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$Unique_ID{bob01067}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Chapter 20A  November 1986:  The Attorney General's Inquiry}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{attorney
north
general
meese
mcfarlane
documents
november
president
poindexter
told}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter 20A  November 1986:  The Attorney General's Inquiry

The Attorney General's Inquiry Is Launched

     When Attorney General Edwin Meese returned to Washington on the morning
of November 21, he immediately convened his top advisers to discuss the
Administration's conflicting versions of what had actually happened in
November 1985.  Present were Deputy Attorney General Arnold Burns, John
Richardson (the Attorney General's Chief of Staff), William Bradford Reynolds
(Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division), and Charles Cooper
(Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel).  Cooper briefed
the group on the discrepancies between the proposed Casey testimony and the
facts as recalled by others in the Administration.  The Attorney General
decided to propose to the President that he be commissioned to gather the
facts so that the Administration would be speaking with one voice.

     At 9:22 a.m., the Attorney General called Poindexter on a secure
telephone and told him to arrange a meeting among themselves, the President,
and Donald Regan.  According to Regan, Attorney General Meese met with him
before they went to see the President on the morning of November 21.  Attorney
General Meese told Regan he was having trouble getting the facts in one place,
and that a full investigation should be made.

     At approximately 11:30 a.m., Attorney General Meese, Regan, and
Poindexter met with the President.  According to Attorney General Meese, he
told the President that the Administration did not have a coherent picture of
the Iran initiative because the operation was so heavily compartmentalized.
Attorney General Meese suggested that he be authorized to gather the facts to
present an accurate overview for the President and the public.  The President
acceded.  It was agreed that over the weekend the Attorney General would try
to gather the facts in time for the previously scheduled National Security
Planning Group (NSPG) meeting on Monday, November 24.  Attorney General Meese
testified that when he embarked on this effort he was acting as "legal adviser
to the President."  [Test., Hearings, at 100-9, 7/28/87, at 224; Meese Dep.,
at 82-84.  North and Poindexter also characterized Meese's role as that of
"friend" of the President, not Attorney General.  North Test., Hearings,
100-7, Part II, 7/14/87, at 186-187; Poindexter Test., Hearings, 100-8,
7/16/87, at 133-134.  Poindexter described Meese's role as a "special
adviser," Id.]

     Meanwhile, at 11:00 a.m., Ledeen and McFarlane met at Ledeen's home to
discuss the extent of the arms sales transactions.  McFarlane said he was
clear on everything except the November 1985 shipment.  North appeared at
Ledeen's home about 12:30 p.m., "in some distress" according to McFarlane.
Ledeen testified that both North and McFarlane referred to meetings with the
Attorney General.  McFarlane agreed to drive North back downtown. During the
drive, North told McFarlane that he was concerned Ledeen may have made money
on the arms transactions, a concern that North denied in his public testimony.
North also told McFarlane that he was going to have a "shredding party that
weekend."  McFarlane testified that he responded, "Ollie, look, you have acted
under instruction at all times and I'm confident that you have nothing to
worry about.  Let it all happen and I'll back you up."  North denied using the
term "shredding party," but recalled telling McFarlane that all key documents
already had been destroyed.

     Meese arrived back at the Justice Department at 12:45 p.m. and advised
Reynolds, Cooper, and Richardson that the President had authorized him to "get
his arms around the Iranian initiative."  [The Attorney General instructed
Richardson to keep a log of all meetings the Attorney General had during this
inquiry, including the time of the interviews, meetings and those in
attendance.  Richardson Dep., 7/22/87, at 34-35.]  Meese then met with FBI
Director William Webster on an unrelated matter.  When Webster brought up the
confusion surrounding the Iran arms sales, Attorney General Meese advised
that the President had asked him to conduct a factual inquiry because
different participants had different pieces of knowledge to be reconciled.
Attorney General Meese declined an offer of FBI assistance from Webster,
stating that he saw nothing criminal in the arms sales.  Webster agreed that
absent evidence of a crime, the FBI should not be involved.  Attorney General
Meese did not relate the details surrounding Casey's testimony or the
possible violations of the Arms Export Control Act arising from the 1985
shipments.  The Attorney General also testified that he did not bring in the
FBI because he and Webster concluded that it would not be "appropriate."

     According to North's deputy, Robert Earl, North came to his office during
the afternoon of November 21 and told Earl that he had just attended a meeting
at the White House, and that the Attorney General was sending a Justice
Department team to the National Security Council because the Congressional
briefings had raised questions.  According to Earl, North said he had asked
Attorney General Meese, "Can I have or will I have 24 or 48 hours" and Meese
responded that he did not know whether North would have that much time.  The
Attorney General recalled no such conversation with North; North denied it;
and there is no other evidence that North met with the Attorney General that
day.  Earl testified further that North asked for Earl's Iran file, remarking
that "It's time for North to be a scapegoat."  Earl stated that, when he gave
his file to North, he could tell that he would never see it again.  Earl was
right.

     That afternoon, Attorney General Meese selected his factfinding team. He
chose two political appointees and one person from his personal staff. He
selected Cooper because he was already looking into the matter as head of the
Office of Legal Counsel, which provides advice to the executive branch on
various legal matters, including national security.  Richardson was the
Attorney General's Chief of Staff.  Reynolds was assigned because, in addition
to his responsibilities as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, he
coordinated certain national security matters and was Counselor to the
Attorney General.

     Meese testified that he never considered assigning attorneys from the
Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, whose job it is to review covert
action findings and applications for intelligence surveillance activities.
Nor, according to the Attorney General, did he consider assigning additional
attorneys to assist with the formidable tasks of document review and witness
interviews.  No members of the Criminal Division were included, even though
William Weld (Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division)
told Cooper and Reynolds at a staff meeting that morning that he thought the
Criminal Division should be involved.  Meese testified that it was his view at
the time that there was no reason to believe any crime had been committed or
that any criminal investigation was required.

     At their meeting on Friday afternoon, the factfinding team formulated a
list of witnesses to be interviewed.  It included McFarlane, North, Secretary
Shultz, Secretary Weinberger, the Vice President, Paul Thompson, Stanley
Sporkin, John McMahon, Charles Allen, the CIA's Deputy Director for
Operations, the CIA Deputy Chief Counsel, and CIA operations officers. Meese
listed items that needed action, including contacting Poindexter to gather
documents and Casey to arrange interviews of Sporkin and McMahon. The focus of
the inquiry was to be the November 1985 HAWKs shipment.

The NSC Staff Responds by Altering and Destroying Evidence

     Once those at the center of the Iran arms sales were alerted to the
Attorney General's inquiry, they took steps, in Colonel Earl's words, to
"close down the compartment" - destroy all the documentary evidence.

     North met with Poindexter at 1:30 p.m. and then again at 2:25 p.m. on
November 21.  Sometime that same afternoon, North instructed his secretary,
Fawn Hall, to alter a series of official action memorandums that he had
written during the previous year to then-National Security Adviser McFarlane.
These memorandums related to North's activities in raising funds and arranging
military assistance for the Contras during the period of the Boland Amendment.
McFarlane had told North a year earlier, during the 1985 Congressional
inquiry, that these memorandums raised significant problems under the Boland
Amendment.  McFarlane had given North a handwritten list containing the NSC's
"System IV" identification numbers of the problem documents.  [Hall Test.,
Hearings, 100-5, 6/8/87, at 478-79; North Test., Hearings, 100-7, Part I,
7/8/87, at 173.  Ex. FH-1.  The NSC maintains a document tracking and filing
system that includes assigning discrete numbers to documents prepared by the
NSC staff.  "System IV" is utilized for the most sensitive,
intelligence-related documents.]  North kept McFarlane's list taped to his
desk near the computer terminal during the ensuing year.

     Sometime on November 21, 1986, North requested the originals of the
documents on McFarlane's list from the System IV security officer, who found
and provided North with all but one.  [Ex. FH-1A; Ex. OLN-71.  The one
document that the security officer could not find (System IV # 40124), he
presumed to have been destroyed and so advised North.  In fact, the document,
which had been written in December 1984, was in the files, but the security
officer had checked only the files for 1985.  This December 1984 document
which North had sought to alter recounted a meeting that North had held with
an official of Country 4 to solicit lethal assistance for the Contras.  Ex.
GJS-1.  The document was provided to the Committees during the Committees'
investigation.  See Hall Test., Hearings, 100-5, 6/8/ 87, at 278.]  There is
no evidence that the System IV security officer knew of North's purpose in
requesting these documents.

     North then proceeded to alter the original System IV documents by hand.
The gist of his alterations was to eliminate references to the funds raised
for the Contras from third countries during the Boland cutoff, and also to
eliminate or obscure passages in the documents that showed the NSC staffs
active role in facilitating the provision of military intelligence and other
lethal assistance for the Contras during the same period.

     North gave the doctored documents to Hall and instructed her to prepare
new originals containing North's changes.  Hall testified that she followed
North's instructions without paying attention to the nature of the alterations
or asking their purpose.  She admitted, however, that she did not feel
comfortable, but assumed North had a valid reason.  She stated also that she
did not then know that the Attorney General had commenced an investigation or
that his representatives would shortly be reviewing NSC documents.

     After making the alterations, Hall destroyed the original documents and
was preparing to replace her file copies of the original versions of the
documents with copies of the altered originals when she was distracted by
North's shredding of documents and volunteered to help.  [Hall Test.,
Hearings, 100-5, 6/8/87, at 499-502.  Because Hall ultimately did not complete
the alteration process (by substituting copies of the altered documents for
her file copies of the originals), both versions of the documents were found
in the NSC files and provided to the Committees during the Committees'
investigation.  Exs. FH-2 through FH-6A.]

     The document shredding involved North, Hall, and Earl.  North pulled
documents from his safe; Hall shredded them.  Earl brought documents down from
his office, and these, too, were shredded.  Hall asked North if she should
shred his telephone logs, and he agreed.  Hall also shredded PROF notes and
K143 messages.  [When these PROF notes were destroyed, North and others
apparently believed that those messages were gone forever.  They did not know
that, unless messages were deleted from the computer memory itself, the
messages still could be retrieved for a time.  Such retrieval took place, and
that is why the Committees were able to obtain at least some PROF messages
that North and others believed to have been destroyed.]  She could not recall
what other types of documents went into the shredder.  But the quantity was
large - approximately one and one half feet of documents.  Indeed, so many
documents were destroyed that the shredding machine actually jammed and Hall
needed assistance from the Crisis Management Center to reactivate it.  Hall
testified that, although documents were normally shredded in North's office,
never before had there been such an organized program of document destruction
or such a large volume of documents destroyed.

     Although Hall stated that, when she participated in the shredding - as in
the alteration of documents - she did not know of the Attorney General's
inquiry, North and Earl certainly knew.  Yet they both maintained in their
testimony that the document destruction was justified to protect the security
of the covert action or, as Earl put it, "the compartment."  But in fact, the
investigators from whom North and Earl were suppressing this evidence were
officials of their own Government who had been directed to investigate by the
President.

     Poindexter, too, destroyed evidence.  At approximately 3:00 p.m. on
November 21, the Attorney General telephoned Poindexter and requested that he
make available for review all documents relating to the Iran initiative.
Poindexter then ripped up the only signed copy of the President's December
1985 Finding, which retroactively authorized U.S. participation in the
November 1985 arms shipment.  Poindexter admitted at the public hearings that
he destroyed this Finding because it described the Iran initiative as
unambiguously arms-for-hostages, and therefore would have been politically
embarrassing to the President.  It also would have stripped away the cover
story concocted by the NSC staff.  It would never reach the investigators.

     Since the President had obviously been aware of the December 1985 Finding
when he signed it, Poindexter could not explain why he thought that destroying
of this Presidential record would nullify its existence - unless he somehow
felt confident that the President would either fail to recall the Finding or
deny that he had ever signed it.  As recently as a week before Poindexter's
public testimony, the White House announced that "[o]ur position is that [the
Finding] never went to the President, period."

     Poindexter's participation in destroying evidence did not stop with the
Finding.  He also tore up certain PROF notes possibly used to brief the
President, which had been stored with the Finding.  Although Poindexter said
he could not recall their content, these documents were of sufficient
importance to be locked with the original Finding in Poindexter's secure safe.

     In addition, during the afternoon of November 21, North came to
Poindexter with his 1985 spiral notebook which contained North's
contemporaneous notes regarding the November 1985 HAWK shipment.  Those notes
showed that North and others in the U.S. government were involved with that
shipment.  Like the Finding, the notes belied Poindexter's statement to
Congress earlier that day that the United States did not learn of the true
contents of the shipment until after it was made.  Moreover, although
Poindexter testified at the public hearings that North's notes did not reflect
that the President had approved the HAWK shipment, in fact, North's notes of
November 26, 1985 actually read:  "R.R. directed operation to proceed.  If
Israelis want to provide different model, then we will replenish."  Poindexter
did not object to North's announced intention to destroy the notebook.

     North, Poindexter, and their aides were not the only persons involved in
the Iran-Contra Affair to destroy evidence in November 1986.  Documents were
also shredded at the offices of Secord's company, Stanford Technology Trading
Group International (STTGI).  According to the testimony of Secord's
Administrative Assistant, Shirley Napier, the documents destroyed at STTGI
included steno books, telephone logs, and telexes.  The destruction continued
over a period of days.  The participants were Secord, Robert Dutton, Napier,
and an STTGI secretary.

     Napier originally testified that the shredding activity occurred early in
December 1986.  Several weeks after her deposition, Napier submitted an
affidavit changing her testimony, based on refreshed recollection, to place
the shredding during the week of November 17, 1986, "probably the 19th through
the 21st" - the same week as the shredding in the White House.  [Napier Aff.,
5/11/87, at Par. 7.  Dutton maintained at the hearing that the document
destruction at STTGI was undertaken because "[w]e had a great concern about
the security of the office.  It was General Secord's desire that we don't have
any superfluous material laying around the office."  But since Dutton also
testified that the only records of his that were shredded were supposedly
duplicates, he could not explain how destruction of only the duplicates
preserved operational security.  In any event, Dutton did not testify that the
numerous other documents shredded at STTGI were only duplicates.  Dutton
Test., Hearings, 100-3, 5/27/87, at 251.]

     North and McFarlane took other actions on November 21 in response to the
Attorney General's investigation.  At 3:15 p.m., North met again with Ledeen,
this time in North's office, and discussed the November 1985 HAWK shipment.
North knew that Ledeen could testify to U.S. involvement.  He asked how Ledeen
would respond to questions regarding the shipment.  Ledeen replied that he
would say he was aware of the shipment but did not know who authorized it or
how or when the authorization took place.  North said that was fine.  North
stated also that he had been saving things for "his grandchildren" which he
would now have to shred.  [Ledeen Dep., 6/19/87, at 22.  Ledeen also recalled
in his deposition that, prior to November 21, North had told him that the
Justice Department was investigating the possibly illegal sale of HAWK
missiles in 1985 and suggested that Ledeen retain an attorney.  North told
Ledeen that he also had been advised by someone from the Justice Department to
get an attorney.  Id. at 9-10, 27.]

     The Attorney General's investigation went forward later that afternoon
with an interview of McFarlane by Meese and Cooper.  Attorney General Meese
urged McFarlane to tell the whole truth, assuring him this was in the
President's interest.  McFarlane said he believed that the November 1985
shipment contained oil drilling equipment until he was told otherwise in May
of 1986.  When asked if he had told Secretary Shultz in 1985 about the HAWK
shipment, McFarlane said he could not recall, but did not dispute it. Cooper
testified that neither he nor the Attorney General told McFarlane that
Secretary Shultz had a contemporaneous note indicating that McFarlane had told
him about the HAWK shipment before it occurred.  But McFarlane testified that
he learned of the note from the Attorney General at that same interview.
McFarlane's version is corroborated by the fact that he called the State
Department right after the interview asking for a copy of the note.  The note,
of course, was highly significant, because it was the only existing document
known to McFarlane that indicated that U.S. officials did indeed know of,
approve, and had participated in, the HAWK shipment.  North and Poindexter
apparently believed they had destroyed or otherwise removed all other such
documentary evidence.

     During the Attorney General's interview, McFarlane did not volunteer
anything about the document shredding comment from North earlier in the day.
Nor did McFarlane volunteer that he knew that proceeds of the Iran arms sales
had been diverted to the Contras.  McFarlane testified that he should have
told the Attorney General, but it did not occur to him to mention these facts.

     At the conclusion of the interview, after Cooper had left, McFarlane
stayed behind to speak privately to Meese.  He told Attorney General Meese
that although he had taken full responsibility in a speech delivered the night
before to "protect the President," he wanted Meese to know that the President
was "four square" behind the Iran initiative.  According to McFarlane, the
Attorney General said it was preferable legally if the President had
authorized the early shipments.

     Immediately after leaving the Attorney General's office, McFarlane used a
pay telephone outside of the Justice Department to call North. North's notes
of that call indicate that McFarlane said he was told that the Arms Export
Control Act was not a problem and that "RR" [Reagan] would be supportive of a
"mental finding."  McFarlane sent Poindexter a PROF note later that evening
similarly describing his meeting with the Attorney General.  In that note he
stated:

[I]t appears that the matter of not notifying [Congress] about the Israeli
transfers can be covered if the President made a 'mental finding' before the
transfers took place.  Well in that sense we ought to be OK because he was all
for letting the Israelis do anything they wanted at the very first briefing in
the hospital.  Ed [Meese] seemed relieved at that.

     While the Attorney General and Cooper met with McFarlane, Reynolds, and
Richardson spent Friday afternoon at the Justice Department doing routine work
and reading the NSC staffs chronologies.  Attorney General Meese testified
that he did not send anyone to review the NSC documents on Friday afternoon,
despite the short reporting deadline of Monday afternoon, because "there was
no urgency to it."  It was midafternoon anyway and the NSC staff needed time
to prepare their documents for review.

     After the McFarlane interview, Meese, Cooper, Reynolds, and Richardson
made plans to meet the next morning.  Sometime in the early evening, Secretary
Shultz called to tell Meese that he was available for an interview the
following morning.  Meese also called Secretary Weinberger, who told Meese
that he could be reached that weekend at the hospital to which his wife had
been admitted.  Subsequently, Attorney General Meese spoke to Secretary
Weinberger over the weekend and, although he could not recall what Secretary
Weinberger said, he remembered concluding that Secretary Weinberger had no
useful information.  On November 21, Attorney General Meese called Casey to
let him know about the inquiry and what he would be doing at the CIA.  Meese
also mentioned he wanted to meet with Casey over the weekend.

     Later that evening, Cooper made arrangements for John McGinnis, an
attorney from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, to review
intelligence reports regarding the Iran arms sales.  McGinnis reviewed these
reports overnight and reported back to Cooper that they indicated that the
U.S. was involved in the 1985 Israeli shipments.  According to the Attorney
General's statement during his November 25 press conference, these reports
also indicated that excess profits from the sale had been made available for
some other purpose.

     As the day drew to a close, North remained late in his office to meet
with Richard Miller, a private fund-raiser for the Contra cause, who arrived
at North's office as North was packing his briefcase.  North asked Miller to
drive him to Dupont Circle.  Either during that drive, or the day before,
North told Miller that the Attorney General had advised him to get an
attorney.  The Attorney General denied telling North to get an attorney; and
North testified that it was Casey who so advised him.  Miller dropped North at
the office building of North's attorney.