Iran Contra: Episode 6 - Fault Lines

Pushkin From the day the story broke in lebanon early November. All the possible outcomes and worsening scandal were immediately obvious, it seemed to me, and I reached the conclusion that at least if you can't turn things around, maybe you can atone and I won't develop for you the nature of depression and how it can worsen and lead to a cycle of decline. And yet that was what was happening.

One of the most important figures in the Iran Contra affair, Robert McFarlan, is in a hospital tonight. The former National Security advisor apparently took an overdose of valium as an attempted suicide.

It was shortly after seven am when Missus McFarland tried to rouse her husband and couldn't.

In the months after the Iran Contra scandal broke, Bud McFarlane had felt a duty to take responsibility for it. McFarland believed he was the only one in Reagan's inner circle who could have stopped the arms for Hostages initiative, and he had failed. Still, McFarland had maintained hope that the administration could set the scandal aside and recommit itself

Yeah, I still had this foolish I think believe that we shouldn't close down the government with a scandal in pre occupation with it when you had other things that still needed to be done.

So McFarland wrote down the policy goals he thought the administration could still pursue.

The President had achieved quite a lot, that is, he had teed up opportunities that were enormous, and I wrote down what ought to be done in four areas where we would be taking an initiative of importance to our country.

When he was finished, McFarlane says that he submitted the memo to the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State.

But I didn't even get an answer. One of the three did. I'd forgotten who it was, But I had no signal that any of it was being considered.

And so.

To me, that was kind of a moment of truth that your best efforts have failed. You have exhausted all possible recourse for salvaging the considerable gains that could be made aid and under President Reagan's leadership.

When McFarland saw that his memo was being ignored, he became convinced that the promise of the Reagan administration had been truly squandered and that it was partly his fault. Later, McFarland explained his decision to try to take his own life by invoking the Japanese ritual of seppuku, a form of suicide practiced by disgraced samurai who wanted to restore honor to their families.

It was foolish looking back, but no, it has a tradition in the Far East, and it's just more comment on how deep the depression had become.

Around midnight on February eighth, nineteen eighty seven, Bud McFarland swallowed roughly thirty volume tablets. When his wife woke up the next morning, she saw that something was wrong and called an ambulance.

Missus McFarland was clutching a note from her husband, which she refused to show to the medics.

McFarlan has come under increasing strong as the Iran a fair defense.

McFarlane, who was forty nine years old, was taken to a nearby naval hospital to recover. News of McFarland's suicide attempt came as multiple investigations into Iran Contra were lurching to life.

The nation's one hundredth Congress convened today clearly preoccupied with the Iran Contra crisis.

The House and the Senate had both formed committees to look into the matter, and they were preparing for public hearings.

After a long debate, the Senate finally approved a resolution authorizing a bipartisan committee to investigate.

Adopted overwhelmingly bipartisanly by a margin of four hundred and.

Sixteen to two.

The House also established its Select Committee.

While Congress set its inquiry in motion, prosecutors working in the Office of the Independent Council were undertaking a separate investigation.

Lawrence Walsh, a former judge and former Deputy Attorney General, demand to search for any criminal wrongdoing.

Unlike Congress, the Independent Council was pursuing a criminal probe intended to identify any illegal acts that may have been committed as part of Iran contract.

I think that we have a statutory basis to believe that a federal law may have been violated.

And then there was the Tower Commission, a three person panel appointed by the President that included a former national security advisor and two former senators.

Former Texas Senator John Tower, former National Security Advisor Brent Scolcroft, and former Secretary of State Edmund Muski are.

The other members.

Their job was to find out what had gone wrong in the White House and then share their findings with the public. The Tower Commission was most focused on the National Security Council.

The panel reportably has expanded its investigation to include possible attempts to cover up the scandal.

Looking back, it's no surprise McFarland's foreign policy memo didn't get more attention. Reagan was under siege and the notion that he could just set the scandal aside and get back to business was wishful thinking. As Congress prepared to hold hearings, the American public wanted answers. What had the President known about Iran Contra, when did he know it? And had he lied to cover it up. I'm Leon Nafok from Prolog Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco Iran contract.

The full story of the Iran Contra affair begins to unfold for all of us to see.

Colonel lath please rise.

Oliver North has become the hottest tickets in town.

The man's become an instant celebrity.

I mispled the Congress secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law.

We were shocked. To this day, I'm shocked.

Millions of Americans have a nagging suspicion that the truth has not yet come out.

Episode six fault Lines, The Iran Contra goes on trial as each of its principal architects takes a turn fielding the blame. We'll be right back, Bud. McFarlane ended up spending about two weeks in the hospital. During his recovery, he received several notable visits. One was from former President Richard Nixon, who gave McFarland advice on overcoming adversity and living with one's mistakes. McFarland was also visited by the three members of the Tower Commission, who interviewed him in

The Special Review Board has completed its work, but it might be helpful to give you the highlights of this rather lengthy report to the president.

At a press conference, the commission's chairman and namesake, John Tower detailed the president's failings as a manager. Though most of the bad ideas had come from Reagan's subordinates, Tower said it was his job to watch what they were doing and rain them in.

Now you can say that perhaps this president holds himself a little bit too aloof from the implementation of policy. But one thing is very very clear that members of the system who were privied of what was going on failed to the president because the president clearly didn't understand.

And the President of the United States is described here generally as a man who just simply was not very much in control of the foreign policy apparatus of his administration.

The Tower report would not be the final verdict underran contract. There were still congressional hearings ahead, as well as potential indictments coming out of the Independent Council's Office, but for the time being, the report spoke loudly here was a panel created by the President, and the best thing they could say about him was that he was out to lunch.

This is an NBCU special President Reagan's response to the Tower Commission report. I.

Fellow Americans, I've spoken to you from this historic office on many occasions and about many things.

On March fourth, nineteen eighty seven, Reagan delivered a primetime speech in response to the Tower Board's findings.

For the past three months, I've been silent on the revelations about Iran, and you must have been thinking of why doesn't he tell us what's happening. But I've had to wait, as you have, for the complete story.

Reagan called the Tower report honest, convincing, and highly critical. Then he referred back to his first public statements about the scandal, it admitted that they had been inaccurate.

A few months ago, I told the American people, I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is. Not reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake.

But the time for candid self reflection had passed. As much as Reagan may have wanted to move on from Iran Contra. The scrutiny was only going to intensify as Congress prepared for televised hearings.

The public and the press wanted to know what the hell happened, how high it went, who was responsible for it, and was there anything that we didn't know.

This is John Neilds. He's a former prosecutor who was hired by House Democrats as chief counsel to lead their investigation and question witnesses during the hearings.

Our job was to tell the story in a way that people could figure out for themselves what things were wrong, what things were arguably wrong and arguably right, and what things were fine.

It's important to note that these were not impeachment hearings. Neilds was convinced it was highly unlikely that Congress would ever take that step. Reagan was too popular and his second term was almost up anyway. Also, Neilds thought it was pretty clear that whatever Reagan did, his intentions had not been malevolent. There was one circumstance in which Congress

He made it the only issue on which Reagan could be impeached. He really wanted to find out as soon as possible the facts that, in his mind would answer the question, is anything impeachable happened here?

And this survey finds that public skepticism is now very deep, and forty one percent think that President Reagan should resign if it turns out he knew that money was being diverted to the Nicaraguan contras.

But as Neil saw it, the diversion, the hyphen at the center of Iran contra was only a shiny object, a diversion, you might say, from everything else that was wrong with the Iran weapons program and the country war individually.

Knowing whether the president was responsible for the diversion was probably the most exciting question that we had to deal with. I don't think it has an awful lot to do with answering the question of whether this was a shocking and really serious a breakdown in the way our government functioned. That's what I thought this was about.

Millions of Americans have a nagging suspicion that the truth has not yet come out.

Three branches must be involved in the governing of the people of this country, and when one branch goes all wild without even including consultation with the other branches, that spells trouble.

It's hard to overstate how huge an undertake these hearings were. Before Congress could publicly question a single witness, Meals and his team of investigators had to obtain documents, take depositions, and figure out which leads to pursue. That meant probing multiple government agencies, including the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and the White House itself.

The Senate, so like Comeree voted today to order General Richard Seacourt to disclose records of Swiss bank accounts he holds.

See what happened to the money, who set the accounts up, who had access to the accounts, how much more when it was in the accounts, and where do the money go now?

This was a set of issues that if I had been in an assistant US attorney, as I had been previously in my life, I would have looked at this as a one or two year investigation before you could say you've done your job. And it was very clear that we were only going to have a matter of months.

The time crunch was the result of a compromise between Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress. As you might imagine, Republicans wanted to get the hearings over and done with as quickly as possible, while Democrats argued for letting them go on as long as they needed to. Hanging over this procedural debate was the upcoming presidential election, in which Ronald Reagan's vice President, George H. W. Bush was expected to run. In the end, it was decided that Congress

It did make more difficult because when you put an end date on the investigation before you've even begun it, how in the world do you know how long it will take. It may take less than that, may take more than that. You go where the evidence leads, you don't just stop.

The team divided the case up into silos and assigned investigators to each one. Notton, for instance, was put on the Department of Justice, which meant she was looking into the weekend fact finding mission you heard about in our previous episode.

I mean, obviously I was there to investigate what the Attorney General did when this first broke his quote unquote investigation to you know, get their quote get their arms around the facts, but also the broader issue of what did the Department of Justice know about the arms sale? So it was sort of a wide swath of things because it involved different divisions of the department.

The clock ticked, Nilds and his team encountered an obstacle that was no less daunting than their deadline. Their two would be star witnesses, Oliver North and his supervisor John Poindexter were going to plead the Fifth North and Poindexter would refuse to testify at the hearings unless Congress gave them immunity. That meant guaranteeing that North and Poindexter's words would not be used against them in a criminal inquiry.

In a strongly worded letter accompanied by a legal memo, Walsh urges the House Committee not to grant witnesses immunity until after his work is done. To do so, he writes, would quote create serious and perhaps insurmountable barriers to the prosecution of the witnesses.

Walsh's mandate was to identify any criminal wrongdoing that may have occurred as part of Iran Contra. That was why North and Poindexter wanted immunity. If they could get it, nothing they said to Congress could be used against them in an indictment.

And that the prosecution would have to prove its case was based on other information.

As a former prosecutor, John Neilds understood how much harder that would make it for Walsh to build cases, but in the end he supported the grant of immunity.

I felt conflicted. I knew that something good was going to come out of it, which was what I thought was the more important good, which is the public is going to learn everything.

The Congressional committee's investigating the scandal formally approved a plan for a limited immunity for these two men, John Poindexter and Oliver.

North, and here on Capitol Hill today, after months of expectation, the full story of the Iran Contra affair begins to unfold for all of us to see.

The Iran contray hearings opened on May fifth, nineteen eighty seven, a little more than six months after the scandal broke. They were run by a joint committee, meaning the House and the Senate were combining their investigations so that witnesses wouldn't have to testify twice.

The joint hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transaction with Iran and the Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition will come to order.

The first witness would be retired Major General Richard Seacord, who had overseen logistics for both the Contra war and the Iran weapons program.

A key figure who has not been heard from before, began to tell the committees of his own involvement in sending arms to Iran and in helping the countries in Central Americas.

Seacord did not demand immunity in exchange for his testimony. He insisted that his involvement was that of a private citizen and a businessman. He told the committee about how his operation had worked and said he thought he was just carrying out the president's policy.

The president has certain rights in the foreign policy area. I never saw myself as being foreign policy operative.

You saw nothing wrong with this operation.

I did not see anything wrong with it.

Then, Seacord seemed sensitive to suggestions that he had only gotten involved in ron Contra to make money.

There was no intention of profiteerian. I know that some people were tossing this word around right now, and I resent it.

If Seacord wasn't doing all this for profit, why wouldn't he turnover records of his Swiss bank accounts.

I relied on the advice of my accounsel. Let's get off the subject.

You're making the rulings.

No, sir, but I did not come here.

To be badger.

Seacord's testimony set the tone for the rest of the hearings. Bud McFarland testified next.

Our witness this morning is mister Robert Carl McFarlane, the former National Security Advisor to the President.

When McFarland was asked about Oliver North's destruction of documents, the term shredding party was introduced into the national lexicon.

Colonel North tell you when the car that there was going to be a shredding party that weekend.

Well, just that there had to be one, the attorney.

By the end of May nineteen eighty seven, the Iran contry hearings were becoming a national obsession. This is a song from a late night Cinemax show called This Week Indoors Document.

Peoples Have Not.

As the hearings continued, the witnesses just kept getting more exciting. About a month then America met Oliver North's personal secretary, Fawn Hall.

She is twenty seven years old. She went to high school in Virginia and then on to finishing school and of course in modeling.

Hall is blonde and striking. As it turned out, she was a former model.

Fawn Hall's appearance on Capitol Hill was a media event. She was surrounded by cameras and security men.

Paul read an opening statement, making as clear as she could that despite her looks, she is not just a pretty face.

And perform my duties in exemplary manner.

I can type.

That last, of course, a reference to congressional sex scandals involving secretaries who admitted they could not type.

Hall's looks were not the only reason people were anticipating her testimony. They also wanted to know about the so called shredding party that she and North allegedly collaborated on after the Iran scandal broke.

Fawn Hall told how she altered and shredded key documents a secretary to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North at the White.

House, and as he pulled documents from each dower and placed on top of the shredder, I inserted them into the shredder.

Hall also testified to sneaking documents out of North's office by stuffing them in her clothes.

And then you proceeded to remove documents from your boots and from other parts of your clothing.

Is that correct?

That's correct?

Her more than anything. Fawn Hall's testimony was about defending Oliver North. He portrayed the colonel as a patriot, a hard working idealist whose only goal was to protect the United States. According to Hall, everything North did, including the destruction of documents, was done in the name of American interests.

And did you.

Surmise that this was a way of trying to cover up something in conjunction with the Iran initiative or the Contra initiative.

I do not use the word cover up. I would use the word protect.

Vawn Hall wasn't the only witness to go to bat for North. One of the Contra leaders flew in to testify as well. And even though most of what he had to say implicated North in Contra activities, what stuck out was the ardor with which he defended North's character and dedication to the anti communist cause.

I have and still have high respect for Colonel North. But there was a group saying that they were going to erect a monument for Colonel North once that Mikaraua was liberated.

Would it be possible to make a brief quote statement, And I will ask before I read it. It's a poem that.

Then North assistant Robert Owen ended his closing statement by reading a poem.

Ali, your enemies are more clever and more treacherous than ours. Yet you have given all you had to give. We have so very little to give you in return. Yet we want you to know that in our hearts and our prayers, you're with us daily. You're giving our children a chance to live as free individuals. And for these things we say thank you, Oli North. And I can only add that I love Oli North like a brother, and I want to thank the committee.

For all this fanfare around Oliver North, who had been refusing to testify, built anticipation for the moment when the man himself would finally appear before the committee and give his side of the story.

Oliver North, after months of delaying and stonewalling, finally goes before Congress tomorrow.

Ifty nine percent of those surveyed thank North will lie to Congressional committees investigating the scandal when he begins testifying Tuesday.

The summer of Iran Contra war on North had everyone's attention a lot.

In the history of Congress have so many lawmakers been so interested in what our lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps has to say, well, the swashbuckling marine who once declared without complaint that.

He was ready to be the pall guy d day is at hand.

The hurrying will please come to order.

On the morning of July seventh, nineteen eighty seven, Oliver North sat before the Congressional Committee waiting for his testimony to begin. He wore his marine uniform, proudly displaying the ribbons and medals he had earned in Vietnam, including two purple hearts and a silver Star North Saltan Pepper hare was neatly parted, and he sat straight up with his jaw squared.

Colonel Law, please rise.

He looked young and almost indecently handsome. Here's Pam Nawton again.

When he took the oa with all the cameras started snapping, as like a whole flock of birds of descended upon the room.

Do you solemnly where that in the testimony you're about to give will be the proof the whole pooth and nothing.

Remember, North's testimony was being shown live on television, and Noughton believes that the camera angles affected the way he was perceived.

They had placed a third camera on the floor so that you could sort of see him sitting over the camera, and it made him much larger than he was in person. He's a rather slight man, but on TV, because of the angle of the camera, he looked, you know, heroic and huge and strong.

John Neilds was first up to question North, and North did not waste any time telegraphing his attitude about what was going on.

Colonel North, you were involved in two operations of this government of great significance to the people of this country.

Is that correct?

At least two, yes, sir, And these operations were carried out in.

Secret, we hoped so.

Neilds began with a line of questioning about why North had felt it was proper to keep his activities secret and to destroy evidence after the fact. North's response was that he couldn't risk the possibility of America's adversaries getting their hands on classified information. Neilds pressed him, But it.

Was designed to be kept a secret from the American people.

I think what is important, mister neild says, that we somehow arrive at some kind of an understanding right here and now as to what a covert operation is. I mean, if we could find a way to insulate with a bubble over these hearings that are being broadcast in Moscow and talk about covert operations to the American people without it getting into the hands of our adversaries. I'm sure we would do that.

Neilds was trying to make an argument that in retrospect he feels like he didn't quite get a in the heat of the moment.

What the reason this was covert was not because we were afraid our enemies would find out about it, was we're afraid of the American people were going to find out about it. Lots of it was unlawful, and that he's going to wrap himself in God country and flag as a justification for telling lies about stuff.

The contrast between North and Neilds was almost cartoonish. North looked like g I. Joe Well. Neilds was more like a pencil necked, long haired graduate student, and though North went out of his way to punctuate his comments with polite formalities, the mutual hostility between the two men was obvious. It didn't help that North's lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, was regularly interrupting neils and raising objections.

Objection, how many times do we have to have the question answer, asked mister chairman.

At one point, North and Sullivan seemed to be mocking Neils from their table. Neilds was frustrated, Well.

What is your question, council?

Have you forgotten the question?

All I have? And I have to make objections?

So you ask it again?

And you did, and it was overruled, and the question stands. I'd like the witness to answer it if he remembers.

It, could we He obviously doesn't remember it.

He just asked you to repeat it.

May yeah you did, he did not, Sir, do you remember the question?

My memory has been shredded, if you would be so kind as to repeat the question.

Pam Norton, the congressional investigator working under Neild's, was taken aback by North's demeanor.

I remember after about an hour or so, John Yild said, well, we're going to take a break now, but when we come back, I'm going to ask you about X Y Z, and North said something the effective, Oh, I can hardly wait.

When we get back, I am going to ask you some questions relating to those transactions.

That's a cliffhanger of an ending.

When the committee took a short break, notting and some of our colleagues whispered to each other about North's performance.

We were saying to ourselves, behind the dice, boy, he's really coming off like a jerk.

But then an ABC News reporter named Britt Hume checked in with the committee lawyers and set them straight.

You know, we said, what do you think, and he goes, I think he's a jerk, he said, but he's coming off great on TV. We're getting flooded with calls. People love him.

At the same time, committee members were also getting a sense of how well North was playing with the folks watching at home.

The members went back to their offices and were finding that their switchboards were getting flooded with calls of people who loved this handsome Lieutenant Kernel.

With all of his medals, all of the North seems to have much of the nation in the palm of his hand.

Over the course of his six days of testimony, North developed a true fan base.

Of those surveyed North as a patriot and hero, forty eight percent believe North is being harassed by the congressional panels, and twenty eight percent say they would enthusiastically support North if he ran for public office.

Journalists were happy to embrace the public affection for North, evidently relieved to have a real leading man in the Iran Contra crisis. The media took to calling him by his nickname Ali, and before long everyone was talking about Ali Mania.

Movies, lectures, Millingham dollar, book contracts.

The Washington Post ran a lengthy analysis of Colonel North's face.

The three major news networks canceled regularly scheduled programming to show north testimony. Gavel to Gavel, a bar maid near Boston, had expected to dislike Colonel North.

After watching the testimony, I began to dislike the committee that was questioning him.

I felt though they were conducting a witch hunt.

His brush is in that uniform, the.

Real hero, and I'm with you one hundred percent, And I'm Glady of the American mine.

And I'm proud of it.

By the third day of North's testimony, thousands of telegrams have been sent to the White House, very few of them critical. Flowers for North arrived daily to the Senate Office building.

Oliver North has become the hottest tickets.

In town or Oliver North's t shirts.

There is talk of an Oliver North doll.

Barber's offered Ali North style haircuts Oli for President merch sprang up across the country.

Ali Berger served up with shredded lettuce, shredded cheese, and of course topped with an American flag.

Let's place it lovely more Haitian.

The man's become an instant celebrity.

You think of another country where that had happened.

John Nields, the long haired lawyer for the House Democrats, remembers North's popularity rising at his expense.

I found out that there were a significant portion of the world that thought Ali North was a cool guy, and that I wasn't a cool guy.

But Neil's got the appeal and he understood the dynamic.

This was Vietnam right. I don't know what it is now, maybe it's immigration or something, but the left right thing was Vietnam, and he was playing to the people who felt dissed, their patriotism had been disrespected after Vietnam, and that the country had abandoned them in the middle of a war, and who left them to die and come home as anything other than heroes. And I understand that very well. I mean, I thought the Vietnam War was a big, big mistake, and so if he was trying

Pam Norton says, the deluge of calls and letters had an immediate effect on the committee member's line of questioning.

And that's when they basically stopped asking, you know, questions, just the natural fear of a member. Whenever you put a question in front of them, the member would say, well, what's he going to say? Well, I don't know what he's going to say. That's why it's an investigation. And they wouldn't do it, not with the witness who had that much public powerful sway.

At that point, the softballs the North was getting from the committee members stood in stark contrast to the grilling he received from Neils.

That's sort of the end of his questioning. I asked him about lying to Congress.

North was defiant.

I think we can abbreviate this in hopes that we can move on so that I can finish this week.

But almost like proud of himself, I will tell you right now, Council, and all the members here gathered.

And all the members here gathered that.

I misled the CONGRESSSS I.

Missed at that meeting.

At that meeting face to face, face to face.

You made false statements to them about your activities in support of the contries I did. I mean, it's who he is and he was telling the truth then, so that's again credit for that's good.

One thing that was interesting about Oliver North's testimony was that, as unapologetic as he was, he didn't exactly take the blame for the scandal. In fact, he made it clear over and over again that even though he stood by everything he had done, he'd also just been following orders like a good marine.

I was simply a staff member with a demonstrated ability to get the job done. I reported directly to mister McFarland and to Admiral Poindexter. My authority to act always flowed, I believe from my superiors. My military training inculcated in me a strong belief in the chain of command, and so far as I can recall, I always acted on major matters with specific approval, after informing my superiors of the facts as I knew them, the risks and the potential benefits.

This testimony fed into the big question coursing through the Iran Contra hearings. How much had the President known specifically what had he known about the diversion of funds from the Iran operation to the contrace. The person best position to answer this question was John Poindexter, Oliver North's boss and the National Security advisor at the time of the nineteen eighty six arm shipments.

Sword says he had sent Poindexter five memos seeking President Reagan's approval for the diversion. Nord says he doesn't know if they reached the President. So committee members will ask Poindexter.

We'll be right back.

The committees meet this morning to hear the testimony of Admiral John Poindexter. Admiral would you please rise to take the oath?

John Poindexter, who had resigned as Reagan's National Security advisor over Iran contra, took the stand on July fifteenth, right after North. Poindexter was more subdued than North, but came across as similarly unrepentant, stating flatly that he had been hoping to withhold information from Congress.

It wasn't withholding it from the American people. It was that there were a lot of opponents in the Congress that would have not agreed with our interpretation of the Bowld amendment, they wouldn't have agreed to the Iranian project, and if it came out, it was going to be a very hot political issue and it would be used to pound on the president.

Then it came time for Poindexter to answer the million dollar question. Taking intermittent puffs on his pipe, he explained that none of his superiors, including President Reagan, had been aware of the diversion of Iran weapons profits to the Contras. To drive the point home, Poindexter invoked Harry Truman's famous line about accountability.

I think it's, you know, an important point here is on this whole issue. You know, the buck stops here with me.

I made the decision.

I felt that I had the authority to do it. I was convinced that the President would in the end think it was a good idea, but I did not want him to be associated with the decision.

John Neilds told me he still thinks about Poindexter's answer, and he still doesn't know what to make of it. On the one hand, Poindexter was testifying plainly that he did not tell Reagan about the diversion. On the other hand, he was admitting that his goal had been to give the president deniability.

He was telling them my role in life, according to my lights, is to take the blame so that the president doesn't have to And there could be two ways of doing that. One not tell the president and not tell the truth. Here, those are the two different ways. Well, it goes without saying I have no idea whether he told the truth or not. And I think that's what everybody thought, what that they didn't know whether Poindexter told the truth.

After Poindexter's testimony, the three news networks began rotating coverage of the hearings and resumed their regularly scheduled programming. By eliminating the possibility that Reagan would be personally linked to the diversion, Poindexter had effectively closed the case and take an impeachment off the table.

The scandal is largely over.

Some committee members say this is a suspense novel which has lost a suspense. That may be one reason the committee now hopes to wrap up its work a week early by the end of July.

Pam Nawton remembers thinking about how differently all Over North and John Poindexter had approached the issue of responsibility. Poindexter had at least made a show of owning the diversion. North, on the other hand, had emphasized his status as a low level operative carrying out a mission handed to him from on high.

To this day, I'm shocked because he is still viewed in many segments of the right as this hero this heroic guy. The truth of the matter is, he took the Fifth Amendment. He only testified with the grant of immunity with a deal. And if you listen to his testimony, he pointed the finger upward. He said he believed the President of the United States knew what he was doing. He was a snitch essentially in common parlance. And it

After the hearings ended, the Congressional Committee wrote up their findings and published them that November in a six hundred and ninety page report.

Good Morning, the Joint House and Senate committees which investigated the Iran Contra affair today issue their majority report, a six hundred and ninety page document that does not produce a smoking god.

And the committee's conclusions were quite different than the Tower Commission's report released earlier in the year.

It was, in the opinion of the majority who signed this report the President who had set the tone allowing a cabal of Zealotz to seize control.

The common ingredients in the Iran Contra affair were secrecy, deception, and a disdain for law.

The report was particularly critical of the White House's and runs around Congress.

They conducted a secret foreign policy and concealed it through a concerted campaign of dishonesty and deception, and when the affair began to unravel, they attempted to cover up their deeds.

But a group of eight Republicans who had served in the committee refused to sign on to the verdict.

Included in the final report is a minority section which accuses the committees of reaching hysterical conclusions.

It started out as a witch hunt, it proceeded as a witch hunt, and the final report indicates that indeed it was a witch.

Hunt led by a Wyoming Congressman named Dick Cheney. The Republican dissenters published their own report, making the case not only for Reagan's innocence, but for the innocence of his entire administration. They said there was no systematic disrespect for the rule of law, no grand conspiracy, and no administration wide dishonesty or cover up. In their opinion, the majority's conclusions were hysterical.

I think what the president was guildia was making an unwise decisions, such as sending arms to Iran. But I think he had the legal authority to do that. I think he had the legal authority to withhold notification from Congress. I don't think those decisions were always why.

Cheney and the other seven Republicans argued that the real fault for Iran contra lay with the congressman who had pushed for the restrictions on contra funding. It was a robust defense of executive authority won that Dick Cheney would later echo as Vice President. By the time Congress wrapped up its work, there was one politician besides Ronald Reagan who remained unscathed. George H. W. Bush had been director

The committees concluded that there is no evidence that Vice President Bush knew about the diversion.

In the fall of nineteen eighty seven, when the report was released, Bush was on to bigger and better things. I am here today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States. When asked about Iran Contra in interviews, Bush insisted that he had been out of the loop. However, Bush told The Washington Post if he were ever to find himself in Ronald Reagan's position, he would expect his staff to give him the facts. I wouldn't want somebody,

Ali, you can't lie to your own people.

It's not a lie.

It's a Cocord operation. Hostage lives depend on what we do here Eric.

For a list of books, articles, and documentaries used in our research, follow the link in the show notes. Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects, and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. Shows produced by Andrew Parsons, madelin kaplan Ula, 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 Silvester. Our theme song is