Richard Armitage

Richard Lee Armitage was born April 26, 1945, in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1967 and served multiple combat tours in Vietnam, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander before leaving the Navy in 1973. After Vietnam, he worked in various Defense Department capacities in Southeast Asia through the mid-1970s. He died December 18, 2021, at age 76.⁵

Reagan Administration

Armitage served in the Reagan administration as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1983 to 1989, a role that made him one of the senior DOD officials responsible for arms sales policy, military assistance programs, and security relationships with key U.S. allies and covert partners. In that capacity, he was one of the Pentagon's primary officials overseeing the network of arms sales and military assistance relationships that overlapped with the Iran-Contra enterprise.¹

PROMIS Software Connection

A letter dated May 16, 1985, signed by Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds and addressed to William F. Weld, U.S. Attorney in Boston, named Armitage alongside Manucher Ghorbanifar and Adnan Khashoggi as a broker for the distribution of PROMIS software equipped with a surveillance back door to a Saudi sheikh for "resale and general distribution as gifts in his region." The letter directed that the software be delivered without "paperwork, customs, or delay" and that financial aspects be "walked through Credit Suisse and National Commercial Bank."³

When shown the letter in 2005, Reynolds authenticated it and independently recalled Armitage, Khashoggi, and Ghorbanifar working together in connection with PROMIS. The letter's authenticity has not been officially confirmed or denied by the government, and Armitage was never publicly questioned about it in a formal legal proceeding.³

Iran-Contra

The Congressional Iran-Contra investigating committees examined Armitage's knowledge of and possible participation in the Iran-Contra operations, given his senior role at the Pentagon during the entire period of the 1985-1986 arms-for-hostages transactions. The Tower Commission Report and Congressional investigations documented some awareness within the Pentagon of the operations but did not formally implicate Armitage in directing or concealing them.²

Deputy Secretary of State and the Plame Affair

Armitage served as Deputy Secretary of State under Secretary Colin Powell from 2001 to 2005. In 2003, journalist Robert Novak published a column identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA officer, triggering a federal investigation into the leak. Armitage subsequently admitted that he had been the source who disclosed Plame's CIA identity to Novak in a background conversation, describing the disclosure as inadvertent. Despite being the original source of the leak, Armitage was not charged in the special counsel investigation led by Patrick Fitzgerald; Vice President Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was the only official convicted (of perjury and obstruction).⁴