Clandestine Contra backer now key adviser to Condi RiceThis is a featured page


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JIM DEE Daily Ireland USA correspondent


08/11/2006


Elliot Abrams once used the alias Mr Kenilworth to fly to London and secretly ask the Sultan of Brunei for $10 million (£5.3 million; €7.8 million) to fund the CIA-backed Contras’ war on the Sandinistas.
His clandestine caper was part of the Iran-Contra affair and earned him temporary banishment from Washington’s elite after he had pleaded guilty to two misdemeanour charges.
These days, Mr Abrams does not need to hide his identity as he jets around in style with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, having become one of her key advisers on the Middle East. It certainly has been a long and heady return to the centre of power for the former Reagan administration hawk who gained prominence in the early 1980s as one of the chief defenders of Ronald Reagan's covert wars in Central America.
Elliot Abrams was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League while at Harvard University in the late 1960s. He went on to work as a staffer for New York Democratic senator Daniel Moynihan in the 1970s before jumping ship and joining the Reagan administration in the 1980s.
First as assistant secretary of state for human rights and later as assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, Mr Abrams often clashed with human-rights groups about atrocities committed by the US-supplied armed forces of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Among the most controversial episodes in which he was involved during the Reagan years was his denial of the December 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, during which government troops butchered 900 civilians. When the massacre was exposed in 1982, Mr Abrams testified before the Senate that reports of the killings “were not credible”. He said the reports were propaganda from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) that was “at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas”.
Later that year, Congress passed the Boland amendment, which sharply curtailed the Reagan administration’s funding of the Contras. Mr Abrams then signed on with Oliver North to help develop covert channels to keep funds flowing without the knowledge of Congress. It was as part of this effort that “Mr Kenilworth” jetted to London seeking the sultan's $10 million.
When the whole Iran-Contra scandal exploded in the late 1980s, Mr Abrams was compelled to testify before Congress about his role. Senator Tom Eagleton told Mr Abrams that his refusal to cooperate could earn him “slammer time”. Mr Abrams replied: “You’ve heard my testimony.” This prompted Mr Eagleton to retort: “I’ve heard it and I want to puke.”
Mr Abrams subsequently pleaded guilty to giving false testimony in relation to the Iran-Contra affair, for which he was sentenced to two years’ probation and 100 hours of community service. President George Bush Sr pardoned him in one of his last presidential acts in 1992.
Then Mr Abrams went to work for a number of Washington think-tanks and became a leading light within the neocon movement that would come to hold such sway in the administration of George W Bush.
In 2001, Mr Bush appointed Mr Abrams senior director of the National Security Council. In February 2005, Mr Bush elevated him to the post of deputy national security adviser. Later that year, Mr Bush also appointed Mr Abrams to head his Global Democracy Strategy, which aims to “spread democracy across the globe”.
Mr Abrams has long been an ardent defender of Israel within the Washington beltway and has opposed US “land-for-peace” proposals. As such, some Arab-American groups have expressed concern about his influential posting next to Condoleezza Rice during the current war in the Middle East.
Asked to comment on Mr Abrams in 1989, Admiral William Crowe, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “This snake is hard to kill.”
Mr Abrams’ journey back into the heart of the US foreign policy apparatus seems to have proven Admiral Crowe very prescient indeed.




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