Richard V. Secord, a former Air Force general and C.I.A. operative who was the logistical middleman in the Iran-contra scandal that rocked the Reagan administration with illegal arms sales to Iran to support right-wing rebels in Nicaragua, died on Monday. He was 92.
A family member, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the death but provided no other details. Mr. Secord had been living in an assisted-living facility in the Daytona Beach area of Florida as recently as August.
A highly decorated fighter pilot who flew 285 missions in Vietnam and directed the C.I.A.’s secret air war in Laos to disrupt Hanoi’s Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route, Mr. Secord was a master of covert operations who was believed to have staged the only successful rescue of prisoners during the war in Indochina and who once directed the defense of a mountaintop radar site against great numbers of North Vietnamese regulars.
Mr. Secord emerged from Iran-contra with a reputation — an incorrect one, he maintained until his death — as a shady character who reportedly made millions in commissions. He pleaded guilty to a felony, lying to Congress, and was put on probation. Prosecutors also called him a silent partner of Edwin P. Wilson, a renegade C.I.A. operative who sold tons of plastic explosives to the Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and went to prison for over two decades.
Under a cloud of suspicion in the Wilson imbroglio, Mr. Secord retired as an Air Force major general and resigned as deputy assistant secretary of defense in 1983. As a civilian, he then went into another covert venture, privately organized by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, who was the deputy director of military affairs for President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council and a friend of Mr. Secord’s.
Over several years, investigators said, the clandestine project raked in some $47 million from the illegal sale of weapons to Iran and, contravening a congressional directive, used some of the profits to supply arms, medicine and other provisions to the guerrilla forces, called contras, who were fighting to overthrow the elected leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.