Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 19, 1990                   TAG: 9005190203
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

NEWLY RELEASED PORTIONS OF OLIVER NORTH'S

As a private group released 1,200 pages of North's notebooks Friday, a new federal grand jury convened to continue the 3 1/2-year-old criminal investigation of the Iran-Contra affair.

The grand jury will attempt to determine the precise roles of then-President Reagan and Bush, sources familiar with the investigation said.

Bush has said he did not know details of the Iran initiative until Dec. 20, 1986, and did not know of North's Contra resupply operation while it was in operation.

A North notebook entry from Nov. 25, 1986, the day the affair became public, refers to a telephone call to North from National Security Adviser John Poindexter and then states, "VP call Peres," Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

The entry adds that the "Contra connection" has been "discovered" and that it "wd be best if Israel wd accept that they were aware that some funds were diverted."

It is not known if any phone call between Bush and Peres was made that day or whether the possibility of making a call was brought up with Bush.

But Attorney General Edwin Meese, in disclosing the diversion that day, put the responsibility partly on Israel. Meese said Iran arms sale money went directly from the Israelis into bank accounts held by the Contras. Meese's statements, which he made after interviewing North and Poindexter, drew immediate complaints from the Israeli government.

Peres called Meese later that day and said Israel had not paid anything into any Contra accounts. Peres "indicated that Israel . . . was not going to take the blame for the diversion," the congressional Iran-Contra committees said in their final report in 1987.

Israel had made three arms deliveries to Iran in 1985 with the blessing of the Reagan administration and had charged far in excess of what it had paid the Pentagon to replenish the arms. The diversion to the Contras apparently began with the November 1985 shipment of Hawk missiles, when unexpended funds wound up in accounts controlled by Richard Secord and Albert Hakim.