Richard Secord obit

Richard Secord, retired Air Force major general involved in Iran-contra affair, dies

 

He was not on the list.

Richard V. Secord, a retired U.S. Air Force major general who landed in the national spotlight after his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, has died.

The general − whose long career included service in Southeast Asia and Tehran − died at 1:10 a.m. Tuesday in Port Orange, surrounded by family, according to a news release. He was 92.

Secord, who had been living in a Daytona Beach-area assisted-living facility, did a lengthy interview with The News-Journal about his life and family that was published in August.

The Ohio native was a 1955 graduate of West Point. From there, Secord opted to join the newly formed Air Force, which trained him as a pilot, first in Marianna, Florida, then at Greenville Air Force Base in Mississippi. He served as a flight instructor and, against his wishes, was sent to school to train to become a professor at the Air Force Academy, which had only started operation the year prior.

"To be a faculty member you had to have a graduate degree,” Secord said. So, to his surprise and chagrin, he received orders to study English at the University of Oklahoma.

“English was a little bit out of my reach,” he told The News-Journal.

Another opportunity arose that did interest him. He took a secretive test. One of the questions asked whether he would − if captured − refuse to identify himself as a member of the U.S. armed services. He answered yes. That became his ticket into covert operations.

"I avoided service at the Air Force Academy by sheer luck,” Secord said.

It brought him into the Air Force's covert operations, where he flew 285 bombing missions in Vietnam starting in 1961 as part of Operation Farm Gate. Secord later was loaned to the Central Intelligence Agency and sent to Laos. In 1967 he led air operations and played a key role in the Ban Naden Raid, a successful attack on a prisoner-of-war camp leading to the rescue of mostly Laotian allies of South Vietnam and the United States. Secord estimated that between 40 and 50 people were rescued, while some sources put the number even higher.

In a June interview, John Secord, the general's son, said the Ban Naden Raid has been highly classified and taught by the CIA as a case study.

"He's modest. He came up with the plan, the execution," John Secord said.

In 1972, Secord was reassigned to the Pentagon and developed plans for the bombing campaign known as Operation Linebacker II, which the Nixon administration contended was critical to forcing North Vietnam to resume negotiations, ultimately leading to the January 1973 Paris Peace Accords.

Between 1963 and 1978, Secord also served three tours in Iran. He served as an adviser to air-ground operations of the Shah's air force, consisting of T-6 aircraft that had been used to train pilots in World War II some 20 years earlier. Secord said the planes were reconfigured to add ordnance stations to battle communist-backed Kurds in the northern quadrant of Iran.

He called it the "trash-can air force," but the effort proved useful.

"It worked. The Kurds weren’t used to having the opposition coming in out of the air. Any opposition is better than none," Secord said.

In the 1970s, Secord became the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in the Iran, handling responsibilities that ranged from diplomacy to security to intelligence gathering throughout the Middle East.

Secord's awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters, Air Force Commendation Medal, Republic of Thailand Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant and Republic of Korea Order of National Security Merit Cheonsu Medal.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1983, Secord formed Stanford Technology Trading Group International with a contact he made in Iran, Albert Hakim.

Together, they worked with Lt. Col. Oliver North, a staffer of the National Security Council under Reagan, to covertly sell arms to Iran and transfer profits to the Contras, a rebel group fighting against the socialist government in Nicaragua. Such use of funds for the Contras was specifically banned by Congress.

This led to a scandal that dominated headlines in 1986 and 1987, with televised hearings and indictments. Secord gave four days of testimony to a Congressional panel investigating the matter.

In 1989, he pleaded guilty to one count of lying to Congress about illegal gifts he provided to North. The guilty plea allowed him to avoid trial on 12 felonies.

Media accounts from 1990 state Secord was sentenced to two years probation but no jail time or fine.

“In my judgment, there has been punishment in this case,” U.S. District Judge Aubrey Robinson said. “The necessity for incarceration does not exist.”

Ten years later, a federal judge vacated the conviction altogether.

In a separate interview that was shared with The News-Journal, Secord was asked how he would like to be remembered.

He responded that it was the fact that the federal court system reversed his conviction for lying to Congress.

"There's a very short file on that in the late '90s ... it's a writ of coram nobis, which means briefly that this was a charge brought totally without any meaning and it was frivolous and it came from the legal term ab initio, meaning 'from the beginning.' This, as a legal matter, never existed. Did not exist, period," Secord said. "The news media pretty much ignored that. It didn't fit with their act."

Secord was preceded in death by his wife of 64 years, Jo Ann, who died on Jan. 7 of this year in their longtime home, Fort Walton Beach. They had three children, Julia, Laura, and John, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

His family is finalizing funeral arrangements, which will be shared in the coming days.