Robert William Jackson (born March 18, 1959) is a US Navy veteran who served as a second class petty officer on the USS Kitty Hawk and became a whistleblower.
On October 1, 1985, Jackson testified before the House Sea Power Subcommittee, sharing 2,000 pages of Navy documents that showed evidence of fraud, forgery, and kickbacks aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk.
Testifying along with Jackson were Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) and Commodore James B. Whittaker, the Navy's assistant commander for inventory and systems integrity.
[2] In August 1985, US District Judge Earl B. Gilliam issued a broad gag order to prevent the seven people charged with stealing the F-14 fighter parts from the Navy and smuggling them to Iran from discussing the case.
But the gag order was also applied to defense attorneys, federal prosecutors, and potential witnesses, which sealed Jackson's allegations and kept the story hidden from public.
By these accords, the US pledged that it "is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.
"[14] In the spring of 1983, the United States launched Operation Staunch, a wide-ranging diplomatic effort to persuade other nations all over the world not to sell arms or spare parts for weapons to Iran.
[1] Over time, Jackson realized that the carrier's supply system didn't work the way it supposed to, having found evidence of fraud, corruption, theft, and waste.
According to Jackson, he and his colleagues were commonly ordered to fill out “survey forms” wrongfully stating that equipment had been lost or damaged.
[1] After conducting a full audit on the ship, Petty Officer Jackson found out that more than $1 million worth of military equipment was missing from the USS Kitty Hawk.
His story was published in the LA Times by the journalist Glenn F. Bunting (https://www.gfbunting.com/), in a series of pieces printed from July 1985 to February 1986.
He was labeled as "a zealot" and a "troublemaker," with news articles smearing his reputation and exposing details about his troubled marriage, religious beliefs, work ethics, and even his high school grades.
After Petty Officer Jackson presented 2,000 pages of documents, the FBI arrested seven people involved in the scheme to smuggle Navy F-14 fighter parts and Phoenix missiles to Iran.
On that occasion, Bates raised the suspicion that an espionage ring was using the USS Kitty Hawk to dispatch F-14 parts to Iran and called it a spy scandal.
[19] Considering that the US was supposed to be allied with Iraq – and having in mind that it was against the US foreign policy to sell any weapons to Iran at that time – Bates' accusations were pretty serious.
[5] Based on a broad gag order issued to prevent the seven people charged with stealing the F-14 fighter parts from the Navy and smuggling them to Iran from discussing the case, Congress decided to seal Jackson's allegations and kept the story hidden from public.
[4] Only one year after Jackson's testimony, on November 3, 1986, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the existence of a secret agreement between the US Government and the Islamic Republic of Iran to illegally sell weapons to the latter, in what later was known as the Iran-Contra affair.
The Iranian government confirmed the Ash-Shiraa story, and, on November 13, President Reagan appeared on national television, stating: My purpose was ... to send a signal that the United States was prepared to replace the animosity between [the U.S. and Iran] with a new relationship ... At the same time we undertook this initiative, we made clear that Iran must oppose all forms of international terrorism as a condition of progress in our relationship.
On October 5, 1986, one month before the Ash-Shiraa article, a transport aircraft delivering weapons via clandestine airdrop to the Nicaraguan Contras was shot down over Nicaragua by a surface-to-air missile.
During the Iran-Contra investigation, it came to light that the CIA was, in fact, illegally selling weapons, airplane parts and missiles to Iran in exchange for off-the-records money and firearms, which were then used to supply the Contras in Nicaragua.
[21] This was a double violation of US foreign policy, as the US government was prohibited both from selling weapons to Iran and from interfering in Nicaragua's political situation.
It resulted in indictments involving authorities as such as the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger; Oliver North, member of the National Security Council; Alan D. Fiers, Chief of the CIA's Central American Task Force; Clair George, Chief of Covert Ops-CIA; Robert C. McFarlane, National Security Adviser; among others.