra supply line at the same time that you were caught up in the Iran side of the operation-all of which was masterminded by Ollie North. Although you don't share the view of him as a mastermind. You seem to describe North as a little hapless.

[A] Secord: I got to know Ollie North, especially in 1986, very, very well. Ollie was a bit disorganized, but mainly he was overworked. He worked superhuman hours. I couldn't do the things he was doing. And he had far too many responsibilities assigned to him.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think he's stable?

[A] Secord: Some people are trying to paint him as a loose cannon. That's not the impression I got. No one who saw him in action day in and day out would say that. He was an energetic workaholic. He was one of the few people around who got things done. He gained more and more power, because he was always given more responsibility.

Ollie got responsibilities because he got things done. Like tracking down those terrorists after the seizure of [the Italian cruise ship] Achille Lauro. Everybody knows it was only because of Ollie North that the U.S. pulled off the operation. And I knew other things he got done that seemed superhuman at the time. So his bosses, Poindexter and McFarlane, just kept piling it on.

[Q] Playboy: Until he failed.

[A] Secord: Yeah. He was like a mule-and you know how the Army treats mules. You load him up and load him up until pretty soon his back breaks. Then you eat him.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't he get help?

[A] Secord: Ollie didn't know how to delegate very well. He wanted to get involved in everything down to details, nuts and bolts, and that burns up time like crazy. I counseled him like he was my own son a couple of times. Once, we were at a critical strategy meeting and he said, "I've got to run, I've got to run." I said, "Ollie, Ollie, for Christ's sake, calm down." He said, after another of those all-nighters, "I've got to be at an Inspector General's meeting." I said, "Ollie, I've been to eight million Inspector General's meetings. Not one has been important. We're talking about life and death here; are you crazy?" "Oh, I've got to go; if I don't go, they'll fuck everything up." It was no use. He was that way.

[Q] Playboy: You obviously admire North.

[A] Secord: He was very bright--a quick study on the kinds of things we're talking about, clandestine operations. He was not as experienced in international affairs as you might think.

[Q] Playboy: No? With the whole new meaning he gave to American foreign policy?

[A] Secord: [Laughs] Well, I mean, if you look at his background, you will see he hadn't served in the field. His knowledge of diplomacy was derived from sitting in meetings in the interagency arena.

[Q] Playboy: You watched North's committee appearance. What did you think?

[A] Secord: It's been like a goddamn soap opera. But great theater-old-fashioned melodrama, the kind Americans love.

[Q] Playboy: Was he evasive?

[A] Secord: I think one of his tactics was to pontificate on a point and not answer. He was filibustering; he'd make a great Senator.

[Q] Playboy: You had the same experience. What was your reaction?

[A] Secord: You have to sit in that chair to experience it. It's the most intimidating thing I've ever experienced. North didn't seem to be intimidated at all. I got a couple of thousand letters and telegrams of support. North got what, 100,000? He's the real Clint Eastwood. [Laughs] Still, Ollie is the kind of guy I would like to keep on tap-but not on lop. I think he's a great guy, but I don't think he's real tough. Still, he has demonstrated his physical courage a number of times; he has now demonstrated his bureaucratic courage. A lot of generals and colonels who have proved their courage in the air or on the ground fall apart when they have to fight the bureaucracy in Washington. They just can't cope with it. I think North has both kinds of courage.

[Q] Playboy: Some people think that his actions in this affair were those of a hot dog, a showman.

[A] Secord: I never saw him in that role, but he could well be a sort of hot dog. Maybe he's the smartest bastard in town. If you are going to be a charismatic leader, then you have to behave like that on occasion. You know, General Pattern had his ivory-handled revolvers. I'm a little bit envious of North, to tell the truth. Although I achieved much higher rank than he ever did, I never had that kind of reputation when I was in the military. I guess I was kind of invisible.

[Q] Playboy: But you were supposed to be, as a covert-operations specialist.

[A] Secord: Well, half of the time. The other half, I was in the highest-profile jobs that you could get. How much higher profile could you be than Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Near East? Most people who didn't know of my covert career just saw me as a tough bureaucrat. But North is different from most officers I've known in the Army or the Marines--self-effacing, low-key, unremarkable types who try to stay away from center stage.

[Q] Playboy: Melodrama aside, did you have any quarrel with North's testimony?

[A] Secord: Everything he said, as far as I am concerned, was pretty high fidelity. His story tracked right along with the facts as I recall them. He knows a lot of things I wasn't involved in-his relationship with [the late CIA director William] Casey, and so forth. And I have to say that I always checked with McFarlane and Poindexter on things Ollie told me. I didn't leave it to his word entirely.

[Q] Playboy: When Poindexter testified, he said the President did not know what your group was doing. You say he did. Why?

[A] Secord: Oh, he did, he did. Poindexter himself told me that the President knew about the airlift and was very pleased with what I was doing.

[Q] Playboy: Poindexter's testimony on that point makes you out to be a liar, though.

[A] Secord:Naturally, the President knew what was going on. I testified that McFarlane told me the President had cleared it in July of 1985. McFarlane did tell me that. I did not dream that up!

[Q] Playboy: Still, there seems to be some vagueness on that point.

[A] Secord: [Heatedly, leaning forward, fists clenched] I know how they would like it to seem. They would like it to seem that this guy Sccord got his hooks into Oliver North and manipulated him. Secord and his scummy pals really made out and the poor President didn't know anything. So if we clean out the scum-Secord, Hakim, North-everything will be all right.

[Q] Playboy: What personal knowledge do you have of what Reagan knew?

[A] Secord: In November of '85, I became involved in the Iranian side of things. North came to me because I had undertaken the airlift program and I had gotten closer to him. He had gotten a call from McFarlane, who was with the President at the Geneva summit. McFarlane had gotten a call from the Israeli minister of defense, Yitzhak Rabin. The Israelis had run into trouble in Portugal trying to move the HAWK missiles to Iran through there; they couldn't get flight clearance from the Portuguese. The Israelis were stymied.

[Q] Playboy: So ... North?

[A] Secord: Right. McFarlane called Ollie at the White House. Ollie called me. He said, "Can you come down here? I want to talk to you." I went down and he laid out part of the program for me. I was amazed.

[Q] Playboy: Of course, North knew that you had been buying weapons from Portugal and you knew your way around.

[A] Secord: Yes, he thought I had developed a pretty good relationship with the Portuguese government, which was true. The Portuguese were supportive of what we were doing in Nicaragua. I said. "I'll do what I can; I don't know." I mean, this was a tall order, getting the Portuguese to swallow a story. I never got clearance. The missiles finally went through Israel. But that's how I was drawn into the whole thing.

[Q] Playboy: So you're saying you know the President had personal knowledge because McFarlane was with him in Geneva when the call from Rabin came in.

[A] Secord: That's right. There is no question that he knew. Bud McFarlane personally told me, standing on the ramp in Tel Aviv, that the President had approved the shipment of the missiles in July of 1985.

[Q] Playboy: Whose idea was it originally to ship the missiles?

[A] Secord: The idea came from the Israelis. The Israelis were always getting caught dealing with Iran. Many times, selling our stuff, it would come out because of the requirement to notify Congress. Under U.S. law, any sale of military equipment has to be cleared with Congress before it can be transferred.

[Q] Playboy: According to your testimony, this was your introduction to the Iran operation, and the middlemen in this were arms dealers Manucher Ghorbanifar, who put up the money for the original antitank-missile deal, and Adnan Khashoggi. The group was referred to later as the first channel. You eventually argued successfully to cut both the Israelis and the arms dealers out. Why?

[A] Secord: Hakim did not trust them, and neither did I. Ghorbanifar is to tally corrupt. But he is up front about it. He made no secret that he was trying to make money. He's a typical Iranian rug merchant. He won't back off. Much later, in June, I learned that Khashoggi was a part of it. That just floored me. There was the snaky Ghorbanifar, who we discovered was lying to both us and the Iranians, and Khashoggi and God knows who else. How long could it stay secret?

[Q] Playboy: What was the Israeli government's interest in dealing with Iran?

[A] Secord: I think the Israeli government was interested strictly in the intelligence aspect. But they were so cheap that they wouldn't even pay for the 508 TOW antitank missiles. They wanted the U.S. to pay for them. If I had to do it all over again, I would have insisted that the Israelis foot the bill totally and we could have cut out Ghorbanifar immediately. After all, it was peanuts.

[Q] Playboy: So everyone was making money except the U.S. What did you say about your own motives?

[A] Secord: I told them I was in the arms trade for money, but then I forswore my share of the profits a year later, because I thought I might want to re-enter public service. And that is true. And what really irritates the shit out of me is that the records show that Hakim said that at the hearings, except that he put the date up a couple of months.

[Q] Playboy: There is also the famous matter of the Porsche you supposedly bought out of the profits.

[A] Secord: As I've said, the Porsche was a loan or S31,000 from Hakim. He claimed before the committee that he didn't think it was a loan, but Hakim has lent me money a number of times.

[Q] Playboy: Yet initially you saw a way to make a good deal of money.

[A] Secord: I said that the opening of Iran presented opportunities for really big business in the future. I discussed this with Hakim, George Gave, the CIA Iran expert, and North.

[Q] Playboy: And there was never any objection to your making money?

[A] Secord: No, at the time, there was no objection.

[Q] Playboy: Did the President know of your involvement and of your motives?

[A] Secord: Sure. Why do you think the term third parties was inserted in the Presidential finding of January, which retroactively-authorized the shipment of the TOW missiles?

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Secord: ' "Third parties" referred to me.

[Q] Playboy: Elaborate on that.

[A] Secord: The Presidential finding said that this operation was to be executed using normal means and third countries, and so on. The CIA lawyers checked this out after they were briefed on how it was going to be implemented, using me as the commercial cutout [a term used by the CIA for a diversionary corporate cover]. They said that they would cover me by using other language. And so they inserted the term third parties.

[Q] Playboy: The finding went to the President for his signature. Do you know if he knew what it was for?

[A] Secord: He knew what it was for. Either that or he's in the habit of signing blank checks.

[Q] Playboy: Whose idea was it to transfer the proceeds from the Iran sales to the Contrast

[A] Secord: Well, that's another matter entirely. That came up after the Iran initiative got under way. The donations were not coming in to support the airlift operation as Ollie had promised. We didn't think the sending of some surplus money from the Iran deals to keep the Contra project going was such a big deal. It seemed not to affect the President one way or another. So 1 never gave it a thought at the time. Now it seems to be the central issue of the investigation.

[Q] Playboy: How did you first divert the funds to the Contra airlift?

[A] Secord: Ollie was saying, "You can't just send money down to the airlift operation." I talked with Hakim about this. He never wanted to do it, because he didn't have any particular brief for the Contra airlift. He was in the Iran operation body and soul, but I don't think he knows where Nicaragua is. He wasn't overjoyed about sending the money down to this ragtag operation. But I made him do it.

It was either that or cancel out-just walk away from it. I could have done that. I could have said, "The hell with you. I've had it." But that's not my style. I usually bulldog it on through. This was one case where I shouldn't have. But I don't know.... I'll tell you, when we started delivering the goods last summer--and if we hadn't, there would not have been a southern front, and a lot of troops would not have been supplied on the northern front.... We sent money down after the February deal, and then again after the May deal in Iran. But I don't know if they're still there or not. Because when we began to drop the Contra operation, we dropped it very fast. [Smiles]

[Q] Playboy: Earlier, you mentioned your concern for secrecy. By all accounts, the operation wasn't very secure.

[A] Secord: By my standards, we had lousy operational security on both the Contra operation and the Iran deals. I talked with Ollie about this several times. As early as July of last year, I was urging him to go to the President with a pre-emption-long before the second channel was developed. I anticipated this because the way Ghorbanifar was acting, he was threatening to make the deal public. It was a real mess. It was the messiest operation I had ever been involved in. It's a miracle it wasn't blown in July.

[Q] Playboy: Ghorbanifar was upset about not being paid back the money he had advanced for the missiles, wasn't he?

[A] Secord: We had a lot of money in our accounts, but it wasn't what it seemed. This really blew my skirts up, as they say. After the May trip to Tehran failed, in theory, we had an awful lot of money in our accounts, because we charged something like $15,000,000 for something like $6,000,000 worth of stuff. So, in theory, we had $9,000,000 surplus.

[Q] Playboy: A nice round sum.

[A] Secord: Except for S2,000,000 the Israelis insisted on for additional insurance.

[Q] Playboy: But you had the rest of the money in the bank.

[A] Secord: So what? If you were in my place, wouldn't you be worried about having to refund the money? But I already had sent some of the money to the Contra airlift operation. I couldn't repay Ghorbanifar. You see the mood he was in.

[Q] Playboy: Threatening to go public?

[A] Secord: He wasn't being paid by the Iranians. And we hadn't delivered the goods, right. And he was screaming at Israeli intelligence agent Amiram Nir, and Nir was giving him the cold shoulder, because Israeli intelligence wanted the operation to go on. And I'm sitting here like the meat in a sandwich, because, you know, I don't have SI 1.000.000 to pay him back.

[Q] Playboy: But this money and the profit from other sales to Iran were kept in your Swiss account. You claimed before the committee that this money was yours; weren't you, in fact, hanging on to the profits--profiteering, in other words?

[A] Secord: This really gets me, and I told the committee that. Senator Rudman claimed it was all Government money, the money in the Swiss accounts. When we couldn't repay Ghorbanifar, I explained all this to the people 1 was dealing with in the U.S. Government. I told them I desperately needed the money to pay Ghorbanifar back. I said, "You guys screwed this whole thing up; what am I supposed to do?" They said, "That's your problem." So that's why I say now it's the enterprise's money. They just dropped this whole thing on me to deal with as I could.

[Q] Playboy: In his testimony, North claimed that the profits from the enterprise were not Hakim's and yours. He claimed that given five minutes with Hakim, he would get the money back. What's your reaction?

[A] Secord: I think that was just a little bravado on his part. Ollie said at the time that I owned the HAWK parts. He said, "That's Dick's problem, not the U.S. Government's problem."

[Q] Playboy: What do you intend to do with the money?

[A] Secord: I have already stated for the record that I intend to have the money donated after we've paid all the bills. We have S1,000.000 or more in outstanding bills. We have a lot of lawyers' fees, too. But whatever money is residual, I will talk with Hakim and try to get it donated. And I can only try, because the money is his; technically, he controls it. I will try, but 1 can't put a pistol to his head. In reality, $8,000,000, under the circumstances, isn't much. We were dangerously low on capital. A businessman would understand.

[Q] Playboy: What was your role in setting up the famous Tehran meeting?

[A] Secord: I was in charge of setting up the logistics for the meeting. I was the one who furnished the airplane and crew and did the planning for the clandestine mission in Iran. That was a direct result of the February 24 meeting in Frankfurt, which I attended along with North, a CIA official, Hakim, Ghorbanifar and Nir. On the other side were two officials from the Iranian prime minister's office and one from the Iranian military.

[Q] Playboy: This was when you disguised Hakim with a wig and glasses?

[A] Secord: Yes, because Ghorbanifar didn't trust Hakim, but also because we couldn't get a translator. The CIA didn't have anybody available who could speak Farsi.

[Q] Playboy: That and other meetings were the setup for North and McFarlane's visit to Tehran with the cake and the Bible from President Reagan--which took on farcical overtones. For starters, no one showed up to meet McFarlane and North and the others when they arrived, right?

[A] Secord: Yes, and the reason there was no one to meet them was that the Iranians thought that the whole thing was bullshit. They didn't believe they were actually coming.

[Q] Playboy: You mean that, in effect, they were just dropping by Tehran with cake and Bible?

[A] Secord: [Laughs] Yes. The people Ghorbanifar was talking with didn't trust anybody, so they hadn't made any arrangements. As a consequence, the high personages who were supposed to meet them weren't there. They didn't even hear of the meeting until after McFarlane got there. And, by the way, they didn't take a Bible on that trip-just a cake.

[Q] Playboy: We'll get back to that, but win-did McFarlane go if it hadn't really been set up?

[A] Secord: I don't know what McFarlane was thinking. He thought he was going to a meeting of the UN or something. There wasn't even an agenda. McFarlane just wasn't thinking straight. He went into Tehran with the notion that as soon as he arrived, the hostages would be released. That was a new thought to me. I had never heard anything about that.

[Q] Playboy: Why hadn't all this been ironed out beforehand?

[A] Secord: There just wasn't enough discussion. North didn't pay a good deal of attention to detail. Nir and I had told him there should be more meetings before McFarlane went to Tehran. A lot of things were screwed up.

[Q] Playboy: If you protested, why weren't more meetings held?

[A] Secord: It was decided by Poindexter, McFarlane and maybe the President that there had been enough meetings, so that was it. Anyway, after that failed trip left us in the hole financially, as I described. Hakim finally established contact with what he thought would be the right channel-the second channel. So we had a two-day meeting in Brussels in August.

I was impressed by the second-channel group, much more so than by the first group. Not because they gave me all the answers I wanted to hear but because they gave me all the answers Americans don't want to hear. They talked a great deal about the tremendous difficulty in dealing with us and how secrecy had to be maintained. And they gave me a lot of information, inside information that to me established their bona fides. In the end, the agency was excited about them as well.

[Q] Playboy: And you arranged with North and the others to proceed with the deal?

[A] Secord: I talked with North and others, and we arranged to test the Iranians. The test was whether or not they would come to Washington secretly. They surprised me by accepting if we could guarantee secrecy.

[Q] Playboy: They hadn't yet met North?

[A] Secord: They hadn't met any Americans since the revolution.

[Q] Playboy: Then came the famous meeting that included a tour of the White House.

[A] Secord: Yes. I didn't take the tour myself, but I was there.

[Q] Playboy: When Hakim and Stanley Sporkin [then CIA legal counsel] testified about those meetings, they said you presented as a primary motive of the arms sales the release of the hostages before the U.S. elections. Is that true?

[A] Secord: No. The hostages were on the agenda, of course, but they were not the paramount issue. The Iranians themselves brought up the issue of the hostages. I will tell you this: The Iranians also brought up the issue of the elections. They talked about how the French had negotiated in the past to get hostages back before elections, so they assumed that was our motive, too. North and I corrected them on this, saying, "No, our President is not up for re-election."

So I will dispute Hakim and the testimony of Sporkin on that. We can accuse the President of a lot of screw-ups, but that ain't one of them. If you look at the tapes and listen to the audio tapes of the meetings, that much is clear.

[Q] Playboy: All of the meetings were taped? Video and audio tapes?

[A] Secord: Yes, all but one. I facilitated the taping for the CIA. The meeting in Frankfurt was taped, the subsequent meetings in Europe with both channels were taped, all except one. The idea was to have an accurate record when the investigations came. As they always do. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Would the tapes demonstrate who had knowledge of the operation? Perhaps the President?

[A] Secord: I don't think so. But in the meetings, the President's name was invoked by North many, many times.

[Q] Playboy: There was a lot of criticism about North's use of the President's name.

[A] Secord: I think the tapes would show the true context of how the President's name was used. And they would show that this whole thing wasn't a cowboy operation. Ollie has been attacked as misrepresenting it; the tapes would show he didn't.

What Ollie said to the Iranians was that this President is also a man of God. Don't forget, the Iranians were calling us Great Satans, and we had a lot to live down before we could ever do business with them. They sermonized to us on numerous occasions. Ollie said, "Now, look, there arc a couple of things that we have to get straight on this religion thing: The President himself is a man of God; the President constantly makes reference to religious themes; the President prayed all night about the meeting."

[Q] Playboy: Did they believe all this?

[A] Secord: He used a little poetic license, because this was the world they lived in. But his message was to persuade them that the President is a man of God. "Look," he said, "we have a Bible here inscribed for you. And don't forget it's the God of Abraham, which covers us all."

[Q] Playboy: The famous Bible that was taken to this meeting, not to Iran.

[A] Secord: Right. It wasn't taken to Iran with McFarlane, as many believe. But the Bible was inscribed by the President.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't those Iranians taken aback by all this Bible thumping?

[A] Secord: [Laughs] Yeah, they really were. We gave them the Bible because they had given us a Koran. It wasn't inscribed. So Ollie wanted to one-up them and gave them the inscribed Bible. Not a bad tactic.

[Q] Playboy: But how did they react to all of North's religious references?

[A] Secord: One of the heads of the Iranian delegation took me off to the side when we took a break in the meeting and said, "What's with this guy North? We just left a country full of mullahs and what do I find here but a goddamn mullah!" [Laughs] North has claimed that our President is a direct descendant of the God of Abraham. "For God's sake," said the Iranian, "we've got to rush back and tell the ayatollah!" We all laughed like hell. But I don't think any of this was uncomplimentary to the President.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like the Iranians were just regular guys.

[A] Secord: Yeah. When they made their trip to the Washington area, their handler made 44 calls to escort services until they got some girls to go to the Virginia hotel where they were staying.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know?

[A] Secord: The CIA bugged them. I saw the transcripts. The CIA was pissed because they had to pay for the phone calls. On the other hand, some of the Iranians wouldn't hesitate to blow your brains out. We weren't dealing with boy scouts. Some of them were bloody murderers.

[Q] Playboy: Then how could you trust them to get whatever you agreed upon done?

[A] Secord: How do you trust them? You don't. You have to trust in their performance and dispense with all the hot air. There were a couple of mullahs floating around as titular heads of the delegations, but most of the members of the delegations were technocrats who had been well educated. And they understood what we meant when we spoke of our bureaucracy as being cumbersome to deal with. We'd talk about that during meals. One of them said, "You think you have trouble? You don't know what a bureaucracy is until you've lived in a theocracy."

[Q] Playboy: Did the second-channel Iranians promise to release the hostages in return for the weapons shipments?

[A] Secord: I said that one of the things that made me believe the second channel was legitimate was that they didn't tell us what we wanted to hear. They laid it right out on the table that they didn't necessarily command the Hezballah [The Party of God, which is holding the American hostages in Lebanon] and couldn't automatically get them released.

[Q] Playboy: You're saying that they claimed they couldn't get the hostages out at all?

[A] Secord: No. Just that they couldn't do it by flipping a switch. They said they thought they could do certain things. And they did get hostage David Jacobsen out. But they said that they had to work very, very cautiously. And it was going to take time. In a gross sort of way, they were saying that they had to pay off the Hezballah.

[Q] Playboy: You mean, the Iranians were saying that, in effect, they would pay the ransom for the U.S. hostages?

[A] Secord: This is very important and no one has brought it up, especially North. I think he felt that it was too sensitive. I don't feel that way.

You know, the second channel said to us that the best way to clear up the problem-because it was a problem for them as well as us-was to give us the location of the hostages and let us deal with it.

[Q] Playboy: Then the Iranians were willing to compromise the Hezballah by helping the U.S. in an armed rescue operation to get the hostages out. That's rather astonishing, isn't it?

[A] Secord: They brought this up to North and myself several times. And I talked to Ollie's chain of command. I'm certain that George Cave will back me up on this. I said, "Ollie, listen to these guys. They may be giving us the best present we will ever get. Think what it would mean if we could have a successful hostage raid after all this time. What a signal to the whole world: Ah! The Americans have come back to life."

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that's how we should deal with hostages from the outset?

[A] Secord: Well, when William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was captured, the CIA should have gotten him out. The K.G.B. would have gotten its man out. When the Hezballah took some Soviets hostage, the K.G.B. didn't waste any time. I know for a fact that the K.G.B. hired the Druses--Walid Jumblatt's people--to imprison the sons of the Hezballah leaders. The K.G.B. came down on the Hezballah like a ton of bricks. In a matter of minutes, the Hezballah knew they had made a mistake. If I had been the director of the CIA when they picked up my station chief, I would have had their ass.

[Q] Playboy: Then why didn't you try it? In retrospect, if you'd succeeded in a hostage raid, the entire Ivan/Contra affair would never have happened.

[A] Secord: I wanted to badly. I said to Ollie, "You may think I'm bloody crazy and people are going to get killed and all that. But I'm telling you that if we could get these guys to give us their intelligence and we could get some supporting collateral intelligence, there would be no better place to run a hostage raid than Beirut. It's flat land, beautiful for helicopters at night, and we could bring in ships off the coast." So to me, this was tremendous. Ollie saw that it was possible, but I don't think he or his superiors wanted to push it. They thought they could get immediate results by negotiation.

[Q] Playboy: How would the Iranians have benefited from an armed raid by the U.S.?

[A] Secord: They would have made speeches about the Great Satan, gone to prayers and had a wonderful time. At the same time, they could have rested assured that we had knocked off quite a few of those bastards that they couldn't stand, either. And they could have regained control over the Hezballah. The guys we were dealing with were not stupid.

[Q] Playboy: Thinking back, if North knew that the Contra movement was as corrupt as it was and that the Iranians couldn't secure the release of the hostages, why didn't he shut down the operation? In his zeal, wasn't there a fair amount of self-delusion?

[A] Secord: To an extent, I think that is a fair statement. North was under great pressure from the President to get the goddamn hostages out of there. Reagan mentioned them every day. And I think North always saw the Contras as being better than I thought they were, always. Tom Clines, who is an expert on that part of the world, was more cynical about them than I. My general impression was that even with first-class support, they would never win militarily. Maybe they could put pressure on the Sandinistas to force some sort of political accommodation-but militarily, no.

As far as the hostages were concerned, North was schizophrenic about that. He is a smart guy and realized that the real game was a strategic one-opening up Iran. He saw that the hostages were an obstacle to that. Now, my belief is that Reagan saw it differently. The President just wanted the hostages out.

[Q] Playboy: You don't think he saw the geopolitical advantage in the long term?

[A] Secord: That's too complex for the Reagan mentality. I don't think he could handle it. But I think he knew the outlines of what we were up to and was standing firmly behind it. He is still responsible, and that is the thing that really irks me. How people think he can evade responsibility is beyond me.

[Q] Playboy: There has been a good deal said about your formulating American foreign policy in the meetings. For instance, you were supposed to have promised the Iranians that the U.S. would fight the Russians if Iran were invaded.

[A] Secord: During the meeting with the second channel--[Iranian Parliament speaker Hashemi] Rafsanjani's people--in Brussels, I did say we'd fight the Russians if they invaded Iran. It made the headlines in The Washington Post. But what I said was that the United States had spent millions of dollars to deter the Soviets from invading Iran. We had created a whole new unified command for that purpose. It's called the Central Command, and it is very clear from our public statements, and so forth, that we are prepared to face the Russians if they go into Iran. This is not news.

[Q] Playboy: Then you deny any attempt to form American foreign policy?

[A] Secord: Yes. And the fact is, I was simply helping execute foreign policy.

[Q] Playboy: You say you were executing policy. That's a theme running through all of this-the privatization of American foreign policy. Do you think it's a dangerous way to run a country's foreign affairs?

[A] Secord: I have mixed emotions about that charge. Historically, of course, everyone knows that private individuals and companies have been used for various purposes by various governments to do things that official governments can't do.

But what people are saying in this case is that private individuals, more or less led by me, have seized control of this piece of foreign policy. And that's not true. I was working under the watchful eye of the White House and in accordance with U.S. policy that was described for me.

[Q] Playboy: We should ask you again: Did you ever say you went into this for purely, or exclusively, patriotic motives?

[A] Secord: No. Nor did I say that to the committee. I testified for the record that we were going to make money. And I said at meetings that the opening of the door to Iran presented opportunities for really big business in the future.

[Q] Playboy: Hakim implied in his testimony that you took money out of the enterprise for your own use.

[A] Secord: I don't know why he said that, but he'll have to be confronted with it. I think he was led into it. And he was afraid that what he said in his deposition would be in conflict with what he said publicly. The account they were talking about is owned by Hakim and another Iranian, the Coral account. And according to the records, Hakim was drawing on the account for various expenses. So if it was my personal account, as he claimed, why was he drawing on it?

[Q] Playboy: But Hakim had a grant of immunity; why would he lie?

[A] Secord: I think he was scared to death.

[Q] Playboy: Because he's Iranian? You think he had visions of being led out to the courtyard?

[A] Secord: [Smiles] Right. Terrified.

[Q] Playboy: Well.... Another person you may feel needs confronting is Attorney General Edwin Meese. You didn't speak particularly kindly to the committee about his role in bringing this to light.

[A] Secord: When I scored him in front of the committee, I meant every word I said. And he will go down in history as the biggest fool of this entire operation. Had he not panicked-had he taken the time to be educated-this whole thing wouldn't have happened the way it did.

[Q] Playboy: Why did Meese panic?

[A] Secord: I think they were in a meeting and they said, "Look, we're being criticized left and right by the press; let's conduct an internal investigation to make sure our skirts are really clean." And they stumbled across some dumb memo that Oliver North had. You know. North must have written 8,000,000 memos while he was in office.

[Q] Playboy: The memo that described diverting money to the Contras from Iran?

[A] Secord: Yeah. To issue a report based on that, inside of two days, is by definition foolhardy. Who in the world could conduct a complex investigation over a weekend about anything as complex as this?

[Q] Playboy: Meese seemed a little nervous when he announced his discovery.

[A] Secord: You bet, but why? I mean, it's a desperation born of ignorance. When you panic and look for ways out, you generally stumble into the wrong exit. And Meese takes these steps like an elephant. This is how you criminalize things, with just a snap of the fingers.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't there a cover story you concocted in the event the story broke?

[A] Secord: Originally, the Israelis were going to take the hit. But as we got more and more into the operation, I realized it wasn't going to work. I'm not against plausible deniability. but in this case, it wasn't even plausible. U.S. fingerprints were all over this one. I urged the White House to go public with this thing in July of '86, before the second channel was developed. But they built a Chinese Wall around the President, and that's where they're sitting to this day, hoping the wolves will be satisfied with North, Poindexter and me.

[Q] Playboy: If what you say is true, how do you feel about being the fall guy?

[A] Secord: I feel I was betrayed along with my guys.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you decide to testify without immunity?

[A] Secord: I spent a lot of time going over every aspect of the thing with my attorneys, and we concluded that we hadn't broken any laws, that we were acting in good faith every step of the way. We were trying to carry out our private-but Presidentially directed-jobs. So why should I continue to suffer tremendous pressure from the press when I hadn't done anything wrong? I guess I just got mad and decided I would go up. Then I got an invitation to be the first one to testify. I never expected that.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Secord: Why would anybody think I would be invited up before Bud McFarlane? I guess the committee thought I was the most knowledgeable besides North. I had as much knowledge as North. If the committee had gotten North to go voluntarily, then he would have gone first.

[Q] Playboy: If you feel the committee has political motives, and you have evidence to clear your name, wouldn't your best bet be a court of law?

[A] Secord: Why do you think we've been cooperating with the special prosecutor? We didn't have to talk to him, but we have.

[Q] Playboy: For how long?

[A] Secord: Since before the committee met. Their radios are on receive now. [Smiles]

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever think back and wish that you hadn't answered the phone when Ollie first called?

[A] Secord: That's it; you finally broke the code: Do nothing and stay out of trouble.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think you and your guys were called rather than the CIA?

[A] Secord: One of the problems with the CIA is that they don't have experienced people running the show. You have shoe clerks running the railroad. The Carter Administration eviscerated the CIA; it was just wrecked. And the clandestine branch, which was very small, was finished. I think Casey was trying to do a good job, but he was too old to really be effective.

[Q] Playboy: Throughout much of this interview, you often sound as if you want people to know that the rest of the world doesn't operate according to the standard you're being held to now--and you resent it. Is that fair?

[A] Secord: The American standard is not observed anywhere else in the world. What you've said is probably a fair statement. You have to know what the U.S. laws are and live with them, but you also have to know what the local laws are and live with them and not get caught in between.

[Q] Playboy: How is the arms business since the Iran deal broke?

[A] Secord: Terrible, just terrible. It's almost killed it. Few of our clients want to be caught in the glare of publicity.

[Q] Playboy: And your family?

[A] Secord: This sort of thing is always toughest on the family. They just sit there holding their breath until the next newspaper comes out or the next jerk knocks on the door with a TV Minicam.

[Q] Playboy: With all the charges made about you, would you say you've just had bad luck or----

[A] Secord: I've had good luck and bad. It's the American way; No good deed goes unpunished. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: You're just going to be stoic about it all? Be a tough guy and shrug it off?

[A] Secord: No, I haven't shrugged it off. I expect to win this one. I may have to leave a few dead bodies behind me--figuratively speaking, of course--but I expect to win this one. I will not lose this one! I took the other one--having to retire from the Air Force--lying down, but I will not lose this one. I'm a fighter.

"You cannot win battles without facing the enemy. You have to be able to stare him down."