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• Last spring North gave the State Department the number of a Swiss bank account into which the Sultan of Brunei deposited "several million" dollars for humanitarian aid to the contras. The money had been solicited by Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, with the approval of Secretary of State George Shultz. It is not known how this money was spent.
• Billionaire H. Ross Perot confirmed that he had twice been solicited by North to provide up to $2 million to ransom U.S. hostages held in Lebanon, and had agreed to do so. Both efforts, in 1984 and in May of this year, were unsuccessful. On the second attempt Perot sent $2 million to Cyprus in a scheme to swap cash and hostages at sea; in the same month North and former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane were following yet another track to free the hostages, flying to Tehran with a planeload of U.S. arms. All this occurred while the President was declaring that the U.S. would never pay ransom for hostages.
As reporters and other probers tried to track the elusive money flow, there were other discoveries, some sensational and perhaps self-serving, that could not be readily evaluated. A CIA agent who claims to have been directly involved in covert U.S. funding of the contras told TIME that a number of his fellow agents fear the Administration intends to deny any responsibility for their actions. The agent knew that what he was doing was unlawful but contends that he was told by superiors, "The President wants this done." Yet no written authorization was given to the agents who carried out the policy. "We're going to take the fall," the agent predicted, because officials higher than North or Poindexter will continue to disclaim any knowledge of the fund diversion.
Lawyers defending twelve international arms dealers who are a waiting trial in a federal court in New York City on charges of planning to sell more than $2 billion in arms to Iran last year also contend that high Administration officials were aware of their plan and secretly encouraged it. They claim they had verbal approval at various times from Vice President George Bush. The CIA and the Justice and State departments all deny having approved the plans of the defendants, but proceedings in the case have been suspended.
There are also conflicting claims that Saudi Arabia facilitated U.S. arms deals with Iran and possibly helped divert the proceeds to Central America as well. Farid Ghadry, a dissident Saudi who claims his information comes from a member of the Saudi royal family, told TIME the Saudis were actually secretly bankrolling both the Iran arms sales and the contras. The Saudi Information Ministry "categorically denied that the kingdom had played a key role in opening negotiations between Washington and Tehran over American arms deals." But numerous observers in the Middle East say the cautious kingdom has been hedging its bets in the six-year-old war between Iran and Iraq. King Fahd reportedly told P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat last month that the approach to Iran was justifiable because "we have our security interests to consider. Anyway, we still give aid to [Iraqi Leader] Saddam [Hussein]." Saudi Arabia is thought to give Iraq about $5 billion a year.