Iran Contra: Episode 5 - All Out

Pushkin. On Thursday, November thirteenth, nineteen eighty six, Ronald Reagan opened his maroon leather bound diary and jotted down a few thoughts about his day. He was in the middle of a firestorm, he wrote, caused by the ridiculous falsehoods the media has been spawning. The firestorm had been ignited by two separate scandals. First, there was Eugene Hasenfuss, the former marine whose plane had been shot down over Nicaragua by a Sandinista soldier.

It has all the makings of a major new uproar.

The US may have violated a ban on a to the Contras.

The Hasenfuss crash seemed to confirm that the Reagan administration was yet again evading the law that prohibited the US government from funding the Contra rebels.

The White House has had full knowledge of this Contra cargo plane operation for more than a year.

Then, about a month later, the White House was hit with a seemingly unrelated story about arms trafficking in a different foreign country. According to an article in a Lebanese magazine, the US was selling missiles to Iran. Subsequent reports alleged that the arrangement was part of an arms for hostages swamp.

Iran has helped the United States free hostage from Lebanon, and the US is helping Iran in its war with Iraq.

In his diary, Reagan referred to the controversy as the Iran incident that was a lot more innocuous than what people outside the administration were, calling.

It a very dangerous precedent negotiating with terrorists.

Escapades, and I think that is the word is simply a misreading of Iranian political realities, and therefore it's dumb.

The Iran news instantly eclipsed Eugene Hasenfuss and Nicaragua. It just wasn't that surprising that Reagan still wanted to support the contras. The arms for hostages story, on the other hand, seemed to come out of nowhere, and it flatly contradicted Reagan's stated policies of not negotiating with terrorists and opposing the sale of weapons to Iran. The outcry was unlike anything the Reagan White House had ever faced.

For six years round Reagan was the Teflon president.

That's Peter Wallson. In nineteen eighty six, he was serving as White House counsel, a job that involved advising the president on what was and wasn't legal. Wallison says that scandals just didn't seem to stick to Reagan through most of his presidency, but the Iran story was different.

There was so little official information coming out, only leaks from various places and people who had some knowledge of it, either abroad or in the United States. So it was an enormous media firestorm.

Initially, Reagan tried to just ride it out, even as advisers urged him to publicly address the controversy. Finally, a week after American media picked up the arms for hostages story, Reagan agreed to deliver a televised speech. First order of business, he wrote in his diary, I will go on TV at eight pm tonight.

President Reagan is addressing the nation this evening to set the record straight as the White House put it on relations where they ran, and efforts to free you as hostages.

Peter Wallason is one of the White House staffers responsible for writing the speech.

We were supposed to explain what all these newspaper reports were about, all this media coverage. But the idea was to try to explain, I suppose what it was that happened in a way that showed that it was innocent.

But as Wallason and the other speechwriters discovered, the facts of the arm shipments were not easy to nail down. Here's Jane Mayer, a reporter at The New Yorker and co author of the book Landslide.

What becomes clear is that the as that are most involved in this scandal are conspiring with each other to come up with cover stories that will get themselves off the hook. But in order to do that, they need to kind of get the President to lie for them.

Some sources within the administration tell us somewhat different story than the one the president will tell tonight. One such source, familiar with the president's speech, said, we are now engaged in rewriting history.

This is all putting the president in great peril, and it rings a familiar bell to at least a couple people. They remember Watergate.

Here's Peter Wallason again.

After Watergate, we all understood that the cover up could be worse than the crime itself.

Reagan's speech was going to be an opportunity to send a clear signal he was not trying to cover anything up.

NBC's regular Thursday night schedule beginning with the Cosby Show will be seen immediately following President Reagan's address on most of these stations.

At eight p m. On November thirteenth, Reagan sat down at his desk in the Oval Office, looked into the camera, and tried to explain himself.

Good evening.

I wanted this time to talk with you about an extremely sensitive and profoundly important matter of foreign policy. For eighteen months now, we have had underway a secret diplomatic initiative to Iran. That initiative was undertaken for the simplest and best of reasons, to renew a relationship with the nation of Iran, to bring an honorable end of the bloody six year war between Iran and Iraq, to eliminate state sponsored terrorism and subversion, and to effect the safe return of all hostages.

There it was confirmation of the arm sales to Iran to effect the safe return of all the hostages. Except a minute later, Reagan also said this.

The charge has been made that the United States has shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release of American hostages in Lebanon. Those charges are utterly false. The United States has not.

The speech did not play well with viewers.

It is a new experience for the president. He goes on television to tell the nation he has never sent any arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages, and twenty four hours later, the country is far from convinced.

An ABC News poll found that fifty six percent of Americans thought the President was lying when he said there had not been in arms for hostages deal. Suddenly, Reagan was in an unfamiliar position. People just didn't trust him.

There was criticism of the President's explanations from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Is the President lying?

They may think there was no quid pro quoll. I can't believe that the Iranians didn't think there was any quid pro quoll.

This was not how people usually talked about Ronald Reagan. It cut against everything that was appealing about him as a politician.

In Watergate, Nixon was always seen as a schemer. You know, his nickname was tricky Dick. Reagan was the opposite. He was sort of sunny, and he didn't seem like the type would be able to come up with this incredibly complicated scheme and lie to the American public.

In the wake of Reagan's speech. White House communications director Pat Buchanan Yes that. Pat Buchanan decided to reach out to a former colleague he thought might have some advice.

And he called up Nixon himself and asked Nixon for his advice. What should they do?

Yes that Nixon.

Nixon said, don't do the cover up. Get out the facts as much as you can, and say you've made a mistake, and the public will accept that.

Buchanan brought Nixon's advice to the White House, but Reagan was not prepared to admit that he had made a mistake. There wasn't anything to apologize for. He insisted he hadn't done anything wrong. I'm leon Nyfok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco, Iran Contra.

The country is being asked to believe some things that are hard to swallow.

Something's happening here that looks a lot like Watergate, that being.

A complete orgy of shredding.

I realized that I'd missed the whole story.

I directed the Attorney General, who wanted to take a review of this matter.

The President knew nothing about it until I reported it to him. I alerted him yesterday morning Boo.

In the administration knew what was going on, and when.

Episode five all out how the Reagan White House tried to stop their Iran problem from becoming a second Watergate. We'll be right back after the President's speech from the Oval Office, the White House schedule the follow up press conference about the Iran issue. Maybe his first speech had just been too confusing.

It is argued to this very political city that President Reagan's televised news conference tonight in the midst of the Iran affair, will be the most important of his presidency. There are many unanswered questions about the most visibly difficult problem since.

He was elected once again, Reagan's aides were divided over how he should present the facts within the next Should he say as little as possible and keep insisting that everything had been above board, or should he admit that the missile sales were part of an arms for hostages deal and apologize. One of the people advocating for the come clean approach was Reagan's Secretary of State, George Schultz.

Get it all out, as I said, Morts and all, and then they'll graduate get behind you.

Schultz died in twenty twenty one at the age of one hundred. When I interviewed him, he was ninety eight and living in californ And though he served under Nixon, he insisted to me that his advice to Reagan wasn't informed by his experience of Watergate.

No, I wasn't really thinking about Watergate. President Reagan's standing was totally different from Richard Nixon's. People loved Reagan and respected him a great deal, and they knew he was a man of principle.

As Secretary of State, Schultz had strongly opposed the idea of selling missiles to Iran. He had advocated against it during multiple meetings with the President.

I was opposed to it from the beginning, and I always felt somehow it would wind up leaking out. My fear was that we were selling arms to Iran and Iran was up to no good. It was a mistake.

Clearly, pushing back against the arms deals in private had not worked. Now that the story was out, Schultz was surprisingly willing to push back in public too.

Secretary of State Schultz continued distancing himself from the trading of weapons or hostages.

Shultz said he thought that not negotiating with terrorists is the right policy asked about official silence on the reports of dealings where Iran. Schultz later said, I don't particularly enjoy it. I like to say what I think.

As the scandal intensified, Schultz went unfaced the nation. In an interview with Leslie Stall, he made clear that he was out of sync with other members of the administration.

Will there be any more arm shipments to Iran, either directly by the United States or through any third parties?

Under the circumstances if Iran's were with Iraq, its pursuit of terrorism, its association with those holding our hostages, I would certainly say, as far as I am concerned, No.

Do you have the authority to speak for the entire administration?

No.

Schultz's interview enraged his colleagues in the administration and set off another round of speculation about chaos in the White House. You're not going to resign, are you?

For the State Department? They're saying the Secretary wants a firm commitment no more arms will be sent to Iran, and shows will be included in future deliberations.

Now, Reagan wouldn't just have to clear the air about arm shipments. When he gave his press conference, he would likely face questions about whether his administration was coming apart under the weight of the scandal. To prepare, the President enlisted the help of some of his top aides, including National Security Advisor John Poindexter.

We knew from the beginning it would be difficult to explain to the American people the detailed rationale. The problem, in my mind, was associating the arms with the hostages.

Poindexter wanted the President to explain that the missiles weren't really a ransom payment for the hostages. They were part of something bigger. As you'll remember for Episode four, Poindexter believed that the ultimate goal of the initiative was to make inroads with moderates in the Iranian government. The point of the missiles was to show the Iranians that the US was operating in good faith. The release of the hostages was supposed to show the US that the Iranians were too.

Our sale of arms to Iran was an indication, we thought, to Iran that the President was serious about this, and there causing the release of hostis by proxy was an indication of honesty and earnestness on their part.

One problem with Poindexter's explanation was that Reagan cared a lot more about the hostages than he did about the broader geopolitical strategy. Another problem was that the president didn't seem to have a firm grasp on what had happened or what he had personally approved.

Before the president's press conference, what we called a murder board in the White House theater.

The murder board was essentially a rehearsal for the press.

Conference, and at one of these murder boards, the president would be on the podium, the Press Secretary would play the role of the media, asking questions.

As Poindexter watched Reagan practice his answers, he became very concerned.

That was when I first noticed that the President's memory was failing, because the President would give an answer and he would not have remembered the details of what had transpired. So I would correct the president, tell him, this is what I think you ought to say, and the President would say right, and then he would come back to the first question, and the President would not remember what I had suggested to him to say. So at that point I knew it was going to be difficult.

What do you mean, I have a few words here before I take your questions some brief remarks.

At eight pm on November nineteenth, the President walked out to a podium in the East Room of the White House. He delivered a brief statement in which he echoed Poindexter's talking points about the diplomatic opening to Iran. Then he opened the floor to questions from the press.

If I can call up, if your armed shipments had no effect on the release of the hostages, then how do you explain the release of the hostages at the same time that the shipments were coming out?

Now, I said that at the time, I said to them that there was something they could do to show their sincerity, and if they really meant it that they were not in favor of backing terrorists, they could begin by releasing our hostages.

Even as he pushed Poindexter's high minded rationale for the arm sales, Reagan struggled to explain how the hostages fit into it, and who exactly the US had been dealing with in a.

How did you know that you were reaching the moderates and how do you define a moderate in that kind of a government.

Well, again, you're asking questions that I cannot get into. With regard of the answers, but believe me, we had information that led us to believe that there are factions within Iran, and many of them with an eye toward the fact that they think sooner rather than later, there is going to be a change in the government there, and there is great dissatisfaction among the people.

Something else happened during the press conference, too. Reagan repeatedly denied any US involvement in the two arms shipments that took place in nineteen eighty five. These were the shipments that had started at all, the ones in which Israel had served as the middleman. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, knew the president's remarks have contained inaccuracies. The next day, he confronted Reagan about it face to face.

I always had a pattern with him, whenever he gave a speech or a pres we'd have a talk afterwards, and I'd give him my reactions. And my reaction was, you told a lot of things that weren't true. You think they're true, and they've been fed to you by your staff, and they're not true. And if you would like, I will come over to the White House and go through them with you. And he invited more.

Over Schultz met with Reagan in the White House residence.

And I went through specific things that he said and then pointed out why they weren't right. And he was baffled because he thought his staff had given me his factual information and he assumed they were right, which it wasn't true. I never thought I'd talk to a President of the United States that way.

While the President tried to contain the scandal in public, his administration was trying to take control of it behind the scenes. The effort was led by Reagan's Attorney General, ed mess. Mee was a longtime member of the president's inner circle. He had been at Reagan's side back in the sixties when Reagan was the governor of California, and he'd followed him to the White House in nineteen eighty one.

It is true that first and foremost he's loyal to Ronald Reagan.

Ed Mees, whether by instinct or by design, is Ronald Reagan's man.

Here's journalist Jane Mayer again.

He was kind of the keeper of the flame. Of the kind of conservative values that Reagan served and supported. He was a loyalist extraordinaire.

Toward the end of Reagan's first term, he nominated Mees to be Attorney General. It was a controversial choice, what if mess ended up having to investigate his friend.

Meies came under sharp questioning from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, concerned whether he would be the president's or the people's lawyer.

We have learned the evil lesson of Watergate.

Drshowitz, Professor of Criminal law at Harvard University.

When you have a political operative in the position of Attorney general, it creates an inherent conflict of interest.

After more than a year of questions about that and other controversies, Meis was confirmed by the Senate, and the closest vote for an Attorney general in sixty years.

Edwin mess was finally sworn in today as the new U s Attorney General. The Senate voted sixty three to thirty one to confirm MEAs on Saturday. The vote came after a filibuster.

In January of nineteen eighty six, shortly after the first two weapons shipments to Iran, Meis was asked to provide a legal opinion about the initiative. Some of the president's advisors have been preparing a so called finding for the president to sign. A finding was a kind of document that formally authorized covert actions, in this case, the secret

It was not a publicly known or announced investigation. It was in fact, very much in keeping with the fact that the material of the investigation, that is, the essential facts, the transactions, the subject matter of the investigation, remained classified.

It came to be called the Weekend Investigation. The idea was that Meice and Cooper would do some digging and be ready to present the facts to the President the following Monday.

And the mission was to just get the facts, get the truth. The worst thing that the administration could do was advance a false narrative about all this. Once the truth did come out, it would be exponentially worse politically and otherwise legally for the President.

For his administration, the plan was to interview the people most intimately involved in the arm sales and look through memos and other documents that could shed light on how the initiative had evolved. Meanwhile, two of the people closest to the Iran weapons program, John Poindexter and Oliver North, set about getting their affairs in order. Poindexter was concerned about the earliest covert action finding that Reagan had signed to cover the arm sales. The document had plainly stated

I decided that the first version of the finding, which was not a complete explanation of what we were doing, was not important, and so I personally destroyed it.

How did you destroy it?

Earned it outside out in the back, like a coffee can or something.

Essentially it was a coffee can. Did that feel momentus momeatish? No, not really. I hadn't liked that version of the finding to begin with, and it was good riddance.

Oliver North had similar instincts. He had been informed that DOJ officials working with Edmeice and Charles Cooper were planning to come to his office to look through his files. Here again is Jane Mayer.

Mees didn't just rush in and seize their files as the FBI might have, which gave them notice that if there was anything in there, maybe they better take care of it.

North would later testify that his priority during this time was to protect government secrets. One of those secrets was the diversion of profits from the Iran arm sales to the Contras. As part of his effort to conceal some of his activities, North asked his secretary, Vaughn Hall, to help him alter documents, like retype them with entire sentences deleted. But some documents were apparently beyond redemption.

They fed so many into the shredder that was in the NSC that it jammed. It was just, you know, just a complete obstruction of evidence party taking place as they shredded everything in sight.

The next day, two DOJ staffers working on Edmes's weekend investigation came to North's office. North himself wasn't in yet when the staffers, Brad Reynolds and John Richardson arrived and started going through a stack of folders. Here's Ann Roe, an editor at The Economist and author of Lives Lies and the Iran Contra Affair.

They're trying to be very quiet. Actually, they imbibed this air of sort of high secrecy that goes around North I mean they're behaving a bit like secret agents themselves, these two officials that they're writing notes to each other, they're not actually speaking to each other or just whispering.

Reynolds and Richardson planned to go through the folders and North thought flagging important documents. They wanted a photocopy as they went.

So they're looking through the folders and they're about three folders in and they've suddenly come upon this Manila folder with wh written on it. It's quite a thin folder, not much in it and a close type document, no spacing, and they have a look at it.

The document was a five page memo titled Release of American Hostages in Beirut.

There's a paragraph in there that says residual funds allocated as follows twelve point two million dollars to supply the Democratic Nicaraguan resistance.

The document would come to be known simply as the Diversion Memo. It laid out how millions of dollars generated by the arm shipments to Iran could be diverted to the contras in Nicaragua. Reynolds and Richardson were taken aback.

They both had the same reaction to this, that it's too spectacular, that it's too extraordinary to think it ever happened.

Reynolds hid the memo in the stack of papers he intended to copy.

You might wonder at this point why North was so happy to leave these two folks in his office where there was something as explosive as a diversion memo just sitting there. The reason was that there being a complete orgy of shredding going on in this office.

Reynolds and Richardson hurried to tell ed Meice what they had found. On their way out of the office, they ran into Oliver North and told him they were about to take a break for lunch. Then they met mess and Charles Cooper at the old Ebbitt Grill about a block away from the White House. Here's Cooper again.

We were in a booth, Our voices were lowered. We took care to make sure that our conversation wasn't overheard. Vividly remember ed Mees's reaction, because as we all listened to him, we immediately understood the potential import of what Brad was telling us, and so we were all wide eyed and jaws dropped. Ed simply said, oh shit.

The next day, mis met with North the Department of Justice to confront him with the smoking gun.

Meats had been a prosecutor for years and he knew how to do this, and so they go all over the arms sells and chat about this and that and so on. The North he's very relaxed and answering the questions, and then miss suddenly says what about this and hands him over the diversion memo.

And Ali was taken aback that Ed knew about it. His demeanor just betrayed the fact that he wasn't expecting that question.

He says something like I missed one. So Mey said, well did this happen? And all said yes.

After his meeting with Mees, North tried to call Poindexter to tell him the diversion had been discovered, but Poindexter wasn't reachable. North then returned to his office, where he stayed until four fifteen in the morning, shredding more documents. Meanwhile, Ed Mee and Charles Cooper knew they were holding a time bomb.

The most important implication of this, and ed Mees grasped it immediately, was that this information is something that the president must number one know immediately, and Number two that

On Monday, November twenty fourth, Mess went to the White House to tell Reagan what his weekend investigation had uncovered. He told the President that Oliver North had been taking money from the Iran weapons sales and giving it to the Contras.

Ed made that report in a very tightly controlled meeting with the President and his firm recommendation that this information be made public as quickly as it reasonably could be.

Reagan wrote about the meeting in his diary. That night, Ed m told me of a smoking gun our Colonel North gave the money to the Contras. North didn't tell me about this. This may call for resignations. It soon became clear that John Poindexter North, supervisor the National Security Council, had been in on the diversion two. Reagan and Mess agreed that the situation was so radioactive that the only option was to announce it publicly and force Poindexter and

I knew that it would be controversial that I had approved the use of the excess profits without telling the president. I wanted him to have some distance from that decision, and I thought the way to put emphasis on that was to resign. You know, I had taken a risk, and I had lost.

North drafted resignation letter too, but before he could leave on his own terms, he was fired from the NSC staff and reassigned to another job in the Marine Corps. It was decided that Reagan would deliver yet another public statement on the scandal that was now being called Iran Gate. This time it would be a press conference including both Reagan and Mees, and they would disclose the results of

Him to isolate him from the use of the excess province, which again we didn't think there was any illegal about it, but it would be controversial. One of the problems that I saw at the time was that I was beginning to question whether the President could really defend the initiative, whether he could explain it to the American public.

We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

On November twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, Ronald Reagan gave a press conference to make public what he'd learned. He kept things pretty vague.

Last Friday, after becoming concern whether my national security apparatus had provided me with a security or a complete factual record with respect to the implementation of my policy toward Iran, I directed the Attorney General to undertake a review of this matter over the weekend and report to me on Monday and yesterday Secretary Meice provided me in the White House Chief of Staff with a report on his preliminary findings, and this report led me to conclude that I was

When he was finished speaking, Reagan stepped aside and Edmeese took his place at the microphone, why don't.

I tell you what is the situation?

And then Jane Mayer was covering the White House for the Wall Street Journal at the time, and she was watching the press conference as it happened.

It was an unusual thing to see this tubby barrel of a man come in with his pink face, and he goes up to the podium and he kind of matter of factly lays out this completely astounding story.

Certain monies which were received in the transaction were taken and made available to the forces in Central America. The President knew nothing about it until I reported it to him. I alerted him yesterday morning we still had some more work to do, and then I gave him the detail that we had yesterday afternoon.

Who in the NSC was aware that this extra amount of money was being transferred to the so called contras or under their control.

The only person's in the United States government that knew precisely about this, The only person was Lieutenant Colonel North.

I mean, it was unbelievable. It was the craziest thing, and he was just sort of matter of factly running through it. We realized that, at least I realized that I'd missed the whole story.

Charles Cooper, the DOJ official who had worked with me on the weekend investigation, was watching the press conference with Secretary of State George Schultz.

I was in the kind of the control room, just off the briefing room, and I was watching it on a monitor in that control room, and I remember vividly after that was done, George Schultz basically turning from the TV monitors, standing right next to me and looking at me and saying good job, and then walking out.

Things moved very quickly after that. On Thursday, November twenty seventh, Thanksgiving, the Los Angeles Times reported that Oliver North had shredded reams of documents that could have been used as evidence. It was starting to feel a lot like Watergate.

Reporters attempted to ask Oliver North at his home today about published stories that he had destroyed documents which may have shed light on the Iran arm scandal.

At the appropriate time and in the appropriate forum, I will make a full exposition, and I will do so on the advice of my attorney. I would suggest that you all go home and thank God for the blessings of the beautiful country.

North later tried to visit the White House, but was told he could not enter under any circumstances.

On December first, Reagan announced the creation of the Tower Commission, a group of three former political leaders who would investigate what went wrong in the White House chain of command. Then, on December twod Reagan convinced Edmeese to request the appointment of an independent council, a move enabled by reforms that were enacted after Watergate.

The twenty General Niece's turning over the case to an independent council.

Lawrence Walsh, a former judge and former Deputy Attorney General, will be the man to search for any criminal wrongdoing.

In appointing a special prosecutor and in ordering his senior staff members to appear before it or Congress, Reagan was doing what President Richard Nixon did not during Watergate, sweeping away all suspicion of a cover.

Up between the Tower Commission and the Independent Council. The White House was under scrutiny on multiple fronts. Congress was starting up its own investigations too, and reporters were beginning to ask questions about Edmee.

Mees may be the Attorney General, but he is also one of President Reagan's oldest and closest associates, and what he says will be weighed here.

With that in mind, one of Mesa's colleagues of the Department of Justice complained that the Criminal Division and even the FB should have been involved in the fact finding mission. Later, Mece would testify that his goal after the Iran story broke had been to quote limit the damage. And when you look at the way he went about the investigation, giving people an opportunity to destroy documents that could never be recovered, it's hard to feel like his top priority

I don't think there's a difference between getting to the truth and controlling the damage at least in my view, and I know ed me shares it. The one thing that would be most damaging and most inevitably discovered, would be an effort to present a false narrative to Congress about something like this. So, to my mind, you know, damage control and finding the facts were synonymous. You know, I reject very firmly the skepticism about the genuineness I guess of an effort to find the truth and to

In any event, the administration's attempts to minimize the scandal seemed to have the opposite effect. Within a month of the story becoming public, Reagan's approval rating had dropped by twenty one percent. One poll found that ninety percent of the American people believed he was lying about what he knew. Meanwhile, from his home in Virginia, cut off from the job he had loved so much, Oliver North was adjusting to life as a public figure.

Just two blocks from the White House. After meeting with his new criminal lawyer, North again refused to answer questions.

I would refer those questions to my attorney.

The questions set on reports confirmed by.

North was optimistic that once everything was out in the open, people would see that his actions have been justified, maybe even heroic. He said as much in a letter he sent to John Poindexter the night before he was fired. I remain convinced that what we tried to accomplish was worth the risk, he wrote. We nearly succeeded. Hopefully when the political fractricide is finished, there will be others who

She's coming off great on TV.

We're getting flooded with calls.

People love him, and that's when they basically stopped asking foocal questions.

For a list of books, articles, and documentaries we used in our research, follow the link in the show notes. Fiasco is a production of Prologue Projects and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. Shows produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline Kaplan, Ulla Kulpa, and me Leon Mayfock. Our editor was Camilla Hammer. Our researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas. Our music is by Nick Filvester. Our theme song is