From:         cdp!christic%labrea.stanford.edu
Subject:      JURY CONVICTS EX-CIA AGENT

/* Written  4:27 pm  Dec 31, 1990 by christic in cdp:christic.news */
/* ---------- "JURY CONVICTS EX-CIA AGENT" ---------- */
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JURY CONVICTS C.I.A. AGENT ON CONCEALING IRAN-CONTRA PROFITS

By TIA LESSIN AND CARL DEAL
Convergence Magazine, Christic Institute, Winter 1991, p. 2

Thomas G. Clines, the highest-ranking retired Central
Intelligence Agency official ever to stand trial, was found
guilty in September on four counts of tax evasion.

A Federal jury in Baltimore found that Clines attempted to
conceal more than $250,000 in profits from secret Iran-contra
arms deals. He was sentenced in December to 16 months in prison.

Along with business partners Albert Hakim, former assistant
defense secretary Richard Secord, former C.I.A. operations
director C.I.A. Theodore Shackley and 25 others, Clines is a
defendant in Avirgan v. Hull, the Christic Institute's Federal
racketeering lawsuit against the arms-smuggling and drug-
trafficking enterprise exposed by the Iran-contra affair. The
case is currently pending before the 11th Circuit Court of
Appeals.

The jury deliberated only three hours before convicting Clines of
failing to report his full income by at least $203,431 in 1985
and $57,009 in 1986. He also was found guilty of concealing
assets in foreign financial accounts.

Clines has been implicated in illegal activities throughout his
public and private career. During the C.I.A.'s secret war in
Southeast Asia, he was named by an Australian Government
commission as a key figure in a bank used to launder the proceeds
from heroin sales. Later promoted to director of training in the
C.I.A. Office of Clandestine Services, Clines was forced into
retirement in 1978 because of his close association with fellow
agent Edwin Wilson. Wilson is serving a Federal prison term for
selling explosives to the Libyan Government.

Five years later, Clines' Egyptian American Transport Company
(EATSCO) was convicted of fraud after the United States
Government learned the firm had overcharged $8 million in arms
sales to the Pentagon. Clines incorporated EATSCO in 1979 with
silent partners Wilson, Secord, Hakim and Shackley.

According to Christic Institute staff attorney Joanne Royce,
Clines' conviction on tax charges ``is reminiscent of the days
when Chicago gangsters were convicted on tax evasion charges, but
were never charged on the crimes they committed to get that
money.''

Clines may have to answer for his other crimes, however, if the
Christic Institute's civil racketeering case is reinstated by the
Federal appeals court in Atlanta. The suit was filed under RICO,
the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which
gives private citizens the power to sue organized criminal
enterprises.

The Institute's lawsuit charges Clines with a number of
racketeering crimes--including unlawful trafficking in arms and
explosives.

Clines is the eighth person prosecuted for Iran-contra crimes. He
joins former national security aide Lt. Col Oliver North, former
National Security Advisers John Poindexter and Robert MacFarlane,
conservative fundraisers Spitz Channel and Richard Miller, and
business associates Secord and Hakim.

Unlike other key Iran-contra players who have been characterized
as overzealous ideologues or naive dupes, prosecutors described
Clines as a shrewd businessman who willfully and knowingly lied
to the Internal Revenue Service and Congressional investigators
about his financial dealings. Government attorneys accused the
former C.I.A. agent of ``recharacterizing'' the ledgers given to
Congressional investigators to conceal both his profits and his
central role in the contra resupply network.

In 1985 and 1986, Clines arranged for the purchase of millions of
dollars worth of rifles, machine guns, grenades and explosives
which were sold to the contras after a considerable markup.
Clines pocketed 20 to 30 percent of the profits on each sale,
collecting more than $882,000.

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