The first major Eastern bloc spy captured in Britain after the expulsion of the twenty-five Soviet illegals identified by Oleg Gordievsky was Dutchman Erwin Van Haarlem. He only came to light when MI5 followed a member of the Soviet Trade Delegation whom they (probably wrongly) suspected of being a GRU officer and saw him behave furtively on Hampstead Heath before entering a local pub. Half an hour later a second man searched an area of ground on the heath before entering the same pub. MI5 followed this other man and identified him as Van Haarlem, a self-employed art dealer, who was actually in Britain working for the Czech secret service.
Special Branch raided Van Haarlem’s flat on 2 April 1988, and caught him red-handed, in the middle of receiving a transmission from Prague. He admitted he was Czech, and produced his one-time cipher pads. One of the main witnesses at his trial was future MI5 head Stella Rimington (referred to as Miss J) who explained that MI5 believed Van Haarlem was a sleeper agent, ready for a front-line role in time of war.
It turned out that Van Haarlem wasn’t the spy’s real name, even though an Erwin Van Haarlem had been abandoned in Prague, aged six weeks, in 1944. The baby’s mother had tracked the man down using that name in 1978 and he had pretended to be her son. However, DNA testing proved that they were not in fact related: the spy had adopted the name prior to leaving Czechoslovakia in 1974.
The judge at his trial, at which he was found guilty of committing an act preparatory to espionage, noted, ‘I address you by the name Van Haarlem, although I am convinced it was not yours at birth,’ adding, ‘I have not the least doubt you are a dedicated, disciplined and resourceful spy and I have equally no doubt that had you not been caught you would in future years have done whatever your Czech controllers required you to do, however harmful that might have been to our national interests. Those interests and freedoms we must jealously guard.’ He was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1989, but was deported to Prague after serving five. MI5 discovered his true name was Vaclav Jelinek; the real Van Haarlem was eventually reunited with his mother, unaware that his identity had been stolen after he had changed his own name some years earlier.
As far as the CIA is concerned, the eighties was the era of DCI William Casey and the Iran-Contra affair, a convoluted saga of deals involving arms shipments to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages which actually made a profit — and was then illegally used to support the Contra faction in Nicaragua, in direct violation of the law. In the middle of the explosive revelations about the actions of the National Security Council (NSC) and the CIA, DCI Casey was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which effectively incapacitated him at a time when the Agency needed strong leadership.
The Congressional Committees investigating the affair pointed out the fundamental problem at the heart of the Iran-Contra situation: ‘The common ingredients of the Iran and Contra policies were secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law… the United States simultaneously pursued two contradictory foreign policies — a public one and a secret one.’
In 1979 the Sandanistas took power in Nicaragua, and despite receiving aid from President Carter, the regime allied itself with the Soviet bloc via Cuba, receiving guns and other material from the Communists. The Nicaraguan Democratic Force (aka the Contras) were created in 1980, and as the Sandanistas started supporting the rebels in El Salvador, the US began to provide support to the Contras, although armed action was prohibited by the president. When President Reagan took office in 1981, he cut all aid to the Sandanistas, and on 1 December, signed an order permitting the CIA to support the Contras with arms, equipment and money. The NSC organized publicity stunts to ensure there was support domestically within the US for the aid to continue.
However, not everyone in Congress was in favour of the CIA’s involvement, which led to Massachusetts Representative Edward P. Boland’s first Amendment in 1982, which barred ‘the use of funds ‘‘for the purpose of’’ overthrowing the government of Nicaragua or provoking a war between Nicaragua and Honduras’. This left a loophole which was quickly exploited — third-party funds could be solicited, and general aid could still be provided to the Contras. The CIA assisted with covert actions in Nicaragua, destroying fuel tanks and mining the harbour. After their role was revealed by the
During fiscal year 1985, no funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose or which would have the effect of supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization, movement or individual.
Although this was designed to stem the flow of support, it failed. Third-party donations could still be obtained, and the NSC could oversee other activities, since technically they didn’t fall under the definition of prohibited agencies in the Amendment. Colonel Oliver North, on loan to the NSC from the Marine Corps, was placed in charge.
Around the same time, clandestine negotiations were going on with Iran. The fundamentalist Islamic regime that seized power in January 1979 had taken American hostages at various times — but also needed support in their war against Iraq, so required some way of dealing with The Great Satan (as they dubbed America). A communications pipeline was opened via the Israelis in July 1985 so that thirteen days after President Reagan vehemently denounced any idea of giving reward to terrorists — like those in Iran — he was informed of a plan to exchange a hundred anti-tank missiles for some of the American hostages being held. (There are multiple contradictory versions of how much he knew about this and exactly when.) The deals began to go through, and profits from the second were channelled to a front company, known as the Enterprise.
This second deal, in November 1985, was the one that caused the CIA major headaches, as Oliver North involved them to assist with some logistical problems. What the CIA knew about the nature of the flight and the contents of the shipment that they were helping to supply became the focal point of the discussions. Most within the CIA were unaware that it involved the transport of weapons (which at that point was technically illegal).
In light of the second flight’s problems, it was decided that the arms would be sent directly from the Enterprise to Iran, and President Reagan signed a Presidential Finding authorising such shipments on 17 January 1986. Shortly afterwards, someone came up with the idea of diverting the profits from the arms sales to the Contras — or at least, whatever proportion of the profits that the private businessmen involved would allow to be passed across. Many believe that the scheme was devised by DCI Casey, others that it was Oliver North’s brainwave — a memo North wrote on 4 April 1986, which he failed to shred during his mass destruction of documents when the Iran-Contra affair became public later that year, spells out specifically that monies would be diverted to the Contras. North certainly maintained that he believed that President Reagan was aware of this plan, and approved it.
When news of the covert shipments leaked in November 1986, the main concern at the CIA was over the November 1985 deal, since it took place before the Presidential Finding that gave the Agency permission to assist with an arms deal. DCI Casey — probably already suffering the effects of the brain tumour that would remove him from power before the end of the year — was uncharacteristically lapse in his preparation for the questions about the Agency’s role in an illegal covert action. This wasn’t helped by Oliver North’s attempts to disassociate the NSC from that shipment, or Casey’s inability to recall whether he specifically knew that there were Hawk missiles in the cases that were dispatched with CIA aid, rather than oil-drilling bits, per the manifest. Many in Washington believed that DCI Casey intended to perjure himself to the Congressional Oversight Committee over this, although this may stem from a draft wording that Casey appended to a document during a meeting the day before the hearing — according to CIA sources, he never approved anything that specifically cleared the NSC or CIA of knowledge.
The CIA’s concern increased when details of the diversion of funds to the Contras became public knowledge a few days later, since William Casey had made no mention of it in his testimony to Congress. There were many calls for his resignation, but in what appeared to be a combative interview with
The Iran-Contra affair rolled on throughout 1987, with emphasis switching from the role of the CIA to what knowledge President Reagan had of the deal. His National Security Advisor at the relevant time, Admiral Poindexter, claimed that he had shredded a document signed by Reagan authorizing the deal. Oliver North wrote:
