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$Unique_ID{bob01065}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Chapter 19B  The President's November 19 News Conference}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{november
president
shipment
chronology
states
united
shipments
north
iran
hawk}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter 19B  The President's November 19 News Conference

     On November 19, the President vouched for facts that were wrong.  In his
nationally televised news conference, the President made the following
assertions - all of which were incorrect:

     - The President denied any involvement by a third country in the arms
sales.  When asked if he could explain the Israeli role, he replied, "No,
because we, as I say, have had nothing to do with other countries or their
shipment of arms or doing what they're doing."

     - When asked whether he was saying that "the only shipments with which we
were involved were the one or two that followed your January 17 Finding and
that . . . there were no other shipments which the United States condoned,"
the President responded, "That's right.  I'm saying nothing, but the missiles
we sold . . . ."

     - The President asserted that 1,000 TOW missiles were transferred (in
fact, 2,004 were transferred), and that the 1,000 transferred TOWs "didn't add
to any offensive power on the part of Iran."

     - The President stated that "everything that we sold [Iran] could be put
in one cargo plane, and there would be plenty of room left over."

     In addition, the President repeated his assertion that the United States
had not traded arms for hostages, relying on the distinction that the Iranian
Government itself did not hold the hostages.

     Although the President denied any third-country involvement in the sales
and said he could not explain the role of Israel, the Israeli role had been
discussed prominently in the cover memorandum on the basis of which the
President signed the January 17, 1986, Finding permitting the sales to go
forward.  Further, while the President also stated at his news conference that
the United States had not been involved with or condoned any shipments prior
to the January 1986 Finding, he told the Secretary of State that day that he
had known of the November 1985 shipment of HAWK missiles to Iran by Israel.
[Shultz Test., Hearings, 100-9, 7/23/87, at 44; Ex. GPS-C.  According to
contemporaneous notes made by Shultz's Executive Assistant, the President made
this statement to Shultz on November 19, 1986 prior to the press conference.]

     After the press conference, Charles Cooper telephoned Paul Thompson to
initiate a correction of the President's obvious misstatement that no third
country had been involved in the arms sales.  Thompson assured Cooper that the
NSC staff was already aware of this error and was planning to correct it.  A
correction was issued from the White House 20 minutes later.  Even this
correction, however, left the record inaccurate.  The correction conceded that
a third country had been involved, but did not state that the United States
had been involved in the sales by that country prior to the January 17, 1986,
Finding.

     Commenting on the numerous errors at the press conference, Regan
testified that Poindexter and his staff had spun so many stories in preparing
the President that "this sort of confused the Presidential mind as to what he
could say and couldn't say and what he should say and shouldn't say."

     The Secretary of State, who had watched the press conference, sought an
immediate meeting with the President.

The President and Secretary of State Meet on November 20.

     When he asked the President for a meeting, Secretary Shultz said that he
could demonstrate that a number of facts had been misstated at the press
conference.  In Secretary Shultz's view, the President's skillfulness as a
communicator was being exploited by the NSC staff for its own purposes - to
spread inaccurate information.

     The Secretary and the President met on November 20.  Donald Regan was
also there.  It was, Secretary Shultz testified, a "long, tough discussion.
Not the kind of discussion I ever thought I would have with the President of
the United States."

     According to Secretary Shultz, he reviewed with the President the factual
errors at the press conference.  [Shultz Test., Hearings, 100-9, 7/23/87, at
44.  A paper prepared for Shultz's meeting with the President detailed the
facts that were at odds with public statements from the White House.  Ex.
GPS-45; Sofaer Dep. at 58.]  The President "corroborated" the facts concerning
his approval of various arms shipments - including the November 1985 HAWK
shipment.  The President said, however, that "what he expected to have carried
out was an effort to get an opening of a different kind to Iran and the arms
and the hostages were ancillary to that, that was not his objective."  Shultz
replied, "Well I recognize that, Mr. President, and that is a good objective,
but that isn't the way it worked."

     The Secretary also asserted that the President was being given wrong
information, including "information that suggested that Iran was no longer
practicing terrorism."  He testified that his message overall to the President
was:  "You have got to look at these facts."

The NSC Staff's Chronologies

     Information was in fact being prepared by the NSC staff in the form of
"chronologies," documents setting forth key events relating to the Iran
initiative in chronological order.  The NSC staff had begun preparing a
chronology shortly after the disclosure of the Iran arms sales.  The
chronology started out as a one or two-page outline.  As time passed, however,
the chronology was transformed into a 17-page single-spaced document
containing background information and rationales for the various events and
decisions.

     Although a number of persons worked on the NSC staff chronologies, not
all participated in falsifying the facts.  That was the province of North,
McFarlane, and Poindexter.  North testified that the three had purposefully
misrepresented significant events in the chronologies.

     Poindexter acknowledged only that he had instructed North to omit any
reference to the diversion.  Otherwise, both Poindexter and McFarlane claimed
that they tried to paint a true picture in the chronologies, and that any
failures were the result of faulty memory or, in the case of McFarlane, an
effort to "gild" the facts.  The record refutes this claim - for the errors in
the chronologies were not simply incorrect dates or imperfect renditions of
meetings, but wholesale distortions of key events.  Moreover, it was McFarlane
himself who supplied narratives containing the most extreme
misrepresentations, with Poindexter's approval and North's assistance.

     The most glaring misrepresentations concerned the Israeli shipments made
before the President's January 1986, Finding - the August-September 1985
shipments of 504 TOW missiles and the November 1985, shipment of 18 HAWK
missiles from Israel to Iran.  The initial versions of the chronology,
prepared by North on November 7 included fairly accurate references to those
shipments.  McFarlane then sent a PROF message to Poindexter on November 7
suggesting that "[i]t might be useful to review what the truth is."  But
McFarlane's version was not the "truth":

     - He asserted that the August-September TOW shipments occurred when the
Israelis "went ahead on their own" after McFarlane had disapproved; and

     - He made no mention at all of the November 1985 HAWK shipment.

     McFarlane's "truth" set the stage for what was to come.  Subsequent
versions of the chronology, on November 12 and 13, picked up the theme of "no
prior U.S. approval" of the 1985 Israeli shipments and claimed that the United
States "acquiesced" in Israel's TOW shipment only after the release of hostage
Benjamin Weir on September 14, 1985.  No reference was made to any
Presidential approval of those shipments or to any of the prior discussions
between Israel and the United States from June through September; nor was
there any reference to the November 1985 HAWK shipment.

     In the November 17, 5:00 p.m. edition of the chronology, the authors
declared falsely that the United States was "not aware of the
[August-September TOW] shipment at the time it was made."  However, this
version of the chronology did contain an accurate reference to the November
1985 HAWK shipment, except that it was silent on the question of U.S.
knowledge and approval.

     Then, three separate discussions occurred on November 18, between North
and Keel, Poindexter, and Armitage, concerning the legality of the 1985 sales.
At 10:30 a.m., Keel and North reviewed the questions the President might be
asked at the press conference on November 19.  Two of the questions were, "Did
Israeli shipments on our behalf violate the law?"  and, "Did this violate the
Arms Export Control Act?"  At 5:30 p.m., North spoke to Poindexter, who
referred to the pre-Finding period and told North that the "big issue then was
legality."  Then, at 6:00 p.m., Armitage called and told North that lawyers
were asking him about the Israeli shipments in 1985 and wanted to know whether
the United States knew about them.

     Following these conversations, another version of the chronology was
drafted at 7:30 p.m. on November 18.  It denied prior U.S. knowledge of the
August-September 1985 TOW shipments and expressly stated that the November
1985 HAWK shipment was not an "authorized" exception to U.S. policy.  It also
contained an augmented misrepresentation of the TOW shipments.  It stated
that:

     - When informed by Israeli official David Kimche of a possible transfer
of TOWs, the United States, via McFarlane, refused to acquiesce in the
transfer or to guarantee replacement of the TOWS.

     - When the United States learned after the fact of the TOW transfers, a
decision was made not "to expose this Israeli shipment," so that the United
States could exploit the Israeli channel to Iran to further its own strategic
initiative.

     Later in the evening on November 18, McFarlane sent Poindexter a lengthy
PROF message suggesting deletions to the November 17 draft chronology and an
insert relating principally to the 1985 shipments.  He recommended that the
chronology add that, after authorizing a "dialogue" with Iran in July 1985,
the President rejected two separate Israeli proposals for arms transfers (one
for a direct sale, the other for shipment by Israel), and, further, that "[w]e
subsequently learned in late August the Israelis had transferred 508 TOW
missiles to Iran."  North incorporated McFarlane's insert virtually verbatim
in the next versions of the chronology, prepared on November 19 at 11:00 a.m.
and November 20 at 1:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.

     The final two editions included two additional misstatements contributed
by North: (1) that the Israelis "told us that they undertook the action,
despite our objections, because they believed it to be in their strategic
interests," and (2) that "[a]fter discussing this matter with the President,
it was decided not to expose this Israeli delivery . . . ."  [The "decision
not to expose" fabrication first appeared, as discussed earlier, in the Nov.
18, 7:30 p.m. version of the chronology.  It dropped out of the Nov. 19,
11:00 a.m. edition, and reappeared in the Nov. 20 versions with a reference to
the President.]

     As noted, the November 1985 HAWK shipment first appeared in a
straightforward way in North's initial November 7 chronology.  It next
appeared in the November 17, 3:00 p.m. version of the chronology, where it was
presented as an Israeli shipment of 18 HAWKs which resulted from "urgent
entreaties from the Iranians" and "raised U.S. concerns that we could well be
creating misunderstandings in Tehran."  The 5:00 p.m. edition on November 17
kept the same description but added that "[t]hese missiles were subsequently
returned to Israel in February 1986, with U.S. assistance."  [N 9368.  These
statements were true as far as they went; but the chronology remained silent
on whether the United States had approved the shipment.]  On November 18, the
chronology recited that the return of the HAWKs was "by mutual agreement of
all three parties."  However, following the three conversations North had on
November 18 with Alton Keel, Poindexter, and Richard Armitage regarding the
legality of the 1985 shipments, the story began to change.  On November 18,
the chronology asserted that the HAWK shipment was "not an authorized
exception to [U.S.] policy," and was retrieved "as a consequence of U.S.
intervention."  North conceded in his testimony that these changes in the
chronology were an attempt to deal with the Arms Export Control Act problems
that had been brought to his attention in his earlier conversations.

     After McFarlane's lengthy PROF message of November 18, the HAWK shipment
reference disappeared from the chronology and was replaced in its entirety
with the precise language recommended by McFarlane - which made no reference
to arms at all:

Later in the fall, other transfers of equipment were made between Israel and
Iran although some of the items were returned to Israel.

The November 19, 11:00 a.m. edition of the chronology added that, in a
December 1985 meeting with an Israeli official, McFarlane "made clear our
strong objection to the Israelis shipment of HAWK missiles."

     On November 20, North and others turned to the proposed testimony that
Casey was to give Congressional Intelligence Committees the next day.  They
faced the problem that a CIA proprietary airline had actually carried the HAWK
missiles to Iran in November 1985, but the President had denied U.S.
involvement in that weapons shipment at his press conference the day before.
Certain members of the NSC staff developed what Regan later termed a "cover
story":  that the U.S. Government had been told by the Israelis that the
November 1985 shipment carried by the proprietary was "oil drilling
equipment," not arms.

     The "oil drilling equipment" cover story first appeared in the chronology
on November 20 at 1:00 p.m., shortly before North, Poindexter, Casey, and
others met to discuss Casey's testimony.  It contained the following
misstatements:

     - In mid-November 1985, the Israelis said they were nearing a
breakthrough and asked a U.S. official for an airline that could discreetly
deliver passengers and "cargo" to Iran.

     - Since the United States "had expressed so much displeasure over the
earlier TOW shipment," the Israelis assured the U.S. Government that the cargo
was "oil drilling parts."  Only then did the U.S. pass the name of a
"proprietary" airline to haul the shipment.

     - Not until January 1986 did the United States learn that "the Israelis,
responding to urgent entreaties from the Iranians, had used the proprietary
aircraft to transport 18 HAWK missiles to Iran."

     - The U.S. Government's "belated awareness" of this shipment "raised
serious concerns that these deliveries were jeopardizing our objective of
arranging a direct meeting with high-level Iranian officials."  So Poindexter
"noted our stringent objections to the HAWK missile shipment" to the Israelis
and indicated that the United States would have to act to have them returned,
as was done in February.

     Following the November 20 meeting to prepare Casey's testimony, and the
subsequent objections to the proposed Casey testimony raised by the State
Department, the cover story was amended - in what is believed to be the last
version of the chronology - to delete all references to oil drilling
equipment.  The U.S. authorization of the November 1985 shipment, however, was
still denied.

     The fictional accounts in the chronologies were not limited to the 1985
shipments.  For example, the chronologies omitted the President's December
1985 Finding (which retroactively "authorized" the November shipment that the
United States had supposedly objected to); affirmatively misrepresented that
there had been consultation with "all appropriate" or "relevant" Cabinet
officers during the initiative; and baldly asserted that all arms sales were
"within the limits of established policy and in compliance with all U.S. law."

     All of this was not the result of any memory lapse.  The consequences of
this exercise in falsifying the facts were severe.  As North testified, by
creating an erroneous version of the facts in the chronologies, those
responsible were "committing the President of the United States to a false
story."

     On November 20 and 21, Poindexter and Casey would take further steps in
the same direction.