As the giant said to Detective Cooper, it’s happening again.

The first contributions were sent by the donors to bank accounts controlled and used by the contras. However, in July 1985, North took control of the funds and — with the support of two national security advisers (Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter) and, according to North, Director Casey — used those funds to run the covert operation to support the contras.

At the suggestion of Director Casey, North recruited Richard V. Secord, a retired Air Force major general with experience in special operations. Secord set up Swiss bank accounts, and North steered future donations into these accounts. Using these funds, and funds later generated by the Iran arms sales, Secord and his associate, Albert Hakim, created what they called “the Enterprise,” a private organization designed to engage in covert activities on behalf of the United States.

The Enterprise, functioning largely at North’s direction, had its own airplanes, pilots, airfield, operatives, ship, secure communications devices, and secret Swiss bank accounts. For 16 months, it served as the secret arm of the N.S.C. staff, carrying out with private and non-appropriated money, and without the accountability or restrictions imposed by law on [the covert] aid program that Congress thought it had prohibited.

Although the C.I.A. and other agencies involved in intelligence activities knew that the Boland Amendment barred their involvement in covert support for the contras, North’s contra support operation received logistical and tactical support from various personnel in the C.I.A. and other agencies. Certain C.I.A. personnel in Central America gave their assistance. The U.S. Ambassador in Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, provided his active assistance. North also enlisted the aid of Defense Department personnel in Central America, and obtained secure communications equipment from the National Security Agency. The Assistant Secretary of State with responsibility for the region, Elliott Abrams, professed ignorance of this support. He later stated that he had been “careful not to ask North lots of questions.”

Does anyone have reason to think that The Enterprise ever really shut down? I mean, Poindexter with Total Information Awareness. Elliott Abrams in the highest position available that wouldn’t require Congressional confirmation, which he wouldn’t have had a chance to get even before the Democrats took over. And of course this was when Negroponte (John, not Nicholas, largely responsible for the $100-dollar laptop) became a war criminal through his actions as ambassador to Honduras.

Seymour Hersh in the latest New Yorker provides a possible explanation for Negroponte’s decision to take a lesser post after only a few months as Director of National Intelligence (it’s encouraging to think that such a thing exists).

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way.”

The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”

The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.

“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”

If only. In fact it’s religious and ideological idiots allied with war profiteers. Dangerous stuff.