RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON—Senior Justice Department officials objected to sending a plane loaded with cash to Tehran at the same time that Iran released four imprisoned Americans, but their objections were overruled by the State Department, according to people familiar with the discussions.

After announcing the release of the Americans in January, President Barack Obama also said the U.S. would pay $1.7 billion to Iran to settle a failed arms deal dating back to 1979. What wasn’t disclosed then was that the first payment would be $400 million in cash, flown in at the same time, as The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The timing and manner of the payment raised alarms at the Justice Department, according to those familiar with the discussions. “People knew what it was going to look like, and there was concern the Iranians probably did consider it a ransom payment,’’ said one of the people.

The disclosures reignited a political furor over the Iran deal in Washington that could complicate White House efforts to fortify it before Mr. Obama’s term ends.

Three top Republicans who have been feuding in recent weeks—presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sen. John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan—were united Wednesday in blasting the Obama administration.

Senior U.S. officials denied the payment was anything like a ransom. They disputed that there was any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange, saying there was no quid pro quo.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest accused Republicans of seizing upon the Journal report to revive their campaign against the landmark nuclear deal, which took effect the same weekend as the prisoner release.

The prisoner-swap negotiations were led by the State Department, with help from the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. The cash settlement talks were handled principally by State Department lawyers. All of that work was overseen, and ultimately approved, by the White House. CONTINUE AT SITE

Passions ran high in Philadelphia after the British departed in June 1778, ending their months-long occupation. Bands of patriots tarred-and-feathered Tories who refused to sign “loyalty oaths.” A few months later, two elderly Quakers accused of treason were tried before Pennsylvania Chief Justice Thomas McKean. Though neither had taken up arms against the rebels, one was said to have encouraged giving the British information on rebel plans and helped guard city gates during the occupation. The other admitted that he had encouraged support for the crown, though he had also helped families of American prisoners gain access to them.

Their respective juries found both defendants guilty, and McKean sentenced the old men to death by hanging. Dozens of petitions for clemency were sent to Pennsylvania’s executive council, and just days before their scheduled executions McKean sought pardons for both. “It was vintage McKean,” says biographer David McKean in “Suspected of Independence.” Strongly committed to the rule of law “as the most effective check on ever-changing popular attitudes,” McKean believed that its application “needed to be guided by compassion.” In this case, the pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears.

Though the two Quakers were the only defendants in his court ever to be convicted of treason and put to death, McKean acquired a reputation, endorsed by some historians, as a “hanging judge.” David McKean (a direct descendant of his subject) says that the chief justice generally “showed leniency to the Loyalists after the British vacated Philadelphia.” Even before the British arrived, he set free 29 Quakers who had been detained as suspected Tory sympathizers.

McKean served 22 years as Pennsylvania’s chief justice, and in the republic’s early years, says the author, his court may have been “more powerful” than the nascent U.S. Supreme Court. Some years later, a multi-volume work about the body of law that McKean developed became “a touchstone for courts throughout the country,” including the Supreme Court. “Perhaps no one other than Chief Justice John Marshall did more than McKean to establish an independent judiciary,” Mr. McKean asserts.

The author of three previous books on American political history, David McKean was an official at the State Department until earlier this year, when he was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. “I never really gave my ancestor a lot of thought,” he writes, until he began to notice fleeting references to him in histories of the period. Unfortunately, Thomas McKean did not keep a diary and was not a prolific letter writer, so events generally loom larger than his intimate perception of them in this brisk biography. CONTINUE AT SITE

When is a payment for hostages not a ransom? When the Obama Administration says so.

That’s how the State Department has tried to spin a $1.7 billion settlement the U.S. reached with Tehran in January, when the nuclear deal was finalized and Tehran released five American hostages, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. The Administration insists the payment merely settled a separate dispute related to the aborted sale of military equipment to the Shah of Iran in 1979.

New reporting by the Journal’s Jay Solomon and Carol Lee blows apart this story. On the day the U.S. hostages came home from Iran, an unmarked cargo plane landed in Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport with cash amounting to $400 million of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies. U.S. law forbids direct dollar transactions with Iran, and the $400 million in cash wasn’t disclosed to Congress. Justice Department officials objected but were overruled.

One reason the Administration is keen to deny that the cash was ransom is because it had already paid a high price by freeing seven Iranians charged or convicted of U.S. crimes and dropping extradition requests for 14 others. But the Iranians weren’t satisfied.

As the Journal reports, “U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.” Cash is an excellent way to pay terrorists, fund Hezbollah in Syria and the Houthis in Yemen, and buy dual-use, nuclear-related hardware—which Iran continues to do, according to reports from Germany’s intelligence services.

The Administration is pretending this money is being used for strictly kosher purposes. “The revenue that’s flowing to Iran is being used to support its currency, to provide moneys to the departments and agencies, build up its infrastructure,” CIA Director John Brennan said last week. Has he heard the word fungible?

The Iranians are less shy about their hostage taking. Iran’s negotiating team for the settlement payment “was largely staffed by members of its domestic spy service,” the Journal reports. Iranian defense officials told the press the cash was “a ransom payment.” CONTINUE AT SITE