TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=91TT2430> <link 93XP0251> <link 93HT0792> <link 93HT0729> <link 90TT0563> <title> Oct. 28, 1991: Oliver North:"Reagan Knew Everything" </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991 Oct. 28, 1991 Ollie North:"Reagan Knew Everything" </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> EXCERPT, Page 36 COVER STORIES "Reagan Knew Everything" </hdr> <body> In Under Fire, an autobiography written in great secrecy, North says the emphasis on the "diversion" of funds to Nicaragua's contras was itself a diversion--to protect the President. In fact, believes the former Marine lieutenant colonel: "Reagan Knew Everything" By Oliver L. North [(c) 1991 by Oliver L. North From Under Fire by Oliver L. North and William Novak, published by Harper-Collins Publishers] On Nov. 25, 1986, at five minutes past noon, President Ronald Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese marched into the crowded White House briefing room to face the press and the TV cameras. As I watched from my office in the Old Executive Office Building, the President explained that he hadn't been told the whole story of our secret arms sales to Iran and that he had asked the Attorney General to look into the matter. He then announced that Admiral John Poindexter, his National Security Adviser, had resigned, and that Lieut. Colonel Oliver North had been "relieved of his duties on the National Security Council staff." What? Before I could catch my breath, the President turned over the microphones to the Attorney General and left. Then Ed Meese dropped the bomb: some of the profits from the arms sales to Iran had been diverted to the Nicaraguan resistance, the contras. The White House press corps actually fell silent for a second or two. Then the barrage began. Did the President know about this? Meese: The President knew nothing about it until I reported it to him. What? Well, then, who did know? Meese: The only person in the U.S. government that knew precisely about this, the only person, was Lieut. Colonel North. What?! Meese: Admiral Poindexter knew that something of this nature was occurring, but he did not look into it further. CIA Director Casey, Secretary of State Shultz, Secretary of Defense Weinberger, myself, the other members of the NSC--none of us knew. What?! "What Colonel North did--is that a crime? Will he be prosecuted?" Meese: We are presently looking into the legal aspects of it as to whether there's any criminality involved. Criminality?! For three weeks, ever since our Iran initiative had been exposed by a Beirut magazine, the Administration's strategy had been unspoken but unmistakable: this must not become another Watergate. And so in November 1986, somebody--probably Donald Regan, the White House chief of staff, or Nancy Reagan--decided that there could not be even the hint of a cover-up. Before the news media could cause any damage, the White House itself would disclose the story. The Administration chose to focus almost exclusively on the "diversion," and there was certainly a lot to be gained by presenting it that way. This particular detail was so dramatic, so sexy, that it might actually--well, divert attention from other, even more important aspects of the story, such as what else the President and his top advisers had known about and approved. And if it could be insinuated that this was the exclusive responsibility of one mid-level staff assistant at the National Security Council (and perhaps his immediate superior, the National Security Adviser), and that this staffer had acted on his own (however unlikely that might be), and that, now that you mention it, his activities might even be criminal--if the public and the press focused on that, then maybe you didn't have another Watergate on your hands after all. Especially if you insisted that the President knew nothing about it. I had expected to leave, and maybe even be fired--but not quite so publicly. Still, I'd had plenty of warning that my days at the NSC were numbered. I was, after all, deeply involved in two major, secret and politically explosive projects, the Iran initiative and the contras, and both had begun to unravel a few weeks earlier. Shortly after the Sandinistas shot down a contra resupply plane with American Eugene Hasenfus on board, William Casey, the director of the CIA, had said of the operation, "Shut it down and clean it up." Somebody's head would have to roll, and offering me up as a political scapegoat was part of the plan--although Casey believed there would be others. "If it comes out," he had told me, "it will go above you, buddy." And after it did come out, he said, "It's not going to stop with you." But never in my darkest nightmares did I imagine that anything I had done in the service of the President, my Commander in Chief, could lead to criminal charges. As soon as the press conference was over, everybody's favorite Watergate question began to reverberate: What did the President know, and when did he know it? According to the polls, a majority of the American people believed that President Reagan did know. I thought so too. And now, five years later, I am even more convinced: President Reagan knew everything. Ronald Reagan knew of and approved a great deal of what went on with both the Iranian initiative and private efforts on behalf of the contras, and he received regular, detailed briefings on both. He met on several occasions with private donors to the resistance and, it appears, personally asked a foreign leader--King Fahd of Saudi Arabia--to double his contribution. I have no doubt that he was told about the use of residuals for the contras, and that he approved it. Enthusiastically. There is an additional possibility: people around the President, and perhaps even President Reagan himself, were involved in an effort to protect the highest office in the land--and the man who occupied it. In his memoirs, Ronald Reagan wrote, "We sent word to the lawyers representing Oliver North and John Poindexter, who knew what had happened, that I wanted them to tell the entire truth and do nothing to protect me." I was surprised to read that, and I asked my lawyers if they ever received such a message. They hadn't. In fact, nobody from the Administration ever asked me to tell the truth. The only message I heard was "exonerate the President." -- On Dec. 11, H. Ross Perot, the Texas entrepreneur, met with Brendan Sullivan, my lawyer. "Look," he said, "why doesn't Ollie just end this thing and explain to the FBI that the President didn't know? If he goes to jail, I'll take care of his family. And I'll be happy to give him a job when he gets out." -- On Dec. 17, a military aide to Vice President Bush visited me and Brendan Sullivan. He suggested that I waive my Fifth Amendment rights and absolve the President of responsibility. Naturally, we wondered: Had this officer come on his own? Had he been sent? I still don't know. -- At the end of January, Paul Laxalt, one of Ronald Reagan's oldest and closest political friends, offered a legal memorandum to my defense team arguing that I would not waive my Fifth Amendment rights if I chose to state publicly that the President did not know about the diversion. My lawyers rejected this proposal out of hand. It's also possible that these approaches were part of a pattern that began even earlier, with President Reagan himself. A few hours after the Nov. 25 press conference, a White House operator tracked me down in a Virginia hotel. When President Reagan came on the line, I expressed my regret for what had taken place, and that the Iran initiative had blown up in our faces. "Ollie," said the President, "you have to understand, I just didn't know." Looking back, I wonder why he put it quite that way, and whether he was implying more than I realized at the time. He could have said, "Ollie, why didn't you tell me about the diversion?" Or "Ollie, believe me, I didn't know what was going on." Instead, it was, "You have to understand, I just didn't know." I now wonder whether he was alone when he made that call. Was Don Regan standing beside him? Or Nancy? Maybe what the President was really trying to tell me was: Look, Ollie, you and I know better, but the line we're putting out is that I didn't know, so please go along with it. It's possible, of course, that President Reagan meant exactly what he said. On the other hand, he was almost always scripted, and I don't have to stretch hard to imagine Donald Regan giving careful thought to the language the boss should use. Many friends and supporters say, "You knocked yourself out carrying out his policies and even risked your life by going to Tehran. Don't you feel betrayed?" Sometimes I do. In terms of the difference he made in the world, I'm very glad he was President for eight years. Yet he could have ended years of suffering for me and my family--by granting a pardon or by shutting down the office of the special prosecutor. Is that betrayal? Well, it sure as hell wasn't supportive. Putting a Lid on the Kettle [A predecessor to both the Iran initiative and the contra resupply scheme was a William Casey-inspired covert program, Operation Tipped Kettle. In 1983-84, hundreds of tons of Soviet-bloc weapons captured from the Palestine Liberation Organization by the Israelis were transferred by the CIA to the contras. But the disclosure that the CIA had mined Nicaraguan harbors infuriated Congress and put the lid on Tipped Kettle--and other aid.] The mining led to a spate of hearings. When Tony Motley, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, was called before the House Intelligence Committee, the Congressmen jumped all over him. "This is terrible," one said. "We're involved in illegal, covert actions, and we're killing sailors from other countries." "Just a minute," Tony replied. "Let me put this thing in context. Fewer people were killed by these mines than died at Chappaquiddick." Maybe that's why Tony didn't last too long in the job. As good as he was, you can't talk like that and stay very long at the State Department. For many in Congress, mining the harbors was the last straw. Instead of providing additional money for the resistance, the House gave us a new Boland amendment, the most restrictive of the five passed between 1982 and 1986, cutting off all aid to the contras. When that happened, a lot of people expected the resistance to wither on the vine and disappear. But President Reagan had no intention of abandoning the contras. In the fall of 1983, Robert McFarlane, the National Security Adviser, asked me for a list of countries that might be approached. In late March 1984, Bill Casey sent Bud a memo telling him that he, Casey, was "in full agreement" that McFarlane should "explore funding alternatives with the Israelis and perhaps others." After he received the Casey memo, Bud made a rare visit to my office. He said, "I want you to have the resistance open up an offshore bank account so that a foreign contributor can make deposits directly into it." Naturally, I wondered who that foreign contributor might be, but I knew better than to ask. McFarlane knew I would be asking Casey how to set this up, and I assumed he didn't want to put the CIA director in an awkward position. Casey was continually being called up to Capitol Hill to answer questions, and life was a lot easier if he didn't know those kinds of answers. I walked down the hall to Casey's office in the OEOB. "I've been told to have the resistance set up an offshore account," I said, "and I could use some help." Casey leaned back on his chair. He was chewing on a yellow wooden pencil. "Is it the Saudis?" he asked. "I don't know." "Come on, don't bullshit me. It's the Saudis, right?" "Honestly, I don't know." Casey smiled. "Well, it must be. How much are we talking about?" "I don't know that either." He peered at me skeptically over his glasses. Then he picked up the secure phone and asked for a number. When somebody picked up at the other end, Casey asked, "If a third party wanted to help our friends down south, who can we trust to handle the money?" When Casey hung up, he said, "Calero's your man." Adolfo Calero was a prominent figure in the resistance. "He should set up an offshore account if he doesn't have one already. The money shouldn't come all at once. Have it arrive in regular payments, every month." Then Casey held school. "Here's what to do," he began. I took out a notebook. "Put that away," he said. "If you have to write everything down, you don't belong in this business. The money should go directly from a foreign account into Calero's offshore account. It shouldn't come into this country at all. Do it with a wire transfer." "What, exactly, is a wire transfer?" Casey sighed. He had spent most of his life in the financial world and had even served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Asking Bill Casey about a wire transfer was a little like asking Einstein, "Excuse me, professor, but what is a square root?" "Why does it have to be an offshore account?" I asked. "Two reasons," he replied. First, all Nicaraguan bank accounts in the U.S. had been frozen. Second, the Treasury Department monitors large transfers of funds in and out of American banks. Someone was bound to notice these transactions and start asking questions. "You're Talking Too Much" In February 1985, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia arrived in Washington on a state visit. During his meetings with the President, he agreed to provide additional funds to the resistance. When the money began to arrive, Calero used it to buy weapons and supplies. He often called me for advice, and soon we conferred about everything, from where the contras could buy surface-to-air missiles to the need for more obstetricians in the base camps. One afternoon, Casey called me from his office at the Intelligence Community Staff Building on F Street. "Can you come over and see me right now?" I threw on my coat, ran over to F Street, and took the creaky old elevator to Casey's office. He said, "You're talking too much." "What do you mean?" "On the phone. How often are you talking to your pal in Honduras? Three, four times a week?" "Something like that." "All in the clear, right?" "Yes." "Well, it's got to stop." Casey said these calls made it too easy for the Soviets to listen in on my talks with Calero. He handed me a small black book with a series of little pockets inside. "Have you ever used one of these?" "No. How does it work?" He shook his head, as if to say, Do I have to explain everything? "It's a code book," he said. "You get one, he gets one. You change the code numbers on a set pattern. Now you can talk without giving away the store." All you had to do was enter the relevant words--Honduras, Nicaragua, guns, ammo, medicine, planes--then line them up with the code numbers in the book, which could be changed every day. It was low-tech but effective. Somebody listening in would have virtually no idea what you were talking about. Later, when more people were involved in our contacts with the resistance, Casey called me in again. "What are you doing about security?" he asked. "Your COMSEC [communications security] stinks." Casey was concerned about the Soviets' ability to monitor calls from their listening post in Lourdes, Cuba. What had begun as a simple link between Adolfo and me soon involved more than a dozen people on at least two continents. Adolfo and I were still using the original code books, but that didn't protect the others. Casey recommended a new, American- made encryption device manufactured by TRW, the KL-43. The code books and communications equipment may have helped keep the Soviets and the Cubans from knowing the details of what I was doing to support the resistance, but the secret kept spreading. There must have been well over 100 people in our government (including State, Defense, CIA, the White House and Congress) who knew at least some of what was being done. As the CIA phased out and I became the focal point for the resistance, we tried to tighten that circle. But for a covert operation, there sure were a lot of people who knew about it--at least until the great plague of amnesia that hit Washington in the fall of 1986. As the summer of 1984 came to an end, I felt as if I were straddling a canyon. On one side was the resistance, always expanding, always needing more. On the other was the CIA, which was steadily withdrawing its support. The canyon was growing wider by the day. Unless I had help, and soon, I was going to fall in. But Casey could see what was happening, and he asked me to come out to CIA headquarters at Langley on a Saturday morning to discuss the state of the resistance. I described the problems that were developing in the wake of the CIA's withdrawal. "Money alone isn't enough," I said. He nodded. "I know. And it'll only get worse in October, when all our people will be gone. You need somebody who can help you out." He leaned back and looked up, as though the answer was written on the ceiling. Whenever he did this, it was all I could do to restrain myself from looking up there with him. "Do you know Dick Secord?" he asked. "The Air Force general? I know who he is. I talked to him a couple of times." "That's the guy," said Casey. "He's got the right experience for this sort of thing. He knows the right people, he gets things done, and he keeps his mouth shut. Why don't you call him?" The Diversion Begins [North and Secord, a retired Air Force general with long experience in clandestine operations, created Project Democracy, supplying the contras with Soviet-bloc and other weaponry, medical supplies and spare parts aboard a fleet of aircraft financed by private benefactors like Joe Coors and governments including Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. Eventually, Secord's business partner Albert Hakim, an expatriate Iranian, was able to help North in Iran, which soon became his other major account at the NSC. North picked up the Iran account on Nov. 17, 1985, when Bud McFarlane asked him to help Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin get a shipment of American-made Israeli HAWK missiles into Iran. The effort to enlist Iran's help in freeing the Western hostages held in Lebanon in exchange for arms shipments was soon in full swing. In May 1986, North flew to Tehran with McFarlane, Israeli antiterrorist adviser Amiram Nir, the NSC's Howard Teicher and the CIA's George Cave. But it quickly became clear that the man who arranged the trip, a Paris-based expatriate Iranian arms merchant named Manucher Ghorbanifar, had been overpromising both sides. After several days of fruitless meetings, McFarlane aborted the mission. Despite his disappointment, North was relieved to get out of Iran without having to use the six lethal white, triangular pills Casey had given him. While keeping the Ghorbanifar channel open--it was "Gorba," as North called him, who hatched the notion of diverting profits from Iranian arms sales to the contras--those involved in the initiative sought other means of dealing with the Iranians. Hakim helped put them in touch with one of Iranian Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani's nephews, a man not in government but well connected to it. North found "the Nephew" realistic about what could be accomplished both in the release of hostages and in developing a dialogue with Iranian moderates.] I believe it made sense to open a dialogue with Iran and search for pragmatists or moderates in its government. At the time, it seemed that selling a small amount of arms to Iran was worth the risk to make it all work. But a quid pro quo arrangement of arms for hostages? This placed all of us in a moral quandary. Human life is sacrosanct, but making what people would inevitably see as concessions to terrorists was a terrible idea--especially since it violated our prohibition on arms sales to Iran. The decision to proceed was made well above my level, but I became a willing participant. For me, the most difficult aspect of the endeavor was accepting that we had established a price for a human life: 500 TOW missiles. To this day, I find this part of our Iran initiative the most troubling. There were other problems. Premature disclosure of our dealings with Iran might not only harm the hostages but would also damage American prestige abroad and the President's effectiveness at home. And dealing with the kidnappers, even through intermediaries, might merely encourage them to take more hostages. Despite the negatives, for me the moral issue was still a very tough call. It's easy to condemn trading arms for hostages, but the State Department had achieved no success using diplomatic channels. "Fix it," McFarlane had said, and that's all I needed to hear. It was the kind of challenge I thrived on. I could have quit. Instead, I jumped in with both feet. [While North was meeting with the Nephew in early October 1986 in Frankfurt, Germany, where they were working toward what would become the release of hostage David Jacobsen, North learned via CNN that the Sandinistas had shot down Hasenfus' C-123 over Nicaragua. "My heart stopped," writes North. "I didn't recognize the name, but I certainly knew what this meant." North hurried back from Frankfurt and was summoned to CIA headquarters at Langley, where Casey ordered him to shut down Project Democracy. He began shredding everything he could find that pertained to the private contra-aid effort but returned to Europe to continue talks with the Nephew. Soon, however, pamphlets describing the McFarlane mission were being circulated in mosques in Qum and Tehran--the work of rival factions opposed to reconciliation with the U.S., according to the Nephew. The story soon made its way into the Beirut magazine Al Shiraa and from there into the American press.] Shortly after the Al Shiraa revelations, Admiral Poindexter asked for a chronology of the Iran initiative. Because my own involvement in the Iran initiative had not begun until I heard from Rabin in November 1985, I relied on others for earlier details. The chronology started out as two pages but soon expanded to 20. On Tuesday, Nov. 18, at about 8 p.m., Bud McFarlane came to my office to "lend a hand" in reworking a draft of the President's remarks for the press conference scheduled for the following night. He proposed several changes to Admiral Poindexter, including a denial that the U.S. had approved any shipments to Iran before January 1986. When he had finished working on the President's remarks, Bud made the same changes on the chronology. By now, President Reagan, Admiral Poindexter and Don Regan had met with various congressional delegations to discuss the Iran initiative, and all had studiously avoided any mention of our involvement in the 1985 shipments. On Nov. 12, when President Reagan and his senior foreign policy advisers met with the congressional leadership at the White House, the President pointedly omitted any reference to his O.K. for Israeli TOW shipments in the summer of 1985 or to his December 1985 finding retroactively authorizing the Iranian initiative. From then on, the President and his senior advisers were committed to this version of events. In his speech to the nation on Nov. 13, the President made no mention of U.S. government approval for, or involvement in, these early shipments. By the time McFarlane finished his rendition of the 1985 events, his account coincided with the President's. In describing the HAWK shipment from Israel to Iran, Bud totally altered the facts about the delivery and our role in it, making it appear that we didn't even know about it at the time. To this day I don't know McFarlane's reasons for these changes. I have mine, and at the time, that was enough; we knew from our intelligence and from meetings with the Iranians that the HAWK shipment of November 1985 had infuriated the Iranians. They had been led to expect a long-range system that could shoot down high-altitude Soviet and Iraqi aircraft. But HAWK is a low-altitude, relatively close-in system. When the Iranians had confronted us with these problems, we had assured them that we'd had nothing to do with that particular shipment. With the agreement of the Israelis, we presented ourselves as the good guys. "Deal with us from now on," we said. "You can return those HAWKs, and we'll help you get what you need." In November 1986, I still didn't want us to reveal our connection with that 1985 shipment. If the U.S. was perceived as having played any role in that transaction, the Beirut kidnappers might take out their anger on the hostages. We also feared that additional hostages might be seized. We were also concerned that any revelation of our role in the 1985 shipment could harm the Nephew. He might end up being targeted as the fall guy in Tehran, especially if it was revealed that shipments to his country had gone through Israel. By then, I fully expected to lose my job. But in Iran, after all, the word "firing" is often followed by the word "squad." The Secret Within a Secret There was still another reason for not disclosing our role in the 1985 shipment from Israel. The original presidential finding that Reagan had signed in December 1985, authorizing the covert shipment of arms to Iran, had been worded in such a way as to make the Iran initiative sound like nothing more than arms for hostages: "Scope: Hostage Rescue--Middle East. Description: The provision of assistance by the Central Intelligence Agency to private parties in their attempt to obtain the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East...As part of these efforts certain foreign materiel and munitions may be provided to the government of Iran, which is taking steps to facilitate the release of the American hostages." Any disclosure of this finding would have been enormously embarrassing for the Administration, especially since the President continued to insist that the Iran initiative was not about arms for hostages. On the afternoon of Nov. 21, John Poindexter and I sat in his office and discussed the problem. In January 1986, the President had signed a second finding, which made clear that the Iran initiative was much broader than simply arms for hostages. This second finding spelled out the President's goals: to create an opening to Iran, to help bring about an end to the Iran-Iraq war and to recover the hostages. The admiral believed the poorly worded first finding had been effectively superseded by the second finding. If that first finding was ever revealed, the President would be humiliated. The admiral asked Paul Thompson, his lawyer, to bring in the signed original 1985 finding. Admiral Poindexter then tore it in half and placed it on the coffee table. This was one of the charges on which he was later indicted and convicted. He was punished by politicians who were out to get the President. What happened to John Poindexter was an outrage. In changing the chronology and in destroying the superseded finding, Bud and the admiral had taken steps to preserve lives and to protect the President. But there were other matters too that we didn't want anyone to know about. No version of the chronologies mentioned "the secret within a secret." We were trying to avoid the political explosion that such a revelation would entail--and we were certainly right about that. We also knew the Iranians would be furious if this story came out. They had been taken to the cleaners and charged enough for the weapons to fund the Nicaraguan resistance and other projects as well. If it was revealed that these funds were used to support the contras, the Iranians might well go ballistic. After all, they had been supporting the Sandinistas. While the government of Iran had no great sympathy for communism, it apparently believed the Sandinistas qualified for that old Middle Eastern proverb: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Meanwhile, back in my office on the night of Nov. 18, McFarlane asked me, "Did you ever take care of that other stuff--way back then?" "Other stuff?" "What did you do with that?" He gestured toward my computer. Taped to the monitor was a list of six NSC document control numbers that Bud had written out and given to me more than a year earlier. The numbers referred to memos I had written to Bud in 1984 and 1985, seeking his approval for some of my efforts in support of the Nicaraguan resistance. In the fall of 1985, Bud had directed me to remove any reference to my support activities and his knowledge of them. I still hadn't done it. In the summer of 1985, two prominent members of Congress started asking questions about the NSC's involvement in secret support for the Nicaraguan resistance. Michael Barnes, chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was a leading opponent of the President's policies in Central America. Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was less vocal than Barnes but also opposed military aid for the resistance. Both wrote McFarlane, asking whether the NSC had indeed been supporting the resistance. Barnes specifically asked about reports of contact between me and the contra leaders. There are two ways to protect a secret when you're asked about it directly. One is simply not to answer. The other is to lie. I argued with Bud that we shouldn't answer these letters. This was precisely the kind of situation that Executive privilege was invented for. Bud said my approach was too confrontational. Instead, he invoked his own form of Executive privilege. He lied. In letters and meetings with various Congressmen, he flatly denied that the NSC, in general, and Oliver North, in particular, were involved in these activities. After Barnes renewed his request to see documents, Bud called me in. "Ollie," he said, "some of these need to be fixed." Bud explained that the memos, all of which I had sent to him, were inconsistent with what he had said and written to Congress and that they were "problematical." He handed me a piece of paper on which he had written the numbers of six NSC documents. Bud said I should remove all references to my operational role and make the memos consistent with what he had said and written to Congress. But I didn't understand why McFarlane had selected only certain memos when I had written dozens that were equally problematical. "Just take care of it," McFarlane said, showing me a document he had already changed. "And from now on, no more memos with this kind of detail." Until Bud came to my office on Nov. 18, 1986, I still hadn't got around to revising these papers. With so many other NSC memos that revealed similar information, I just didn't see the point. But when Bud brought it up again, I dutifully started removing references to my operational role and to McFarlane's knowledge of it, just as he told me to. But it was too late. I was still working on these papers when I was fired. It wasn't until 1989, during my trial, that I finally understood why Bud had selected these six documents. Bud knew they all revealed his detailed awareness and approval of my activities and perhaps, to his way of thinking, the President's as well. Left Out in the Cold On Thursday afternoon, Nov. 20, Bill Casey and I walked back to the OEOB together after a meeting and talked for a few minutes in his office. As I started to leave, he said, "It's going to be O.K. down there." I gave him a puzzled look. "You know, Nicawogwa." (He never could pronounce the name of the country that was always on his mind; at meetings people would go out of their way to try to get him to say it.) Casey went on, "You did a good job. We're back in"--he was referring to Congress's approval of $100 million in aid to the resistance--"but you kept them going." This turned out to be the last real conversation we ever had. Casey died on May 6, 1987. [In closed-session testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Casey claimed he had no knowledge of the 1985 HAWK shipment until January 1986. But he pointedly suggested that the members "might be fascinated to know what Oliver North had been doing operationally to help the Nicaraguan resistance." In doing so, Casey was fulfilling a warning he had given North early on: he would sacrifice him if it meant saving the rest of the Administration. The committee didn't seem interested. But aides to Attorney General Ed Meese, who launched his own investigation that same week, were to become very much interested. On Saturday, Nov. 22, William Bradford Reynolds and John Richardson from Justice came to North's office, where he helped them sort through and copy his files, while he went about his own business--including shredding some documents.] The following afternoon, Sunday, I went to Ed Meese's office in the Justice Department shortly after 2. Ed opened the meeting by asking me to try to recall everything that had happened on the Iran initiative. "Don't worry about trying to protect the President or anyone else," he said. "Just tell me the story." It may sound strange in view of what happened next, but the tone of our discussion was friendly and casual. I didn't expect this meeting to be especially dramatic. I thought we were still trying to put the best face on what happened--to reveal enough to satisfy Congress and the press but not so much as to endanger the hostages. About an hour into the meeting, Meese said, "Is there anything else that can jump up and bite the President on the ass?" "Not that I can think of," I replied. "How about this?" he said, handing me a nine-page document. It was an April 1986 memo from me to Admiral Poindexter detailing a planned arms shipment to Iran and specifically mentioning $12 million in residuals from the arms sales that would go to the Nicaraguan resistance. Oh, shit, I thought. This was precisely the kind of document I had shredded. Or so I thought. "Where did this come from?" I asked. "That's not important," said Meese. "Did this happen?" "No, that particular shipment never took place," I said. This was true, but the next question was inevitable. "Well, did anything like this ever take place?" I paused. This was the secret within a secret that was never supposed to be revealed. But there was no way I was going to lie to Ed Meese. After what seemed like an eternity, I said yes. The earth didn't shake. The walls didn't come crashing down. Nobody said, "Get out the handcuffs! This man has violated the Boland amendment!" Ed Meese was certainly interested but gave no hint of what was to come just two days later at the Nov. 25 press conference. The meeting ended shortly before 6 p.m. As Meese was leaving, I expressed concern about the safety of the hostages. "I certainly hope this won't be made public," I said. Famous last words. By the summer of 1987, the White House was willing to give up just about anyone or anything that would permit the upper echelons of the Administration to survive--even allowing the actions of those who had served the Administration to be criminalized. When I arrived at the Senate Caucus Room to begin my testimony on July 7, 1987, the scene was a lot more raucous than I expected after watching the Iran-contra hearings on TV for seven weeks. Directly in front of me, photographers were shooting like crazy. Just beyond the photographers, on an elevated, double-tiered dais, sat the 26 members of the Iran-contra committee and their innumerable staff. The room reminded me of a miniature Colosseum when the lions were about to be released. I was well aware that some committee members were already convinced I was the villain. That was fine, because I wasn't too crazy about some of them either. To me, many Senators, Congressmen and even their staff members were people of privilege who had shamelessly abandoned the Nicaraguan resistance and left the contras vulnerable to a powerful and well-armed enemy. And now they wanted to humiliate me for doing what they should have done! Brendan Sullivan had agreed that before I testified publicly the committee could ask me one question in private. Their most burning question was whether I had told the President about the "diversion." I explained that, while I had never discussed it with him, I had always assumed that he was aware of what I was doing and had, through my superiors, approved it. The committee's infatuation with the diversion distracted attention from many other things that the President and his Administration had done to support the contras during the Boland prohibitions. And it kept attention focused on me, which appeared to be just what the committee and the Administration wanted. It left John Poindexter and me out in the cold. The Smoking Gun? [After full-scale inquiries by a presidential commission, a joint committee of Congress, the office of special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh and the press, North was eventually brought to trial on 12 counts. When he was indicted, he immediately resigned from the Marine Corps, though "it had been my identity every day for close to 20 years, and I had expected it would continue to be for another 10 or 15." North believes that as part of the White House strategy of protecting the President by diverting blame for Iran-contra from him, "anonymous sources made a concerted effort to portray me as an unreliable renegade, and the press lapped it up, never stopping to ask how I could possibly have done all this on my own." Even the special prosecutor's office apparently failed to pursue evidence that North believes might have led to a wider investigation.] By far the most interesting piece of evidence that Brendan didn't use was what we called the "smoking gun in the closet" tape. (The title comes from a deliciously mixed metaphor that appears in the first line of the transcript.) This tape was supposed to be nothing more than a routinely recorded telephone conversation between employees in two different Manhattan offices of New York's Citibank on June 17, 1987, about three weeks before I testified at the congressional hearings. But in a coincidence almost too bizarre to believe, leaking through the conversation between the two bank employees was a second dialogue between two men on the subject of the Iran-contra hearings. From their discussion, it's clear that one of these men had appeared before the congressional committee. The bank gave the tape to the FBI, and the following summer, Barry Simon, a member of my legal team, found it in a pile of potential evidence that was provided to us by the prosecution. Although most of the conversation between the two men was remarkably clear, we were never able to determine who they were. But there was no doubt as to what they were discussing: A: Yeah, there's a smoking gun in the closet. Reagan knows. B: Listen... A: I told the committee. There was no--I told the committee there was--I had nothing to do with those papers. Ollie North knows about it. Reagan knows...Reagan knows about it... B: Listen, he ain't testifying. A:...and the...and the other, the other people involved do know about that. B: [Unintelligible.] A: Well, you have to go to the committee. B: [Unintelligible] the committee. A: You have to go to the committee, not me. B: Listen... A: Somebody's got to bring this up. B: [Unintelligible.] A: I think somebody ought to go; somebody's got to be responsible for this. B: [Unintelligible.] A: Reagan...Reagan knows. Reagan has all the memos. B: He's got all the memos? I thought he tore all that stuff up. A: No. He's got all the memos, and there are copies. B: Didn't you burn that stuff? A: No. B: Oh, jeez. I warned you about that. A: Nobody...no... B: It's going to hit the papers like crazy. A: Nobody told me to. B: [Unintelligible.] A: [Unintelligible.] No. B: What about your secretary? She couldn't get the stuff copied? A: Not all of it. B: [Unintelligible] about Reagan [unintelligible]. A: Well..., I'm getting out of this thing, and if somebody comes to me, I'm blowing the cover. B: I'll tell you, if I go down, I'm taking you with me. A: Well, me too. B: You and your...secretary...[unintelligible]. A: I'd better call you back. I think we're tapped. B: I think so. A: All right. 'Bye. When Barry first heard the tape during preparations for the trial, he was flabbergasted. "Listen to this!" he called out, and we all gathered to hear it. Barry played it over and over to see if I could identify the voices. Was one of the men Don Regan? It just didn't sound like him. Regan would have come across as more arrogant; these men were clearly anxious. My guess was one of them was Ed Hickey, head of the President's military office, who has since died. Hickey was interviewed around this time by the committee and had been involved, with me, in a hostage-rescue attempt by the Drug Enforcement Administration, funded with profits from the Iran arms sale. But that's just a guess. Whoever these men were, it was clear that somebody was in possession of important documents, some of which had been destroyed. But what? And how exactly did all this fit into the Iran-contra story? When I was unable to identify the voices, Brendan and Barry took the tape to the White House. On July 28, 1988, they met there with Arthur B. Culvahouse, the President's counsel, and one of his aides. As Barry described it later, Culvahouse blanched when he heard the tape, and his aide appeared shaken. Both men denied any knowledge of it, and as far as they knew, no other government agency had been asked about it either. And yet the special prosecutors had received this tape months earlier. Well, said Brendan, would you help us get to the bottom of this and let us interview the President about it? Two months later, the answer came back no. Apparently, the special prosecutor's zeal in pursuing John Poindexter and me did not extend to finding out who was on that tape or what documents they were discussing. Nobody at the White House, the FBI or the special prosecutor's office was interested in helping us. And it's safe to assume that nobody on the congressional committee heard this tape either. If they had, it surely would have leaked. Without being able to identify the voices, we were not able to use the tape in court. The special prosecutor might never have given it to us, except that he was required to do so under the rules of evidence. But neither they, the FBI nor the White House ever revealed its existence. Keeping Faith [North was eventually acquitted of nine counts but found guilty on three, including helping to obstruct Congress and tampering with documents. But on Sept. 16, 1991, Walsh asked Federal Judge Gerhard Gesell to drop all charges because he would be unable to show that testimony in North's trial had not been prejudicially tainted by the testimony he gave under immunity to the congressional Iran-contra committee. "It was finally over," writes North.] According to the conventional wisdom, Iran-contra occurred because a small group of misfits and renegades, working out of the White House basement, rose above the law and carried out their own foreign policy, whereupon their superiors were shocked--shocked--to learn what they had done. It makes for a good story, but that's not what happened. I never saw myself as being above the law, nor did I ever intend to do anything illegal. I have always believed, and still do, that the Boland amendments did not bar the National Security Council from supporting the contras. Even the most stringent of the amendments contained loopholes that we used to ensure that the Nicaraguan resistance would not be abandoned. From 1984 on, I did my best to keep faith with two groups that I cared about deeply, and whose fate President Reagan had put at the top of his agenda: our hostages in Lebanon and the contras. The Iran initiative ended in failure, but that's not to say it wasn't worth trying. Had we succeeded, not only would all the hostages have come home, but we would have opened a new relationship with a country that is still important to our national security. Our Nicaraguan initiative was more straightforward and for me, at least, presented no great moral quandary. Until Congress resumed its funding for the contras, we fulfilled the mission assigned by the President: to keep the resistance alive. Our goal was to enable the contras to exert the kind of pressure on the Sandinistas that could ultimately lead to a free and democratic Nicaragua. Early in 1990, our efforts were vindicated when a coalition of anti-Sandinista groups scored a decisive electoral victory over Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas. HOW IRAN-CONTRA UNFOLDED Dec. 1, 1981. President Reagan signs "finding" authorizing CIA assistance for contras in Nicaragua. May 21, 1983. State Department launches Operation Staunch to discourage sale of arms to Iran by other nations. April 6, 1984. Wall Street Journal exposes CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors as Reagan lobbies for $24 million in contra aid. Oct. 12, 1984. Third and most restrictive of Boland amendments forbids all U.S. intelligence agencies to support the contras. March 6, 1985. Associate Press bureau chief Terry Anderson is kidnapped in Beirut. July 18, 1985. Reagan approves Iran initiative in meeting with Robert McFarlane at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Sept. 14, 1985. Shipment of 408 TOW antitank missiles goes from Israel to Iran (96 were shipped on Aug. 20). Next day, hostage Benjamin Weir is released. Nov. 24, 1985. U.S. HAWK missiles bound for Iran arrive in Israel. Jan. 22, 1986. Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar proposes "diversion" of profits from Iran arms sales to contras. April 4, 1986. North, in message to Poindexter, proposes diverting $12 million in Iran arms profits to contras. May 25, 1986. McFarlane, North and others arrive in Tehran to negotiate sale of arms and release of hostages. Sept. 25, 1986. Congress okays $100 million in lethal and nonlethal aid to contras. Oct. 5, 1986. Plane carrying American Eugene Hasenfus and 10,000 pounds of arms is shot down in Nicaragua. Nov. 2, 1986. Hostage David Jacobsen released following shipment of 500 TOW missiles to Iran. Nov. 3, 1986. Story from Beirut magazine Al Shiraa describing McFarlane's trip to Tehran reaches U.S. press. Nov. 13, 1986. On nationwide TV, Reagan denies he traded arms for hostages. Nov. 25, 1986. Reagan and Attorney General Ed Meese announce discovery of "diversion," resignation of Poindexter and firing of North. Dec. 19, 1986. Lawrence Walsh appointed special prosecutor. July 7-14, 1987. North testifies under immunity before Iran- contra committee. March 16, 1988. Special prosecutor Walsh indicts North. May 4, 1988. North convicted on three counts, acquitted on nine. Sept. 16, 1991. Walsh drops all remaining charges against North after court rules that testimony of key witness McFarlane was tainted by his exposure to North testimony given under immunity. ABOUT THAT CAKE... In November 1986, when the world learned of our visit to Tehran, it was widely reported that we brought a Bible signed by President Reagan and a cake in the shape of a key--to symbolize our desire to open a new relationship with Iran. The report about the Bible was wrong. But we did bring a cake. It was not, however, in the shape of a key. Moreover, it had no real connection with our mission. Manucher Ghorbanifar, our channel to the Iranians, had asked that we bring a cake as a gift for his aging and widowed mother, who lives in Tehran. Because that was one of Gorba's easier requests, Amiram Nir and I bought a large, rectangular chocolate layer cake at a kosher bakery in Tel Aviv. Aboard the plane, I carefully laid the cake box on the sink in the galley. During the flight, when I opened the cabinet above the sink to look for coffee cups, I noticed the matched sets of pistols we had brought as gifts on the same shelf as the dishes. Each set of pistols was packed in an elegant case with a handsome brass key. As I reached for the cups, one of the keys fell onto the uncovered cake, making a sizeable indentation. When I saw how deeply the key had fallen, I left it there, hoping it would look like an intentional decoration. "Well," I said to a collegue, "we can always tell Mrs. Ghorbanifar that this is the key to our hearts." Ghorbanifar's gift never reached his mother. When Nir and I wandered down the hall of the Tehran Hilton, several of the revolutionary guards were playing with the pistols...and eating the cake. NOT ANOTHER MULLAH! At several points during his 1986 visit to Washington, the Iranian emissary we called the Nephew asked for a brief intermission so he could pray. He hadn't brought his prayer rug, so one of my colleagues offered his mulitcolored gym towel. All this praying led me to make several references to Abraham, the biblical father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I also stressed that President Reagan was a man of God. But I apparently pushed the religious comments a little too far. Finally, the Nephew's keeper took Richard Secord aside to complain. "General," he said, "what's with this guy? We just left a country full of muallahs. And what do I find here but another lousy mullah!" THE ULTIMATE COVER-UP Project Democracy became the operator of a seven-plane air force, consisting of three Maules, two C-123s, and two C-7s. Later, during the many investigations, one of the few questions that nobody ever bothered to ask was what happened to those planes. It wasn't until much later that I learned the answer. After the Hasenfus incident, in which one of the C-123s was shot down over Nicaragua, CIA Director William Casey told us to shut down the contra supply operation, and all the pilots, maintenance men and mechanics who had been hired went home on commercial flights, leaving planes and equipment behind. Later, in an effort to tidy up the loose ends from Project Democracy, the CIA undertook an extraordinary operation. First, they had the little air force flown to a remote airfield. Then an enormous crater was dug with bulldozers. The planes were pushed into the pit, covered with explosives and blown up. The remaining wreckage was saturated with fuel and cremated. The fire burned for days. When the smoke finally cleared, the charred remains were buried. It was probably the only time an entire air force had ever been given a funeral. One might call it the ultimate cover-up. BICKER, BICKER Like everyone in the national-security community, I couldn't help being aware of the continual squabbling between Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Part of their rivalry was institutional: the Defense Department tends to be more suspicious of the Soviet Union; State, by its very nature, is more inclined toward compromise and reconciliation. But this conflict was personal, and the hostility inevitably spilled down into the bureaucracies. Whenever Shultz spoke during meetings of the National Security Planning Group in the White House Situation Room, Weinberger would slouch down and close his eyes. When Shultz was finished, Weinberger would usually speak up in disagreement. Sometimes--especially on Central America--he'd talk as if Shultz had never spoken. They fought constantly--in front of the President, in meetings and through public statements. Sometimes you had the feeling that one of them took a more extreme position just to annoy the other guy. They had apparently been at each other's throats for years--ever since 1970, when Weinberger worked for Shultz in Nixon's Office of Management and Budget. According to local lore, their conflict had continued at Bechtel, where Shultz was president and Weinberger general counsel. It was also reflected in their very different personalities. Shultz was certainly the more interesting of the two. In public he always tried to portray himself as the cautious, behind-the- scenes conciliator, struggling to stay out of the limelight. But he struck me as just the opposite: a man who loved the attention of the media and wanted to be seen as being in charge of foreign policy. In private meetings he was contentious, especially with Weinberger and Casey, and he frequently contradicted them in meetings with the President. He also struck me as the more ambitious of the two. Later I learned that Shultz had told one of his aides he saw Iran-contra as an opportunity to become National Security Adviser as well as Secretary of State. Weinberger, on the other hand, was clearly uneasy in front of the media and would often stutter and stammer his way through a press conference. He was far more effective when he held forth in the Situation Room, where his perspectives were clear and concise. He knew that for the U.S. to have credibility, we had to have military strength. Shultz, however, didn't seem to care deeply about any particular issue--so long as he got to negotiate it. Just about the only thing that Shultz and Weinberger seemed to agree on was that they were both strongly opposed to our dealings with Iran. Thier opposition was real enough, but in Shultz's case, especially, I believe he made sure that if the Iran initiative failed, he could credibly claim that he had opposed it. The story came out that Shultz had threatened to resign over the policy. I don't believe it. I'm confident that if he had walked into the Oval Office and said, flat out, "Either this Iran business stops or I'm leaving," the initiative would have been stopped in its tracks. As much a President Reagan cared about the hostages, after Alexander Haig left, he couldn't afford to lose a second Secretary of State. Had Shultz and Weinberger been as strongly opposed as they later claimed, it would never had continued. Consider the impact if both men had gone in together to see the President and said, "Hey boss, we finally found something to agree on. Either this thing stops or we're both out of here." Instead, as pragmatic politicians, they kept their options open. AND THEY BOUNCED CHECKS TOO During my appearance before the joint committee, Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois made a remarkable statement about the hypocrisy of the hearings. Referring to Congress, he said: "If we don't like a law, Colonel, and you guys ought to learn this at the NSC and then the Administration, you just exempt yourself. You see, we exempt ourselves from OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Act. We exempt ourselves from the Ethics in Government Act; no special prosecutors are going after us. We have our own committee of our own brethren that'll take care of that. We are exempt from equal employment opportunity; none of that because we're political people. The Budget Act? Waive it, pass it, kid the people, and waive it. Every time something comes us that's in excess of the budget, pay no attention to it. "Now, if we can't ignore the law or exempt ourselves from it, we play games with the process. Do you know how we got our pay raise?...You know what we did in the House? We waited...until 30 days had elapsed, until it was vested, it could not be unvested...We waited until it was locked in, and then we got to vote on it. And we could tell out constituents, `I didn't vote for that pay raise.' That's the way we do things. So there's much to be learned from watching us." "WITH WINGS AS EAGLES" On July 7, 1987, the first morning of my testimony before the joint congressional committee, an elderly woman I had never seen before handed me a little card. During those days, my lawyers wouldn't allow me to read anything except specific materials relating to the inquisition, and Brendan Sullivan, my lawyer, snatched the card from my hand even before I looked at it. By the time we walked into the hearing room, I had forgotten about it. But just before we sat down, Brendan put the card in front of me. Every time we stood up to leave during a recess, he picked it up and took it with him, and every time we returned, he put it back. Imprinted on the card was a biblical verse: <qt> <l>They that wait upon the Lord</l> <l>shall renew their strength;</l> <l>They shall mount up with wings as eagles.</l> <l>They shall run and not be weary.</l> <l>They shall walk, but not faint.</l> <l>-- Isaiah 40:31</l> </qt> As I went through an extraordinary experience, that card was in front of me the whole time. </body> </article> </text>