Source says reported letter from Obama to Ayatollah ‘f***s up everything'

[Algernon Moncrieff]

10. MCFARLANE TOOK CAKE AND BIBLE TO TEHERAN, EX-C.I.A. MAN SAYS

A retired Central Intelligence Agency official has confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that on the secret mission to Teheran last May, Robert C. McFarlane and his party carried a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders.

According to a person who has read the committee's draft report, the retired C.I.A. official, George W. Cave, an Iran expert who was part of the mission, said the group had 10 falsified passports, believed to be Irish, and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated ''opening'' to Iran.

These and other details of the secret American operation are discussed at length in the report, but much of the material has already appeared in public in the more than two months since the revelations began with publication of a story about the McFarlane mission in a small Beirut weekly. In effect, the report supplies a useful chronology of the events.

The rather bizarre details of the McFarlane mission were first made known by the Iranian Speaker of Parliament, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, on Nov. 4, when the secret operation first became known. Hojatolislam Rafsanjani also said that the Americans had been disguised and that they had carried sets of Colt pistols as gifts. But these details were not confirmed in the report.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/us/mcfarlane-took-cake-and-bible-to-teheran-ex-cia-man-says.html