by Shane Harris
Poindexter wanted the finding to keep discipline in the system. Structure. Process. So if the unthinkable happened, if the operation did become public, the president could turn to the American people and proclaim, Here are my reasons. Here are my principles. And they are good principles. Poindexter never believed that arms for hostages alone would win the public’s approval, even though that crude exchange was precisely how Reagan saw the deal.
Poindexter refused to be rushed on the finding. Bill Casey’s number two at the CIA insisted that Reagan sign something to cover the agency’s own hide; he sent over a terse document describing the covert action as essentially a quid pro quo. Annoyed, Poindexter took it to the president and obtained his signature. But then he locked the only copy of the finding in his safe and called Casey’s deputy back. “I’m keeping one copy. If you or anyone else wants to verify it, you can come over here and look at it.”
He wrote a longer, more nuanced finding. It articulated strategic policy goals and principles, ideas that he felt reflected the grander, loftier order he’d constructed at the White House. Poindexter knew the president saw things much more simply, as a straight exchange of missiles for influence. But, UNODIR. The president would approve of the broader objectives, he told himself. And eventually, he did.
In January, weeks before Poindexter lit the fuse of Iran-Contra, he presented Reagan with the new finding. It enumerated three purposes: establish a more moderate government in Iran; obtain intelligence that could help prevent acts of terrorism; and—lastly—“furthering the release of the American hostages held in Beirut and preventing additional terrorist acts by these groups.” What had started as Reagan’s primary concern now was one of several.
At the end of the document, under the options “OK” and “NO,” Reagan initialed the former.
The president now had a script. But whether he could learn the lines, Poindexter wasn’t sure.
For some time now, Poindexter had watched Reagan slip beneath the cover of a fog. He forgot things. He got confused in meetings and in public appearances. At times, the head and shoulders of the man who seemed born to play the president rose above the mist, clear and distinguishable. But then the cloud wrapped up around him again, and he was lost.
Poindexter never had felt more responsible for the president’s protection, because of both the precarious covert actions he’d undertaken and Reagan’s frail mental state. It was his job, by law, to be the president’s honest broker. He had warned Reagan of all the risks and taken steps to shield him. Poindexter advised the president in writing, “Because of the extreme sensitivity of this project, it is recommended that you exercise your statutory prerogative to withhold notification of the Finding to the Congressional oversight committees until such time that you deem it to be appropriate.”
Poindexter worried that the potential exposure of the Iran initiative threatened the broader war against terrorism. But the mission itself seemed to have no effect on that conflict. The missiles were flowing, yet the hoped-for reciprocal release of the hostages was limited to two, not seven. The NSC staff quibbled with their Iranian sources over missile parts and prices as if they were haggling over rugs in a bazaar. Since the dialogue had begun the previous September there had been no attacks against the United States or Israel by Iranian fundamentalists. But in late December Palestinian terrorists stormed the Rome and Vienna airports with machine guns and hand grenades, killing 18 civilians. The administration fingered Libya as the state sponsor, touching off military skirmishes that led, in April, to the bombing of a disco in West Berlin that killed two American servicemen. Nine days later Reagan ordered an air strike on Tripoli. The war had spread, and in ways no one could appreciate immediately. (Reagan’s successor reaped the whirlwind two years later, when Libyan-sponsored bombers blew a Pan Am jet and 259 people out of the sky over a Scottish village; 11 residents died under falling debris.)
Yet Poindexter and his team never relented. The families of the American hostages had visited personally with him at the White House, presenting a nine-hundred-foot-long yellow ribbon covered with signatures and messages of support. The gesture moved him deeply, and he felt himself becoming committed to the cause in ways that transcended policy pronouncements.
“You can meet with anyone in our government at any time,” Poindexter promised the relatives. In confidence, he hinted at initiatives under way, specifics that his predecessor McFarlane had never given them. Poindexter built up their hopes. The families left the White House convinced that he was working on the problem harder than ever. “He’s a classy guy,” the daughter of one hostage told a reporter.
But the system was coming apart. Not because of the terrorists but because of the complexity of the schemes to defeat them. The man who wanted to control and understand events found himself increasingly befuddled by them. That’s when he started to make mistakes.
In July, six months after Reagan signed the broader finding on Iran, rumors surfaced about the NSC staff ’s other operations in Nicaragua. Lawmakers once again were debating aid to the Contras, but Poindexter was still operating within the confines of the funding prohibition. America’s campaign against socialism in Latin America had become an on-again, off-again war.
Democrats were particularly outraged by newspaper and television reports that said North was personally involved in efforts to resupply the rebels, in defiance of Congress. Just what the hell was going on? several lawmakers wanted to know.
The powerful chairmen of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees asked Reagan for answers. Was the NSC involved in military aid, with foreign governments helping the Contras or any collection of private citizens on the outside? This wasn’t the first time they’d asked—McFarlane had received Congress’s questions, and answered them, when he was still at the White House.
Now the same questions fell to Poindexter, in the form of a paper folder containing a congressional correspondence and an accompanying document for his response. The folder was tucked into a pile of briefs, memos, and communiqués that resided on Poindexter’s desk. He opened the folder, read the precise questions that the committees wanted answered, and then realized that McFarlane had provided them already. Poindexter reaffirmed that declaration, essentially telling the committee to see McFarlane’s prior statement on the matter. But Poindexter didn’t read what McFarlane had actually written.
They were lies. Or, in the most charitable light, deliberately misleading partial truths. In a written response to Lee Hamilton, the Democratic chair of the intelligence committee, McFarlane had averred, “I can state with deep personal conviction that at no time did I or any member of the National Security Council staff violate the letter or spirit” of the ban on aid to the Contras.
How could Poindexter have failed to examine carefully what he was signing on to? Looking back years later, he would find himself at a loss. He was just so busy. There was just so much information. He trusted that under his watch the Contra operation was being run more tightly. The NSC staff was not part of the intelligence community and therefore could be a legal conduit for funds. It was a narrow loophole, but he threaded it, never touching the line, apparently coming out clean on the other side.
But McFarlane had done something altogether different. He’d been reckless by broadly asserting, with unequivocal and practically indignant tones, that there had never been a covert Contra policy of any kind. He insisted that the letter and the spirit of the law were intact. He gave Poindexter no wiggle room. Had he written the responses to Hamilton this time, Poindexter would have been evasive, answering only what was asked. He would have phrased his responses jesuitically: technically true, though not entirely truthful.
As it happened, the House chairmen weren’t buying Poindexter’s assurances, at least not on paper. They asked for a meeting with North, the administration’s alleged man in Nicaragua. In August, nearly a dozen members came down and met with North in the Situation Room. Poindexter didn’t attend, but when he received a debrief
from another staff member after the event, he concluded that North had handled it just right. He hadn’t lied, but he hadn’t told the members everything.
The committee seemed satisfied; they dropped their inquiries about the Contras. Poindexter expressed his satisfaction to North in an electronic mail message: “Bravo Zulu,” the naval signal for “well done.”
They walked a thin line. But thick enough to hang them.
When the climax of this comedy of errors played out, on a frantic stage crowded now with the king, his princes, and their enemies, there was cause for celebration. It was November 3, 1986. An American hostage in Lebanon had just been released. Congressional and gubernatorial elections were to be held the next day. And Reagan was preparing to sign a landmark immigration law, something he’d worked hard for since taking office. Then, on November 3, an independent Lebanese publication, Al Shiraa, published an exposé on McFarlane having made a secret visit to the Iranian capital. The details were sketchy but sharp enough for Iranian officials to confirm that the ex-national security adviser had come to Tehran at the behest of the U.S. government.
Two days after the article ran, a reporter covering the signing ceremony for the immigration bill asked Reagan pointedly, “Do we have a deal going with Iran of some sort?”
The president, who seconds earlier had jokingly congratulated himself for remembering the names of all the attending luminaries, replied simply, “No comment.” But then a request. “Could I suggest an appeal to all of you with regard to this? That the speculation, the commenting and all, on a story that came out of the Middle East, that to us has no foundation—that all of that is making it more difficult for us in our effort to get the other hostages free.”
Reagan had just let the cat out of the bag. The rest of his secrets unraveled quickly. Soon the press picked up on a seemingly unconnected item: the downing of a U.S. cargo plane a month earlier in Nicaragua. The sole survivor, an American named Eugene Hasenfus, told his Sandinista captors that he worked for the CIA. They scoured the wreckage, recovering documents that named a slew of Americans and a State Department humanitarian assistance office that North had subverted for the Contra aid program.
Administration officials told Congress that Hasenfus did not work for the CIA, which was true. He worked for North. Only twelve days after the shoot-down, Congress, once again placated by White House assurances, approved the administration’s $100 million Contra aid package. The era of prohibition had ended. Poindexter and North had bridged the gap in tough times.
Less than six weeks later, they’d both be out of the White House.
McFarlane’s secret visit to Tehran had been no less comic, and no less complicated, than every other step in this once pure-intentioned adventure. It was May 1986, only five months after McFarlane had left the White House and its unremitting demands, and the arms-for-hostages swap was not paying off. The NSC staff had become bogged down with a shady Iranian arms merchant named Manucher Ghorbanifar, who passed himself off as a conduit to the men holding the Americans. Release was at hand, he promised. And if the administration just would send a high-level delegation to Tehran, all parties could iron out the wrinkles.
Poindexter tapped McFarlane for the job. This was his mess; he could fix it. McFarlane, accompanied by two CIA officers and an NSC staffer, touched down in Tehran bearing good tidings from the president of the United States. They waited for more than an hour for Ghorbanifar, and when he finally arrived, the U.S. delegation was whisked off to the top floor of a hotel, formerly the Tehran Hilton.
They cooled their heels for nearly four days, and in due course discovered that their Iranian contacts were utter charlatans. At most, the Iranians said, they now could promise to intervene on behalf of one American hostage. No more than two. But they hadn’t made the proper arrangements. That would take time, contacts . . . more missiles.
The Americans packed for home. They turned back a plane full of spare missile parts en route to Tehran. No deal. McFarlane was defeated.
North sensed his old boss’s desolation. They’d been in contact about the operation since McFarlane had resigned, exchanging messages over a secure communications channel the ex-security adviser kept at home. North could see now how humiliated McFarlane was.
Look on the bright side, North encouraged, as the group stood on a tarmac in Tel Aviv waiting to change planes. We’ve been funneling some of the profits to the Contras.
Oh shit, McFarlane thought.
Eventually the Iranians obtained an official price list from the Defense Department for the missiles they’d bought. Wise to North’s deceptions, they confronted officials at the CIA, who said they had no clue what he’d been up to.
North told Poindexter that the Americans had to keep up their end of the bargain, now more than ever. He drew up a detailed sequence of transactions—one hostage goes free, the United States would ship some weapons parts. Another hostage released, more missiles. A third hostage, and so on.
The dangerous saraband was to culminate in freedom for all the Americans. But before the transactions were complete, two more Americans were snatched in Lebanon. Accounting for the two who’d already been released, the NSC staff was right back where it had started.
Poindexter tried to seize control of the sinking ship. He ordered North to open up a new channel with a source who’d come onto the radar recently, the nephew of a senior Iranian parliamentarian. But by November, after the Al Shiraa article, their cover was blown. Reporters started grilling the president openly. How, they wanted to know, did this exchange not violate all his policies on terrorism, as well as the arms embargo and the rules on third-party weapons transfers? The reporters also said that the Iranians were offering to intercede for the hostages if Reagan would release more missiles. Did he plan to do that? they asked.
On November 10, Reagan gathered his national security principals for a meeting in the Situation Room. He was adamant that the United States had not cut a deal directly with terrorists; the White House was selling arms to Iranian moderates who would intercede on its behalf. A big difference.
George Shultz, the secretary of state, was apoplectic. He hadn’t known until now that Reagan had signed a finding on the Iran initiative. He had warned Poindexter against the scheme. He knew that Congress hadn’t been informed of the arms sales. But worse than all that, the president had debased a basic precept of his war against terrorism, which rested, in Shultz’s estimation, as strongly upon a single commitment as it did upon the show of force: We don’t deal.
Reagan insisted that he had not bargained away his principles. He told Shultz that the terrorists themselves had not profited from the arms sales, only the interlocutors. Shultz said he wasn’t sure the public would recognize the difference. Nor did he.
Poindexter, who was ever mindful of the commander in chief’s increasing fragility, cut into the debate. “How else would we get these hostages out?” he demanded. In the finding Poindexter had written that approaching the government of Iran “may well be our only way.” If Shultz had a better idea, Poindexter thought, he should have spoken up a long time ago. Instead, he had bowed out, telling Poindexter point-blank that he didn’t want to be in the loop on this operation.
Shultz could see now that he’d closed himself off too soon. Poindexter, the rogue “honest broker,” had exposed Reagan to ruin. The president didn’t even know it.
“We don’t deal,” Shultz said, seething.
It was time to return to the script. The players had lost their place. “Line!” the president seemed to shout, the hot, bright lights of the stage shielding the upturned eyebrows and crooked mouths of a skeptical audience.
As Thanksgiving approached, Poindexter and Reagan’s press secretary, Larry Speakes, prepped Reagan for a news conference in which he planned to field questions on the Iranian initiative. During the “murder board,” a kind of grueling dress rehearsal for the main performance, various staffers played the roles of bloodthirsty reporters doing their best to trip the
president into an admission of guilt, to poke holes in the logic of his policy.
Poindexter coached Reagan on the talking points, pulled directly from the finding: We wanted to further a more moderate government in Iran, obtain vital intelligence, and secure the release of American hostages.
But as the mock journalists volleyed questions at the president, he forgot his lines.
The Israelis hadn’t been involved, he responded to one question.
“No, that’s not right, Mr. President,” Poindexter intoned from the audience.
The amount of weapons only amounted to what we could fit in a single plane.
“No, Mr. President, that’s still not right.”
Reagan seemed to commit the mistakes to memory. He stumbled again and again. As the rehearsal drew on, Poindexter looked across the room at Speakes. They locked eyes and exchanged a knowing shake of the head. They were losing him.
Later, when Poindexter had a label to affix to Reagan’s condition, he would console himself that he could do only so much to save his commander in chief. He would recognize the familiar fog of Alzheimer’s disease when it claimed his mother less than a year after it did the former president. Though the public and Reagan himself liked to joke about his forgetfulness—some even thought it a ruse—Poindexter knew the truth. His boss was sick.
Maybe, in the back of his mind, that’s why UNODIR always had been the safest option. Tell the president nothing. Had he known, he would have said yes. But still best not to ask.
