Iran-Contra

TRANSCRIPT

On the twenty-fifth of November, nineteen eighty-six, the President of the United States went on live television and announced that his own staff had been selling missiles to Iran — and skimming the profits to fund a war Congress had banned.

That is not a paraphrase. That is the story, in one sentence.

A president's staff sold missiles to Iran, skimmed the profits, and funded a banned war — and kept the receipts. They wrote it all down: in memos, in notebooks, in Swiss bank accounts. Then they shredded what they could, testified about the rest under immunity, and watched their convictions get reversed on appeal.

DOCUMENTED: the arms sales. DOCUMENTED: the diversion. CLAIMED: who knew what. UNVERIFIED: the money's full trail. The line between the second and third is drawn in ink, by two separate investigations — and this episode is about that line.

First, the sale. DOCUMENTED.

In nineteen eighty-two, Congress began restricting American aid to the Nicaraguan Contras — rebels fighting the Sandinista government. By October of nineteen eighty-four, the restriction was a hard prohibition on military aid, and it ran to October of nineteen eighty-six. Two years when Washington was legally forbidden to fund that war.

The Reagan administration wanted the war funded anyway. So the National Security Council staff went looking for money that wasn't Congress's. By May of nineteen eighty-four, the Saudis were contributing a million dollars a month, routed through a covert account arranged by a Marine lieutenant colonel on the N S C staff named Oliver North.

Then came the second stream. In nineteen eighty-five, President Reagan decided to authorize the sale of American arms to Iran, from Israeli stocks — despite warnings from his own Secretaries of Defense and State, Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz, that the transfers might violate the law. The stated reason: an opening to Iran, and the release of American hostages held in Lebanon.

The Tower Commission — the president's review board — found that Reagan's intense commitment to the hostages drove the initiative, and added, in its own dry words, that the president, quote, 'did not seem to be aware of the way in which the operation was implemented and the full consequences of U S participation.'

The sales ran through nineteen eighty-six: T O W anti-tank missiles in February, Hawk missile parts in May. The shipments are documented. The president's approval of the sales is documented. What is not documented is what happened to the money.

The diversion. DOCUMENTED.

Here is what the Tower Commission established: Lieutenant Colonel North told the Attorney General, in November of nineteen eighty-six, that three to four million dollars was diverted to the support of the Contras after the February shipment of T O W missiles — and that more, though how much he was not sure, was diverted after the May shipment of Hawk parts.

There was a paper trail, and North had written much of it himself. In early April of nineteen eighty-six, he drafted a memo titled 'Release of American Hostages in Beirut,' stating that twelve million dollars in 'residual' funds from the transaction would, quote, 'be used to purchase critically needed supplies for the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance Forces.' The memo was unsigned, and the Tower Commission found no evidence it was ever placed before the National Security Advisor, the president, or any other United States official.

Then the notebooks. North kept spiral-bound reporter's notebooks, day by day, from September of nineteen eighty-four through November of nineteen eighty-six: twenty-eight hundred and forty-eight pages of calls, meetings, and movements — the working diary of the whole operation. The National Security Archive hosts them. They are genuine, handwritten, and they are how investigators reconstructed what the shredder didn't get.

The Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, spent seven years on the case. His report, Volume One, delivered in nineteen ninety-three, draws the knowledge line with a prosecutor's care: no direct evidence was developed that the president authorized or was informed of the profiteering on the Iran arms sales, or of the diversion of proceeds to aid the Contras.

His office could not prove that Reagan authorized or was aware of the diversion. On the record Walsh could build, knowledge of the diversion sits with the men who ran it: North, his superior John Poindexter, and the private operatives Richard Secord and Albert Hakim — and no one higher.

So the money flowed: Iran paid for the missiles, the markup pooled in accounts controlled by North, Secord, and Hakim, and the Contras got the proceeds. A war Congress had banned, funded by missiles sold to a country under an American arms embargo — run off the books, on the president's staff's initiative.

The unraveling. DOCUMENTED.

On November twenty-first, nineteen eighty-six, Attorney General Edwin Meese began asking questions. On the twenty-second, Justice Department lawyers reviewing N S C documents found the one North had not shredded: his April memo explaining the diversion. On the twenty-third, Meese questioned North himself. Walsh's report describes a shaken North admitting the diversion had occurred — and attributing it to the Israelis.

On the twenty-fourth, Meese privately told President Reagan. On the morning of the twenty-fifth, he told the full Cabinet and Congressional leaders. At noon, Reagan and Meese announced it to the country on live television. Poindexter resigned that day. North was reassigned to the Marines.

The Tower Commission delivered its report on February twenty-sixth, nineteen eighty-seven. Congress held televised hearings that year, granting immunity to North, Poindexter, and Hakim. And Walsh kept prosecuting.

The convictions came — and then they went. North was convicted in nineteen eighty-nine; the appeals court vacated his convictions on July twentieth, nineteen ninety, finding that witnesses at his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized Congressional testimony. Poindexter was convicted in April of nineteen ninety of five felonies; his convictions were reversed in nineteen ninety-one, on the same immunity grounds. Both men are living. Neither has a standing conviction.

In December of nineteen ninety-two, President Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger before his trial — with pardons for others in the case. And in nineteen ninety-three, the Walsh report landed: the fullest accounting the government would ever produce.

Now the boundary. This is the line the episode is built on, so here it is, precisely.

Reagan's approval of the arms sales to Iran: DOCUMENTED. The president decided it in nineteen eighty-five, over his cabinet's objections. Both the Tower Commission and the Walsh report record it.

Reagan's knowledge of the diversion: DOCUMENTED — as absent. The Tower Commission's sentence on this is the cleanest in the whole file. Quote:

'The president said he had no knowledge of the diversion prior to his conversation with Attorney General Meese on November twenty-fifth, nineteen eighty-six. No evidence has come to light to suggest otherwise.'

Walsh's office reached the same wall: it could not prove that Reagan authorized or was aware of the diversion. Poindexter told Congress that he made the decision on his own and did not tell the president — though he believed the president would have approved. North testified repeatedly that he believed President Reagan was aware and approving of his activities — but, in the report's words, was unable to offer direct proof of presidential knowledge and authorization.

So the boundary is not a guess. It is two investigations, years apart, reaching the same edge: the sales are the president's; the diversion is North's, Poindexter's, Secord's, and Hakim's. What anyone believed the president would have approved is CLAIMED. What he knew is DOCUMENTED — and what the documents say he knew stops at the sales.

Now the labels, applied with care.

The sales: DOCUMENTED. Arms to Iran in nineteen eighty-five and eighty-six, approved by President Reagan over the objections of Weinberger and Shultz — missiles to a country under an American arms embargo, traded for hostages and an opening to Tehran.

The diversion: DOCUMENTED. Three to four million dollars after the February T O W shipment, more after the May Hawk shipment, twelve million in 'residual' funds named in North's April memo — proceeds moved to the Contras during a Congressional ban on military aid that ran from October nineteen eighty-four to October nineteen eighty-six. The memo trail, the notebooks, the Tower findings, the Walsh findings.

The accountability: DOCUMENTED. The Tower report, February nineteen eighty-seven. North's convictions, vacated in nineteen ninety. Poindexter's, reversed in nineteen ninety-one. The pardons of nineteen ninety-two. The Walsh report, nineteen ninety-three.

Who knew: CLAIMED. North's defense — that he believed the president was aware and approving — offered without direct proof. Poindexter's addendum — that he did not tell the president, but the president would have approved. The beliefs are DOCUMENTED as sworn statements. What they assert is CLAIMED.

The full money trail: UNVERIFIED. Swiss accounts, the Enterprise's ledgers — Walsh's report maps the flow, but the complete accounting never closed. Parts of the record are shredded, redacted, or were never written down. And the question behind the boundary — whether anyone above the four men knew more than the reports could prove — is UNVERIFIED by definition: the investigations found no evidence, which is not the same as evidence of nothing.

The deadpan truth of Iran-Contra is the receipt book.

Nineteen eighty-four: Congress bans military aid to the Contras. Nineteen eighty-five: the president approves selling American missiles to Iran. Nineteen eighty-six: the markup gets diverted to the banned war, the Attorney General finds the memo North forgot to shred, and the president goes on live television. Nineteen eighty-seven: the Tower Commission reports. Nineteen eighty-nine and ninety: convictions. Nineteen ninety and ninety-one: the convictions reversed. Nineteen ninety-three: the final report.

DOCUMENTED: the sales, the diversion, the memo trail, the boundary — two investigations, one line. CLAIMED: that the president knew, or would have approved — believed, testified, unproved. UNVERIFIED: the full money trail, and everything the shredder got.

A president's staff sold missiles to Iran, skimmed the profits, and funded a banned war — and kept the receipts. The receipts are why we know. The missing ones are why we will never fully know.