Speaker 1: Pushkin. On Thursday, November thirteenth, nineteen eighty six, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: opened his maroon leather bound diary and jotted down a
Speaker 1: few thoughts about his day. He was in the middle
Speaker 1: of a firestorm, he wrote, caused by the ridiculous falsehoods
Speaker 1: the media has been spawning. The firestorm had been ignited
Speaker 1: by two separate scandals. First, there was Eugene Hasenfuss, the
Speaker 1: former marine whose plane had been shot down over Nicaragua
Speaker 1: by a Sandinista soldier.
Speaker 2: It has all the makings of a major new uproar.
Speaker 3: The US may have violated a ban on a to
Speaker 3: the Contras.
Speaker 1: The Hasenfuss crash seemed to confirm that the Reagan administration
Speaker 1: was yet again evading the law that prohibited the US
Speaker 1: government from funding the Contra rebels.
Speaker 3: The White House has had full knowledge of this Contra
Speaker 3: cargo plane operation for more than a year.
Speaker 1: Then, about a month later, the White House was hit
Speaker 1: with a seemingly unrelated story about arms trafficking in a
Speaker 1: different foreign country. According to an article in a Lebanese magazine,
Speaker 1: the US was selling missiles to Iran. Subsequent reports alleged
Speaker 1: that the arrangement was part of an arms for hostages swamp.
Speaker 4: Iran has helped the United States free hostage from Lebanon,
Speaker 4: and the US is helping Iran in its war with Iraq.
Speaker 1: In his diary, Reagan referred to the controversy as the
Speaker 1: Iran incident that was a lot more innocuous than what
Speaker 1: people outside the administration were, calling.
Speaker 5: It a very dangerous precedent negotiating with terrorists.
Speaker 3: Escapades, and I think that is the word is simply
Speaker 3: a misreading of Iranian political realities, and therefore it's dumb.
Speaker 1: The Iran news instantly eclipsed Eugene Hasenfuss and Nicaragua. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't that surprising that Reagan still wanted to support
Speaker 1: the contras. The arms for hostages story, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: seemed to come out of nowhere, and it flatly contradicted
Speaker 1: Reagan's stated policies of not negotiating with terrorists and opposing
Speaker 1: the sale of weapons to Iran. The outcry was unlike
Speaker 1: anything the Reagan White House had ever faced.
Speaker 6: For six years round Reagan was the Teflon president.
Speaker 1: That's Peter Wallson. In nineteen eighty six, he was serving
Speaker 1: as White House counsel, a job that involved advising the
Speaker 1: president on what was and wasn't legal. Wallison says that
Speaker 1: scandals just didn't seem to stick to Reagan through most
Speaker 1: of his presidency, but the Iran story was different.
Speaker 6: There was so little official information coming out, only leaks
Speaker 6: from various places and people who had some knowledge of it,
Speaker 6: either abroad or in the United States. So it was
Speaker 6: an enormous media firestorm.
Speaker 1: Initially, Reagan tried to just ride it out, even as
Speaker 1: advisers urged him to publicly address the controversy. Finally, a
Speaker 1: week after American media picked up the arms for hostages story,
Speaker 1: Reagan agreed to deliver a televised speech. First order of business,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his diary, I will go on TV
Speaker 1: at eight pm tonight.
Speaker 5: President Reagan is addressing the nation this evening to set
Speaker 5: the record straight as the White House put it on
Speaker 5: relations where they ran, and efforts to free you as hostages.
Speaker 1: Peter Wallason is one of the White House staffers responsible
Speaker 1: for writing the speech.
Speaker 6: We were supposed to explain what all these newspaper reports
Speaker 6: were about, all this media coverage. But the idea was
Speaker 6: to try to explain, I suppose what it was that
Speaker 6: happened in a way that showed that it was innocent.
Speaker 1: But as Wallason and the other speechwriters discovered, the facts
Speaker 1: of the arm shipments were not easy to nail down.
Speaker 1: Here's Jane Mayer, a reporter at The New Yorker and
Speaker 1: co author of the book Landslide.
Speaker 7: What becomes clear is that the as that are most
Speaker 7: involved in this scandal are conspiring with each other to
Speaker 7: come up with cover stories that will get themselves off
Speaker 7: the hook. But in order to do that, they need
Speaker 7: to kind of get the President to lie for them.
Speaker 8: Some sources within the administration tell us somewhat different story
Speaker 8: than the one the president will tell tonight. One such source,
Speaker 8: familiar with the president's speech, said, we are now engaged
Speaker 8: in rewriting history.
Speaker 7: This is all putting the president in great peril, and
Speaker 7: it rings a familiar bell to at least a couple people.
Speaker 7: They remember Watergate.
Speaker 1: Here's Peter Wallason again.
Speaker 6: After Watergate, we all understood that the cover up could
Speaker 6: be worse than the crime itself.
Speaker 1: Reagan's speech was going to be an opportunity to send
Speaker 1: a clear signal he was not trying to cover anything up.
Speaker 9: NBC's regular Thursday night schedule beginning with the Cosby Show
Speaker 9: will be seen immediately following President Reagan's address on most
Speaker 9: of these stations.
Speaker 1: At eight p m. On November thirteenth, Reagan sat down
Speaker 1: at his desk in the Oval Office, looked into the camera,
Speaker 1: and tried to explain himself.
Speaker 10: Good evening.
Speaker 11: I wanted this time to talk with you about an
Speaker 11: extremely sensitive and profoundly important matter of foreign policy. For
Speaker 11: eighteen months now, we have had underway a secret diplomatic
Speaker 11: initiative to Iran. That initiative was undertaken for the simplest
Speaker 11: and best of reasons, to renew a relationship with the
Speaker 11: nation of Iran, to bring an honorable end of the
Speaker 11: bloody six year war between Iran and Iraq, to eliminate
Speaker 11: state sponsored terrorism and subversion, and to effect the safe
Speaker 11: return of all hostages.
Speaker 1: There it was confirmation of the arm sales to Iran
Speaker 1: to effect the safe return of all the hostages. Except
Speaker 1: a minute later, Reagan also said this.
Speaker 11: The charge has been made that the United States has
Speaker 11: shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release
Speaker 11: of American hostages in Lebanon. Those charges are utterly false.
Speaker 11: The United States has not.
Speaker 1: The speech did not play well with viewers.
Speaker 4: It is a new experience for the president. He goes
Speaker 4: on television to tell the nation he has never sent
Speaker 4: any arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages, and
Speaker 4: twenty four hours later, the country is far from convinced.
Speaker 1: An ABC News poll found that fifty six percent of
Speaker 1: Americans thought the President was lying when he said there
Speaker 1: had not been in arms for hostages deal. Suddenly, Reagan
Speaker 1: was in an unfamiliar position. People just didn't trust him.
Speaker 5: There was criticism of the President's explanations from both Republicans
Speaker 5: and Democrats in Congress.
Speaker 12: Is the President lying?
Speaker 13: They may think there was no quid pro quoll. I
Speaker 13: can't believe that the Iranians didn't think there was any
Speaker 13: quid pro quoll.
Speaker 1: This was not how people usually talked about Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1: It cut against everything that was appealing about him as
Speaker 1: a politician.
Speaker 7: In Watergate, Nixon was always seen as a schemer. You know,
Speaker 7: his nickname was tricky Dick. Reagan was the opposite. He
Speaker 7: was sort of sunny, and he didn't seem like the
Speaker 7: type would be able to come up with this incredibly
Speaker 7: complicated scheme and lie to the American public.
Speaker 1: In the wake of Reagan's speech. White House communications director
Speaker 1: Pat Buchanan Yes that. Pat Buchanan decided to reach out
Speaker 1: to a former colleague he thought might have some advice.
Speaker 7: And he called up Nixon himself and asked Nixon for
Speaker 7: his advice. What should they do?
Speaker 1: Yes that Nixon.
Speaker 7: Nixon said, don't do the cover up. Get out the
Speaker 7: facts as much as you can, and say you've made
Speaker 7: a mistake, and the public will accept that.
Speaker 1: Buchanan brought Nixon's advice to the White House, but Reagan
Speaker 1: was not prepared to admit that he had made a mistake.
Speaker 1: There wasn't anything to apologize for. He insisted he hadn't
Speaker 1: done anything wrong. I'm leon Nyfok from Prologue Projects and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco, Iran Contra.
Speaker 4: The country is being asked to believe some things that
Speaker 4: are hard to swallow.
Speaker 6: Something's happening here that looks a lot like Watergate, that being.
Speaker 14: A complete orgy of shredding.
Speaker 7: I realized that I'd missed the whole story.
Speaker 11: I directed the Attorney General, who wanted to take a
Speaker 11: review of this matter.
Speaker 13: The President knew nothing about it until I reported it
Speaker 13: to him. I alerted him yesterday morning Boo.
Speaker 5: In the administration knew what was going on, and when.
Speaker 1: Episode five all out how the Reagan White House tried
Speaker 1: to stop their Iran problem from becoming a second Watergate.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after the President's speech from the
Speaker 1: Oval Office, the White House schedule the follow up press
Speaker 1: conference about the Iran issue. Maybe his first speech had
Speaker 1: just been too confusing.
Speaker 4: It is argued to this very political city that President
Speaker 4: Reagan's televised news conference tonight in the midst of the
Speaker 4: Iran affair, will be the most important of his presidency.
Speaker 4: There are many unanswered questions about the most visibly difficult
Speaker 4: problem since.
Speaker 1: He was elected once again, Reagan's aides were divided over
Speaker 1: how he should present the facts within the next Should
Speaker 1: he say as little as possible and keep insisting that
Speaker 1: everything had been above board, or should he admit that
Speaker 1: the missile sales were part of an arms for hostages
Speaker 1: deal and apologize. One of the people advocating for the
Speaker 1: come clean approach was Reagan's Secretary of State, George Schultz.
Speaker 10: Get it all out, as I said, Morts and all,
Speaker 10: and then they'll graduate get behind you.
Speaker 1: Schultz died in twenty twenty one at the age of
Speaker 1: one hundred. When I interviewed him, he was ninety eight
Speaker 1: and living in californ And though he served under Nixon,
Speaker 1: he insisted to me that his advice to Reagan wasn't
Speaker 1: informed by his experience of Watergate.
Speaker 10: No, I wasn't really thinking about Watergate. President Reagan's standing
Speaker 10: was totally different from Richard Nixon's. People loved Reagan and
Speaker 10: respected him a great deal, and they knew he was
Speaker 10: a man of principle.
Speaker 1: As Secretary of State, Schultz had strongly opposed the idea
Speaker 1: of selling missiles to Iran. He had advocated against it
Speaker 1: during multiple meetings with the President.
Speaker 10: I was opposed to it from the beginning, and I
Speaker 10: always felt somehow it would wind up leaking out. My
Speaker 10: fear was that we were selling arms to Iran and
Speaker 10: Iran was up to no good. It was a mistake.
Speaker 1: Clearly, pushing back against the arms deals in private had
Speaker 1: not worked. Now that the story was out, Schultz was
Speaker 1: surprisingly willing to push back in public too.
Speaker 3: Secretary of State Schultz continued distancing himself from the trading
Speaker 3: of weapons or hostages.
Speaker 5: Shultz said he thought that not negotiating with terrorists is
Speaker 5: the right policy asked about official silence on the reports
Speaker 5: of dealings where Iran. Schultz later said, I don't particularly
Speaker 5: enjoy it. I like to say what I think.
Speaker 1: As the scandal intensified, Schultz went unfaced the nation. In
Speaker 1: an interview with Leslie Stall, he made clear that he
Speaker 1: was out of sync with other members of the administration.
Speaker 15: Will there be any more arm shipments to Iran, either
Speaker 15: directly by the United States or through any third parties?
Speaker 16: Under the circumstances if Iran's were with Iraq, its pursuit
Speaker 16: of terrorism, its association with those holding our hostages, I
Speaker 16: would certainly say, as far as I am concerned, No.
Speaker 15: Do you have the authority to speak for the entire administration?
Speaker 14: No.
Speaker 1: Schultz's interview enraged his colleagues in the administration and set
Speaker 1: off another round of speculation about chaos in the White House.
Speaker 1: You're not going to resign, are you?
Speaker 3: For the State Department? They're saying the Secretary wants a
Speaker 3: firm commitment no more arms will be sent to Iran,
Speaker 3: and shows will be included in future deliberations.
Speaker 1: Now, Reagan wouldn't just have to clear the air about
Speaker 1: arm shipments. When he gave his press conference, he would
Speaker 1: likely face questions about whether his administration was coming apart
Speaker 1: under the weight of the scandal. To prepare, the President
Speaker 1: enlisted the help of some of his top aides, including
Speaker 1: National Security Advisor John Poindexter.
Speaker 17: We knew from the beginning it would be difficult to
Speaker 17: explain to the American people the detailed rationale. The problem,
Speaker 17: in my mind, was associating the arms with the hostages.
Speaker 1: Poindexter wanted the President to explain that the missiles weren't
Speaker 1: really a ransom payment for the hostages. They were part
Speaker 1: of something bigger. As you'll remember for Episode four, Poindexter
Speaker 1: believed that the ultimate goal of the initiative was to
Speaker 1: make inroads with moderates in the Iranian government. The point
Speaker 1: of the missiles was to show the Iranians that the
Speaker 1: US was operating in good faith. The release of the
Speaker 1: hostages was supposed to show the US that the Iranians
Speaker 1: were too.
Speaker 17: Our sale of arms to Iran was an indication, we thought,
Speaker 17: to Iran that the President was serious about this, and
Speaker 17: there causing the release of hostis by proxy was an
Speaker 17: indication of honesty and earnestness on their part.
Speaker 1: One problem with Poindexter's explanation was that Reagan cared a
Speaker 1: lot more about the hostages than he did about the
Speaker 1: broader geopolitical strategy. Another problem was that the president didn't
Speaker 1: seem to have a firm grasp on what had happened
Speaker 1: or what he had personally approved.
Speaker 17: Before the president's press conference, what we called a murder
Speaker 17: board in the White House theater.
Speaker 1: The murder board was essentially a rehearsal for the press.
Speaker 17: Conference, and at one of these murder boards, the president
Speaker 17: would be on the podium, the Press Secretary would play
Speaker 17: the role of the media, asking questions.
Speaker 1: As Poindexter watched Reagan practice his answers, he became very concerned.
Speaker 17: That was when I first noticed that the President's memory
Speaker 17: was failing, because the President would give an answer and
Speaker 17: he would not have remembered the details of what had transpired.
Speaker 17: So I would correct the president, tell him, this is
Speaker 17: what I think you ought to say, and the President
Speaker 17: would say right, and then he would come back to
Speaker 17: the first question, and the President would not remember what
Speaker 17: I had suggested to him to say. So at that
Speaker 17: point I knew it was going to be difficult.
Speaker 11: What do you mean, I have a few words here
Speaker 11: before I take your questions some brief remarks.
Speaker 1: At eight pm on November nineteenth, the President walked out
Speaker 1: to a podium in the East Room of the White House.
Speaker 1: He delivered a brief statement in which he echoed Poindexter's
Speaker 1: talking points about the diplomatic opening to Iran. Then he
Speaker 1: opened the floor to questions from the press.
Speaker 12: If I can call up, if your armed shipments had
Speaker 12: no effect on the release of the hostages, then how
Speaker 12: do you explain the release of the hostages at the
Speaker 12: same time that the shipments were coming out?
Speaker 11: Now, I said that at the time, I said to
Speaker 11: them that there was something they could do to show
Speaker 11: their sincerity, and if they really meant it that they
Speaker 11: were not in favor of backing terrorists, they could begin
Speaker 11: by releasing our hostages.
Speaker 1: Even as he pushed Poindexter's high minded rationale for the
Speaker 1: arm sales, Reagan struggled to explain how the hostages fit
Speaker 1: into it, and who exactly the US had been dealing
Speaker 1: with in a.
Speaker 13: How did you know that you were reaching the moderates
Speaker 13: and how do you define a moderate in that kind
Speaker 13: of a government.
Speaker 11: Well, again, you're asking questions that I cannot get into.
Speaker 11: With regard of the answers, but believe me, we had
Speaker 11: information that led us to believe that there are factions
Speaker 11: within Iran, and many of them with an eye toward
Speaker 11: the fact that they think sooner rather than later, there
Speaker 11: is going to be a change in the government there,
Speaker 11: and there is great dissatisfaction among the people.
Speaker 1: Something else happened during the press conference, too. Reagan repeatedly
Speaker 1: denied any US involvement in the two arms shipments that
Speaker 1: took place in nineteen eighty five. These were the shipments
Speaker 1: that had started at all, the ones in which Israel
Speaker 1: had served as the middleman. George Schultz, the Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: knew the president's remarks have contained inaccuracies. The next day,
Speaker 1: he confronted Reagan about it face to face.
Speaker 10: I always had a pattern with him, whenever he gave
Speaker 10: a speech or a pres we'd have a talk afterwards,
Speaker 10: and I'd give him my reactions. And my reaction was,
Speaker 10: you told a lot of things that weren't true. You
Speaker 10: think they're true, and they've been fed to you by
Speaker 10: your staff, and they're not true. And if you would like,
Speaker 10: I will come over to the White House and go
Speaker 10: through them with you. And he invited more.
Speaker 1: Over Schultz met with Reagan in the White House residence.
Speaker 10: And I went through specific things that he said and
Speaker 10: then pointed out why they weren't right. And he was
Speaker 10: baffled because he thought his staff had given me his
Speaker 10: factual information and he assumed they were right, which it
Speaker 10: wasn't true. I never thought I'd talk to a President
Speaker 10: of the United States that way.
Speaker 1: While the President tried to contain the scandal in public,
Speaker 1: his administration was trying to take control of it behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. The effort was led by Reagan's Attorney General,
Speaker 1: ed mess. Mee was a longtime member of the president's
Speaker 1: inner circle. He had been at Reagan's side back in
Speaker 1: the sixties when Reagan was the governor of California, and
Speaker 1: he'd followed him to the White House in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: Mess's decades of experience as a Reagan whisperer made him
Speaker 1: a uniquely powerful adviser Reagan's alter ego.
Speaker 9: It is true that first and foremost he's loyal to
Speaker 9: Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 11: Ed Mees, whether by instinct or by design, is Ronald
Speaker 11: Reagan's man.
Speaker 1: Here's journalist Jane Mayer again.
Speaker 7: He was kind of the keeper of the flame. Of
Speaker 7: the kind of conservative values that Reagan served and supported.
Speaker 7: He was a loyalist extraordinaire.
Speaker 1: Toward the end of Reagan's first term, he nominated Mees
Speaker 1: to be Attorney General. It was a controversial choice, what
Speaker 1: if mess ended up having to investigate his friend.
Speaker 15: Meies came under sharp questioning from members of the Senate
Speaker 15: Judiciary Committee, concerned whether he would be the president's or
Speaker 15: the people's lawyer.
Speaker 9: We have learned the evil lesson of Watergate.
Speaker 5: Drshowitz, Professor of Criminal law at Harvard University.
Speaker 9: When you have a political operative in the position of
Speaker 9: Attorney general, it creates an inherent conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: After more than a year of questions about that and
Speaker 1: other controversies, Meis was confirmed by the Senate, and the
Speaker 1: closest vote for an Attorney general in sixty years.
Speaker 15: Edwin mess was finally sworn in today as the new
Speaker 15: U s Attorney General. The Senate voted sixty three to
Speaker 15: thirty one to confirm MEAs on Saturday. The vote came
Speaker 15: after a filibuster.
Speaker 1: In January of nineteen eighty six, shortly after the first
Speaker 1: two weapons shipments to Iran, Meis was asked to provide
Speaker 1: a legal opinion about the initiative. Some of the president's
Speaker 1: advisors have been preparing a so called finding for the
Speaker 1: president to sign. A finding was a kind of document
Speaker 1: that formally authorized covert actions, in this case, the secret
Speaker 1: arm sales. According to law, the White House had to
Speaker 1: notify Congress whenever the President signed a co overt action finding,
Speaker 1: and they had to do it in a quote timely fashion.
Speaker 1: But Meis concluded it was fine to hold off on
Speaker 1: telling Congress about the arm sales until after the hostages
Speaker 1: were released. Nearly a year later, Congress still had not
Speaker 1: been informed. Two days after Reagan's press conference in the
Speaker 1: East Room, mess undertook an internal investigation to figure out
Speaker 1: the facts. The president could not afford to keep making
Speaker 1: public statements based on incomplete information. It would be Miss's
Speaker 1: job to cross reference everyone's stories and brief Reagan on
Speaker 1: what he learned. Meeces would later testify that he conducted
Speaker 1: the investigation on an informal basis as Reagan's counselor and friend,
Speaker 1: rather than as the attorney general. Nevertheless, he staffed the
Speaker 1: project with officials from the Department of Justice that included
Speaker 1: Charles Cooper, a thirty four year old attorney who oversaw
Speaker 1: the Office of Legal Counsel.
Speaker 18: It was not a publicly known or announced investigation. It
Speaker 18: was in fact, very much in keeping with the fact
Speaker 18: that the material of the investigation, that is, the essential facts,
Speaker 18: the transactions, the subject matter of the investigation, remained classified.
Speaker 1: It came to be called the Weekend Investigation. The idea
Speaker 1: was that Meice and Cooper would do some digging and
Speaker 1: be ready to present the facts to the President the
Speaker 1: following Monday.
Speaker 18: And the mission was to just get the facts, get
Speaker 18: the truth. The worst thing that the administration could do
Speaker 18: was advance a false narrative about all this. Once the
Speaker 18: truth did come out, it would be exponentially worse politically
Speaker 18: and otherwise legally for the President.
Speaker 1: For his administration, the plan was to interview the people
Speaker 1: most intimately involved in the arm sales and look through
Speaker 1: memos and other documents that could shed light on how
Speaker 1: the initiative had evolved. Meanwhile, two of the people closest
Speaker 1: to the Iran weapons program, John Poindexter and Oliver North,
Speaker 1: set about getting their affairs in order. Poindexter was concerned
Speaker 1: about the earliest covert action finding that Reagan had signed
Speaker 1: to cover the arm sales. The document had plainly stated
Speaker 1: that the purpose of the initiative was to rescue American hostages. Later,
Speaker 1: Reagan would sign other findings that listed other reasons for
Speaker 1: the ARM sales, reasons that were more in line with
Speaker 1: Poindexter's talking points about improving US relations with Iran. But
Speaker 1: Poindexter still had the first version, and he was worried
Speaker 1: that it would become a political liability.
Speaker 17: I decided that the first version of the finding, which
Speaker 17: was not a complete explanation of what we were doing,
Speaker 17: was not important, and so I personally destroyed it.
Speaker 19: How did you destroy it?
Speaker 1: Earned it outside out in the back, like a coffee
Speaker 1: can or something.
Speaker 17: Essentially it was a coffee can. Did that feel momentus momeatish? No,
Speaker 17: not really. I hadn't liked that version of the finding
Speaker 17: to begin with, and it was good riddance.
Speaker 1: Oliver North had similar instincts. He had been informed that
Speaker 1: DOJ officials working with Edmeice and Charles Cooper were planning
Speaker 1: to come to his office to look through his files.
Speaker 1: Here again is Jane Mayer.
Speaker 7: Mees didn't just rush in and seize their files as
Speaker 7: the FBI might have, which gave them notice that if
Speaker 7: there was anything in there, maybe they better take care
Speaker 7: of it.
Speaker 1: North would later testify that his priority during this time
Speaker 1: was to protect government secrets. One of those secrets was
Speaker 1: the diversion of profits from the Iran arm sales to
Speaker 1: the Contras. As part of his effort to conceal some
Speaker 1: of his activities, North asked his secretary, Vaughn Hall, to
Speaker 1: help him alter documents, like retype them with entire sentences deleted.
Speaker 1: But some documents were apparently beyond redemption.
Speaker 7: They fed so many into the shredder that was in
Speaker 7: the NSC that it jammed. It was just, you know,
Speaker 7: just a complete obstruction of evidence party taking place as
Speaker 7: they shredded everything in sight.
Speaker 1: The next day, two DOJ staffers working on Edmes's weekend
Speaker 1: investigation came to North's office. North himself wasn't in yet
Speaker 1: when the staffers, Brad Reynolds and John Richardson arrived and
Speaker 1: started going through a stack of folders. Here's Ann Roe,
Speaker 1: an editor at The Economist and author of Lives Lies
Speaker 1: and the Iran Contra Affair.
Speaker 14: They're trying to be very quiet. Actually, they imbibed this
Speaker 14: air of sort of high secrecy that goes around North
Speaker 14: I mean they're behaving a bit like secret agents themselves,
Speaker 14: these two officials that they're writing notes to each other,
Speaker 14: they're not actually speaking to each other or just whispering.
Speaker 1: Reynolds and Richardson planned to go through the folders and
Speaker 1: North thought flagging important documents. They wanted a photocopy as
Speaker 1: they went.
Speaker 14: So they're looking through the folders and they're about three
Speaker 14: folders in and they've suddenly come upon this Manila folder
Speaker 14: with wh written on it. It's quite a thin folder,
Speaker 14: not much in it and a close type document, no spacing,
Speaker 14: and they have a look at it.
Speaker 1: The document was a five page memo titled Release of
Speaker 1: American Hostages in Beirut.
Speaker 14: There's a paragraph in there that says residual funds allocated
Speaker 14: as follows twelve point two million dollars to supply the
Speaker 14: Democratic Nicaraguan resistance.
Speaker 1: The document would come to be known simply as the
Speaker 1: Diversion Memo. It laid out how millions of dollars generated
Speaker 1: by the arm shipments to Iran could be diverted to
Speaker 1: the contras in Nicaragua. Reynolds and Richardson were taken aback.
Speaker 14: They both had the same reaction to this, that it's
Speaker 14: too spectacular, that it's too extraordinary to think it ever happened.
Speaker 1: Reynolds hid the memo in the stack of papers he
Speaker 1: intended to copy.
Speaker 14: You might wonder at this point why North was so
Speaker 14: happy to leave these two folks in his office where
Speaker 14: there was something as explosive as a diversion memo just
Speaker 14: sitting there. The reason was that there being a complete
Speaker 14: orgy of shredding going on in this office.
Speaker 1: Reynolds and Richardson hurried to tell ed Meice what they
Speaker 1: had found. On their way out of the office, they
Speaker 1: ran into Oliver North and told him they were about
Speaker 1: to take a break for lunch. Then they met mess
Speaker 1: and Charles Cooper at the old Ebbitt Grill about a
Speaker 1: block away from the White House. Here's Cooper again.
Speaker 18: We were in a booth, Our voices were lowered. We
Speaker 18: took care to make sure that our conversation wasn't overheard.
Speaker 18: Vividly remember ed Mees's reaction, because as we all listened
Speaker 18: to him, we immediately understood the potential import of what
Speaker 18: Brad was telling us, and so we were all wide
Speaker 18: eyed and jaws dropped. Ed simply said, oh shit.
Speaker 1: The next day, mis met with North the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice to confront him with the smoking gun.
Speaker 14: Meats had been a prosecutor for years and he knew
Speaker 14: how to do this, and so they go all over
Speaker 14: the arms sells and chat about this and that and
Speaker 14: so on. The North he's very relaxed and answering the questions,
Speaker 14: and then miss suddenly says what about this and hands
Speaker 14: him over the diversion memo.
Speaker 18: And Ali was taken aback that Ed knew about it.
Speaker 18: His demeanor just betrayed the fact that he wasn't expecting
Speaker 18: that question.
Speaker 14: He says something like I missed one. So Mey said,
Speaker 14: well did this happen? And all said yes.
Speaker 1: After his meeting with Mees, North tried to call Poindexter
Speaker 1: to tell him the diversion had been discovered, but Poindexter
Speaker 1: wasn't reachable. North then returned to his office, where he
Speaker 1: stayed until four fifteen in the morning, shredding more documents. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Ed Mee and Charles Cooper knew they were holding a
Speaker 1: time bomb.
Speaker 18: The most important implication of this, and ed Mees grasped
Speaker 18: it immediately, was that this information is something that the
Speaker 18: president must number one know immediately, and Number two that
Speaker 18: the President must disclose publicly. It was inevitable that something
Speaker 18: like that was going to surface into the public domain
Speaker 18: that this had happened, and if it surfaced through any
Speaker 18: other means other than the president's public disclosure, it would
Speaker 18: be denounced as a cover up, regardless of what the
Speaker 18: real facts were.
Speaker 1: On Monday, November twenty fourth, Mess went to the White
Speaker 1: House to tell Reagan what his weekend investigation had uncovered.
Speaker 1: He told the President that Oliver North had been taking
Speaker 1: money from the Iran weapons sales and giving it to
Speaker 1: the Contras.
Speaker 18: Ed made that report in a very tightly controlled meeting
Speaker 18: with the President and his firm recommendation that this information
Speaker 18: be made public as quickly as it reasonably could be.
Speaker 1: Reagan wrote about the meeting in his diary. That night,
Speaker 1: Ed m told me of a smoking gun our Colonel
Speaker 1: North gave the money to the Contras. North didn't tell
Speaker 1: me about this. This may call for resignations. It soon
Speaker 1: became clear that John Poindexter North, supervisor the National Security Council,
Speaker 1: had been in on the diversion two. Reagan and Mess
Speaker 1: agreed that the situation was so radioactive that the only
Speaker 1: option was to announce it publicly and force Poindexter and
Speaker 1: North out of the White House. It would be a
Speaker 1: huge news story no matter what, but maybe they could
Speaker 1: control the narrative. The next day, John Poindexter was asked
Speaker 1: to resign.
Speaker 17: I knew that it would be controversial that I had
Speaker 17: approved the use of the excess profits without telling the president.
Speaker 17: I wanted him to have some distance from that decision,
Speaker 17: and I thought the way to put emphasis on that
Speaker 17: was to resign. You know, I had taken a risk,
Speaker 17: and I had lost.
Speaker 1: North drafted resignation letter too, but before he could leave
Speaker 1: on his own terms, he was fired from the NSC
Speaker 1: staff and reassigned to another job in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: It was decided that Reagan would deliver yet another public
Speaker 1: statement on the scandal that was now being called Iran Gate.
Speaker 1: This time it would be a press conference including both
Speaker 1: Reagan and Mees, and they would disclose the results of
Speaker 1: mesa's weekend investigation. Just before the press conference began, Richard Seacord,
Speaker 1: the retired Air Force general who had worked on both
Speaker 1: the contrary supply effort and the Iran weapons sales, called
Speaker 1: Poindexter on the phone. Seacord begged Poindexter not to give
Speaker 1: up and resign, telling him he should force the President
Speaker 1: to step up to the plate and take responsibility for
Speaker 1: his actions. But Poindexter told him it was all over.
Speaker 1: You don't understand, he said, According to the Sea Coords memoir,
Speaker 1: it's too late. They're building a wall around.
Speaker 17: Him to isolate him from the use of the excess province,
Speaker 17: which again we didn't think there was any illegal about it,
Speaker 17: but it would be controversial. One of the problems that
Speaker 17: I saw at the time was that I was beginning
Speaker 17: to question whether the President could really defend the initiative,
Speaker 17: whether he could explain it to the American public.
Speaker 19: We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen, the President of
Speaker 19: the United States.
Speaker 1: On November twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, Ronald Reagan gave
Speaker 1: a press conference to make public what he'd learned. He
Speaker 1: kept things pretty vague.
Speaker 11: Last Friday, after becoming concern whether my national security apparatus
Speaker 11: had provided me with a security or a complete factual
Speaker 11: record with respect to the implementation of my policy toward Iran,
Speaker 11: I directed the Attorney General to undertake a review of
Speaker 11: this matter over the weekend and report to me on
Speaker 11: Monday and yesterday Secretary Meice provided me in the White
Speaker 11: House Chief of Staff with a report on his preliminary findings,
Speaker 11: and this report led me to conclude that I was
Speaker 11: not fully informed on the nature of one of the
Speaker 11: activities undertaken in connection with this initiative, This action raises.
Speaker 1: When he was finished speaking, Reagan stepped aside and Edmeese
Speaker 1: took his place at the microphone, why don't.
Speaker 17: I tell you what is the situation?
Speaker 1: And then Jane Mayer was covering the White House for
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal at the time, and she was
Speaker 1: watching the press conference as it happened.
Speaker 7: It was an unusual thing to see this tubby barrel
Speaker 7: of a man come in with his pink face, and
Speaker 7: he goes up to the podium and he kind of
Speaker 7: matter of factly lays out this completely astounding story.
Speaker 13: Certain monies which were received in the transaction were taken
Speaker 13: and made available to the forces in Central America. The
Speaker 13: President knew nothing about it until I reported it to him.
Speaker 13: I alerted him yesterday morning we still had some more
Speaker 13: work to do, and then I gave him the detail
Speaker 13: that we had yesterday afternoon.
Speaker 3: Who in the NSC was aware that this extra amount
Speaker 3: of money was being transferred to the so called contras
Speaker 3: or under their control.
Speaker 13: The only person's in the United States government that knew
Speaker 13: precisely about this, The only person was Lieutenant Colonel North.
Speaker 7: I mean, it was unbelievable. It was the craziest thing,
Speaker 7: and he was just sort of matter of factly running
Speaker 7: through it. We realized that, at least I realized that
Speaker 7: I'd missed the whole story.
Speaker 1: Charles Cooper, the DOJ official who had worked with me
Speaker 1: on the weekend investigation, was watching the press conference with
Speaker 1: Secretary of State George Schultz.
Speaker 18: I was in the kind of the control room, just
Speaker 18: off the briefing room, and I was watching it on
Speaker 18: a monitor in that control room, and I remember vividly
Speaker 18: after that was done, George Schultz basically turning from the
Speaker 18: TV monitors, standing right next to me and looking at
Speaker 18: me and saying good job, and then walking out.
Speaker 1: Things moved very quickly after that. On Thursday, November twenty seventh, Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times reported that Oliver North had shredded
Speaker 1: reams of documents that could have been used as evidence.
Speaker 1: It was starting to feel a lot like Watergate.
Speaker 9: Reporters attempted to ask Oliver North at his home today
Speaker 9: about published stories that he had destroyed documents which may
Speaker 9: have shed light on the Iran arm scandal.
Speaker 20: At the appropriate time and in the appropriate forum, I
Speaker 20: will make a full exposition, and I will do so
Speaker 20: on the advice of my attorney. I would suggest that
Speaker 20: you all go home and thank God for the blessings
Speaker 20: of the beautiful country.
Speaker 9: North later tried to visit the White House, but was
Speaker 9: told he could not enter under any circumstances.
Speaker 1: On December first, Reagan announced the creation of the Tower Commission,
Speaker 1: a group of three former political leaders who would investigate
Speaker 1: what went wrong in the White House chain of command. Then,
Speaker 1: on December twod Reagan convinced Edmeese to request the appointment
Speaker 1: of an independent council, a move enabled by reforms that
Speaker 1: were enacted after Watergate.
Speaker 3: The twenty General Niece's turning over the case to an
Speaker 3: independent council.
Speaker 4: Lawrence Walsh, a former judge and former Deputy Attorney General,
Speaker 4: will be the man to search for any criminal wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: In appointing a special prosecutor and in ordering his senior
Speaker 2: staff members to appear before it or Congress, Reagan was
Speaker 2: doing what President Richard Nixon did not during Watergate, sweeping
Speaker 2: away all suspicion of a cover.
Speaker 1: Up between the Tower Commission and the Independent Council. The
Speaker 1: White House was under scrutiny on multiple fronts. Congress was
Speaker 1: starting up its own investigations too, and reporters were beginning
Speaker 1: to ask questions about Edmee.
Speaker 3: Mees may be the Attorney General, but he is also
Speaker 3: one of President Reagan's oldest and closest associates, and what
Speaker 3: he says will be weighed here.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, one of Mesa's colleagues of the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice complained that the Criminal Division and even
Speaker 1: the FB should have been involved in the fact finding mission. Later,
Speaker 1: Mece would testify that his goal after the Iran story
Speaker 1: broke had been to quote limit the damage. And when
Speaker 1: you look at the way he went about the investigation,
Speaker 1: giving people an opportunity to destroy documents that could never
Speaker 1: be recovered, it's hard to feel like his top priority
Speaker 1: was to get the full truth. I asked Charles Cooper
Speaker 1: about that, whether the inquiry had been a good faith
Speaker 1: effort or just another attempt at damage control.
Speaker 18: I don't think there's a difference between getting to the
Speaker 18: truth and controlling the damage at least in my view,
Speaker 18: and I know ed me shares it. The one thing
Speaker 18: that would be most damaging and most inevitably discovered, would
Speaker 18: be an effort to present a false narrative to Congress
Speaker 18: about something like this. So, to my mind, you know,
Speaker 18: damage control and finding the facts were synonymous. You know,
Speaker 18: I reject very firmly the skepticism about the genuineness I
Speaker 18: guess of an effort to find the truth and to
Speaker 18: disclose the truth. That was our mission.
Speaker 1: In any event, the administration's attempts to minimize the scandal
Speaker 1: seemed to have the opposite effect. Within a month of
Speaker 1: the story becoming public, Reagan's approval rating had dropped by
Speaker 1: twenty one percent. One poll found that ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the American people believed he was lying about what he knew. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: from his home in Virginia, cut off from the job
Speaker 1: he had loved so much, Oliver North was adjusting to
Speaker 1: life as a public figure.
Speaker 9: Just two blocks from the White House. After meeting with
Speaker 9: his new criminal lawyer, North again refused to answer questions.
Speaker 20: I would refer those questions to my attorney.
Speaker 9: The questions set on reports confirmed by.
Speaker 1: North was optimistic that once everything was out in the open,
Speaker 1: people would see that his actions have been justified, maybe
Speaker 1: even heroic. He said as much in a letter he
Speaker 1: sent to John Poindexter the night before he was fired.
Speaker 1: I remain convinced that what we tried to accomplish was
Speaker 1: worth the risk, he wrote. We nearly succeeded. Hopefully when
Speaker 1: the political fractricide is finished, there will be others who
Speaker 1: will agree warmest reguards Semper Fidelis Oliver North. On the
Speaker 1: next episode of Fiasco, Ali Mania.
Speaker 7: She's coming off great on TV.
Speaker 17: We're getting flooded with calls.
Speaker 7: People love him, and that's when they basically stopped asking
Speaker 7: foocal questions.
Speaker 1: For a list of books, articles, and documentaries we used
Speaker 1: in our research, follow the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Fiasco is a production of Prologue Projects and it's distributed
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Shows produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline Kaplan,
Speaker 1: Ulla Kulpa, and me Leon Mayfock. Our editor was Camilla Hammer.
Speaker 1: Our researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Nick Filvester. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at
Speaker 1: Chips n Y Audio mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Rayphiel
Speaker 1: and Johnny Vince Evans. Copyright council provided by Peter Yassi
Speaker 1: at Yass Butler Plc. Thanks to Sam Graham Felsen, Sorea,
Speaker 1: Shockley and Katchick and Kova. Special thanks to Luminary and
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. Binge the entire season of Fiasco
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Speaker 1: up on the Fiasco show page on Apple Podcasts or
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