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David Kimche, 82, the Israeli spymaster-turned-diplomat who engineered the swap of American hostages in Lebanon for arms to Iran, touching off what became the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s, died March 8 of brain cancer at his home in Israel.

Mr. Kimche, a top foreign ministry official and former deputy director of Israel's Mossad intelligence service, told U.S. national security adviser Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane in a 1985 meeting that more than a dozen Americans held by the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon could be freed if the U.S. agreed to pick them up.

No strings were attached to the initial offer, but Mr. Kimche's Iranian intermediary soon upped the ante, demanding that the Americans provide 100 antitank missiles in trade for the hostages, who had been individually seized over the previous three years.

Knowing that the U.S. government would not send arms directly to Iran, Mr. Kimche suggested that Israel provide the weapons, as long as the Americans agreed to sell replacement weapons to Israel. President Ronald Reagan agreed, although the one-step-removed deal violated an international embargo. Some of the profits from the subsequent sale to Israel funded anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua known as the contras, an action that violated a Congressional ban on providing aid to those rebels.
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The agreement resulted in freed hostages, although the Israelis ultimately provided more than four times as many weapons as... >>>