Speaker 1: Pushkin in a political scandal, the gold standard for evidence
Speaker 1: has always been tapes. Tapes were decisive in Watergate.
Speaker 2: We must not have any question to know on this.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm in charge of this thinking, and I am.
Speaker 4: Good about everything else.
Speaker 1: They were decisive in the Clinton impeachment.
Speaker 5: They're bagging.
Speaker 1: Put it in a zip rock bag, and you pack.
Speaker 6: It in with your treasures.
Speaker 4: For though, I don't know, Amonica, it's just this nagging,
Speaker 4: awful feeling I have in the back of my head.
Speaker 1: In Iran Contra, there were no tapes, at least none
Speaker 1: that the public ever got to hear, but there was
Speaker 1: something almost as good. Notes, specifically contemporaneous notes, memos, minutes, calendars, diaries,
Speaker 1: things that people wrote down while events were unfolding, before
Speaker 1: they had a chance to contort or revise their accounts
Speaker 1: of what happened. George H. W. Bush started keeping a
Speaker 1: diary on November fourth, nineteen eighty six. He was still
Speaker 1: the vice president then, but he was already thinking about
Speaker 1: the future. In his first entry, Bush wrote, this is
Speaker 1: the beginning of what I hope will be in accurate diary.
Speaker 1: He vowed to spend between five and fifteen minutes a
Speaker 1: day recording observations about his run for the presidency in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. In his second diary entry, Bush addressed
Speaker 1: a news story that had just found its way into
Speaker 1: the American media after first appearing in the Lebanese magazine
Speaker 1: called Al Chirau.
Speaker 7: Despite repeated rhetoric from the White House that this country
Speaker 7: would not deal with terrorists or terrorist states, that seems
Speaker 7: to be precisely what happened with.
Speaker 2: Sixty million dollars.
Speaker 1: In his diary, Bush referred to the question of the hostages.
Speaker 1: He described himself as quote one of the few people
Speaker 1: that know fully the details. There's a lot of flak
Speaker 1: and misinformation out there, Bush noted, it is not a
Speaker 1: subject we can talk about.
Speaker 3: Through all of this, there has been considerable speculation about
Speaker 3: the role of Vice President Bush. Where was he on
Speaker 3: the Iran affair.
Speaker 1: Bush's public stance in the immediate aftermath of Iran Contra
Speaker 1: was that he had been out of the loop. He
Speaker 1: didn't know that the Iran weapons sales were part of
Speaker 1: a straight armed for hostages deal. He didn't know what
Speaker 1: the secret program to aid the contras, and he definitely
Speaker 1: didn't know about the diversion of profits from one operation
Speaker 1: to the other.
Speaker 4: I was aware of our Iran initiative, and I support
Speaker 4: the President's decision, and I was not aware of and
Speaker 4: I oppose any diversion of funds and he ransom payments
Speaker 4: or any circumvention.
Speaker 1: By the spring of nineteen eighty seven, Bush was preparing
Speaker 1: to compete in the Republican primary. He ran as a
Speaker 1: heavy favorite against Televangelis Pat Robertson and Kansas Senator Bob Dole.
Speaker 6: No, what do you think about eighty eight?
Speaker 7: You got your mind made up? Or this is still open?
Speaker 8: Now, it's still open.
Speaker 9: It is those open minds and even some minds that
Speaker 9: are already made up, that the six Republican presidential candidates
Speaker 9: all hope to influence over the next three months.
Speaker 3: A major issue emerging in the Republican presidential campaign is
Speaker 3: how much Vice President George Bush knew about the Iran
Speaker 3: contra affair.
Speaker 7: Phobs News has spent more than a month preparing to
Speaker 7: Night's report on the Vice President and the Iran contra affair.
Speaker 1: On the eve of the Iowa Caucuses in early nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, CBS Evening News aired a five minute segment
Speaker 1: highlighting evidence that undermined Bush's statements on Iran contract.
Speaker 7: Questions remain about Vice President Bush's role in the Iran
Speaker 7: arms sale.
Speaker 1: Dan rather pointed to paperwork that indicated Bush had sat
Speaker 1: in on multiple meetings about the Iran weapons initiative.
Speaker 7: Mister Bush attended more than fifteen meetings in the Oval
Speaker 7: office at which the arms sales were discussed.
Speaker 1: He also quoted from notes and memos that suggested Bush
Speaker 1: knew about the Contra resupply operation.
Speaker 7: The Vice President's office says he and his age were
Speaker 7: never involved in directing, coordinating, or approving military aid to
Speaker 7: the Contras, but the record is riddled with inconsistencies.
Speaker 1: Bush had agreed ahead of time to sit for a
Speaker 1: live interview directly after the segment aired. What followed was
Speaker 1: a heated exchange, with Bush claiming that CBS News had
Speaker 1: set him up by telling him the segment would be
Speaker 1: a political profile and rather trying to pin the Vice
Speaker 1: President down on what exactly he had known about Iran Contra.
Speaker 7: You said these you had known this was an arms
Speaker 7: for hostages squap, that you would have opposed it. You
Speaker 7: also said exactly that.
Speaker 10: You did not know that.
Speaker 2: May I answered that that was a question. It was yes,
Speaker 2: statement a statement.
Speaker 4: Let me ask the question if created this program, As
Speaker 4: testifiers stated publicly, he did not think it was arms
Speaker 4: for hostages and later and that's me.
Speaker 7: I don't want to be ugumented, mister, the same questions.
Speaker 4: A whole career is It's not fair to judge my
Speaker 4: whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you
Speaker 4: like it if I judge your career by those seven
Speaker 4: minutes when you walked off the set in New York?
Speaker 1: As Dan Rather noted in his report, a CBS News
Speaker 1: New York Times poll had found that almost a third
Speaker 1: of all Republicans believed Bush was hiding something CNN Election
Speaker 1: Right eighty eight. But Iran Contra couldn't stop George Bush.
Speaker 1: He eventually ran away with the Republican nomination, and that
Speaker 1: fall he defeated his Democratic rival Michael Dukakis in the
Speaker 1: general election.
Speaker 3: The state of Michigan has just put George Bush over the.
Speaker 9: Top and the number of electoral votes needed to take
Speaker 9: the White House.
Speaker 1: After two terms as VP, Bush would succeed Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: as president. All the while, Bush maintained his diary. I
Speaker 1: say maintained because he didn't actually write his entries out
Speaker 1: by hand. He dictated them into a tape recorder. His
Speaker 1: assistant would then deliver the cassettes to the Vice President's
Speaker 1: office in Houston, Texas. There, Bush's Houston based secretary would
Speaker 1: transcribe them and file them away. Besides those two intermediaries,
Speaker 1: plus the head of Bush's Houston office, no one knew
Speaker 1: that Bush was keeping a diary. Not Ronald Reagan, not
Speaker 1: the Attorney General, and not Lawrence Walsh, the Independent Council
Speaker 1: who was investigating Iran contra. Walsh and his team of
Speaker 1: prosecutors had started working on the case about a month
Speaker 1: after Bush dictated his first entry, and a few months
Speaker 1: after that, the Office of the Independent Council had submitted
Speaker 1: a document request to the White House asking for any notes, diaries,
Speaker 1: or audio tapes that might be relevant to their investigation.
Speaker 11: All the document requests sought contemporaneous documents and were very
Speaker 11: carefully written and encompassed notes and jottings and dictations and diaries.
Speaker 1: This is John Q. Barrett, who worked on the Independent
Speaker 1: Council's investigation under Lawrence Walsh. Barrett is now a professor
Speaker 1: at Saint John's University's School of Law.
Speaker 11: Contemporaneous documents do speak for themselves. The notes that people
Speaker 11: are taken when they're not trying to shade their story.
Speaker 11: It gives you a roadmap that was highly valuable evidence.
Speaker 1: Highly valuable evidence that Bush did not hand over to
Speaker 1: the Independent Council's Office. Whether Bush made that decision personally
Speaker 1: or whether someone else in his orbit made it for him,
Speaker 1: the move would have lasting consequences. Bush's diary and his
Speaker 1: failure to disclose it would become part of a showdown
Speaker 1: between the Independent Council's Office and the President of the
Speaker 1: United States. In the end, it wasn't Reagan who would
Speaker 1: define the legacy of Iran Contra.
Speaker 12: It was Bush.
Speaker 1: I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries. This
Speaker 1: is fiasco Iran Contra.
Speaker 2: Iran Contra is the creature that just won't die no
Speaker 2: matter how many times George Bush tries to drive us
Speaker 2: a stake through its heart. Some top Republicans are urging
Speaker 2: Bush to retire.
Speaker 12: I was in fact interviewed by the FBI.
Speaker 13: Well President acted as he faces a demand for notes
Speaker 13: that could still be embarrassing. Now he may try to
Speaker 13: resist on the grounds that Iran contract is all over.
Speaker 5: I think it's the last card in the cover. He's
Speaker 5: played the final card.
Speaker 1: Episode eight, our season finale. Pardon me how George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush tried to close the loop on Iran Contra. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Mary Belcher was a reporter covering the
Speaker 1: White House for the Washington Times when the Iran Contra
Speaker 1: scandal broke in November of nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 12: The Press Corps was covering Reagan on a I believe
Speaker 12: it was a cross country trip that ended in California,
Speaker 12: and he was sort of giving a farewell even though
Speaker 12: he had still two years left in office in nineteen
Speaker 12: eighty six.
Speaker 1: As luck would have it, Belcher was actually on Air
Speaker 1: Force one when reports about Bud McFarlane and Oliver North's
Speaker 1: secret Tehran trip started trickling out. Belcher and a colleague
Speaker 1: from Time magazine had accompanied the President to California. They
Speaker 1: ended up filing the Pool Report that day on behalf
Speaker 1: of all the journalists in the White House Press Corps.
Speaker 12: We asked the president spokesperson about these reports, and we
Speaker 12: didn't get much of any answer. One thing he did
Speaker 12: say to us was be careful about repeating these sorts
Speaker 12: of reports. Because you could be wrong.
Speaker 1: Soon Belcher stopped thinking of herself as a White House reporter.
Speaker 1: She was now on the Iran Contribute. She covered the
Speaker 1: congressional hearings, the indictments of Oliver North and John Poindexter,
Speaker 1: as well as north trial. Then Belcher was presented with
Speaker 1: an opportunity to change careers and get a very different
Speaker 1: perspective on the story.
Speaker 12: And at that point, the spokesperson for Special Counsel Lawrence
Speaker 12: Walsh was leaving to return home to Michigan, and I
Speaker 12: was invited to join the office. And I think, as
Speaker 12: a reporter, you're a voyeur and you want to know
Speaker 12: what goes on inside an investigation you've been covering. And
Speaker 12: I took the job.
Speaker 1: When Belcher became the spokesperson for the Independent Council's office,
Speaker 1: the Walsh team was focused on John Poindexter, Reagan's former
Speaker 1: national security advisor. In March of nineteen ninety, it was
Speaker 1: Poindexter's turn to face trial.
Speaker 13: He is charged with five felony counts in connection with
Speaker 13: the Iran Contra scandal. If convicted, he faces a maximum
Speaker 13: of twenty five years in prison.
Speaker 1: Poindexter was accused of lying to Congress about the US
Speaker 1: government's role in the Contra War. He was also accused
Speaker 1: of lying to the Senate about the first US sanctioned
Speaker 1: arms shipments to Iran, and of deleting electronic messages he
Speaker 1: had sent over an internal White House computer network. Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: now out of office, testified at poindexter trial. He did
Speaker 1: not appear in person in the courtroom. Instead, he was
Speaker 1: beamed in by way of a videotaped deposition. Over approximately
Speaker 1: eight hours of testimony, the former president used variations on
Speaker 1: the phrase I don't recall at least eighty eight times.
Speaker 14: I can't say that I specifically recall. I don't have
Speaker 14: a clear recollection of what might have been discussed. I
Speaker 14: don't recall ever mentioning anyone else. I don't recall that
Speaker 14: that coming.
Speaker 2: Up at all.
Speaker 14: As matter of fact, to this day, I don't know
Speaker 14: who finished the delivery of the missiles.
Speaker 12: Really, the overriding message of this is not what did
Speaker 12: the president know and when did he know it?
Speaker 1: But what did he not know and when did he
Speaker 1: not know it?
Speaker 10: I mean the list of things that he didn't know.
Speaker 12: You heard.
Speaker 1: Poindexter was convicted on all counts, but like Oliver North,
Speaker 1: he immediately appealed the verdict, arguing that the evidence against
Speaker 1: him was tainted because it was based in part on
Speaker 1: his testimony before Congress. Here's Mary Belcher again.
Speaker 12: The word taint refers to the fact that both Oliver
Speaker 12: North and John Dexter received immunity from Congress to give
Speaker 12: their testimony. Nothing that they said in those Congressional hearings
Speaker 12: could be used against them in any prosecution.
Speaker 1: This was a huge problem for Lawrence Walsh, and in
Speaker 1: a lead up to North and Poindexter's trials, he and
Speaker 1: his prosecutors had to take borderline comical steps to prevent
Speaker 1: themselves from becoming tainted by coverage of the Iran Contra scandal.
Speaker 1: They couldn't talk about the hearings with their families and
Speaker 1: literally had to turn off the TV or change the
Speaker 1: channel when any mention of North or Poindexter's testimony came on.
Speaker 1: When Mary Belcher joined Walsh's office, part of her job
Speaker 1: was to make sure the prosecutors on staff did not
Speaker 1: get tainted.
Speaker 12: Every day we would get all the press reports and
Speaker 12: gather them in the press office and mark out any
Speaker 12: statements or any information that could arguably be derived from
Speaker 12: either Oliver North through John Poindexter's congressional testimony, not just
Speaker 12: direct quotes, but background information and so so. Sometimes I
Speaker 12: would circulate to the non tainted prosecutorial team press clips
Speaker 12: that were entirely almost entirely blacked out.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't enough. As it turned out, defense attorneys
Speaker 1: for North and Poindexter didn't have to argue that walsh
Speaker 1: Or's prosecutors had been tainted. They could just say that
Speaker 1: witnesses in both trials have been influenced by seeing North
Speaker 1: and Poindexter's testimony in front of Congress. The attorneys took
Speaker 1: a broad definition of influenced. Even if a witness had
Speaker 1: only subconsciously shaped their understanding of events by watching the
Speaker 1: congressional testimony, that was a violation of North and Poindexter's
Speaker 1: Fifth Amendment rights. Here's John Q. Barrett again.
Speaker 11: How do you negate the possibility that hearing some piece
Speaker 11: of ammunized testimony didn't stimulate you to recall something that
Speaker 11: stimulated you, to recall something else that stimulated something else,
Speaker 11: that motivated you to sort of have a certain inflection
Speaker 11: or confidence or tone as you recounted what you believed
Speaker 11: was from your authentic memory without drawing an immunized testimony.
Speaker 1: North successfully challenged his convictions on appeal in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 10: A federal judge today dismissed all charges against former White
Speaker 10: House Aid Oliver North in connection with the Iron Contra affair.
Speaker 5: This, I think is a very very serious warning that
Speaker 5: immunity is not to be granted lightly.
Speaker 1: The following year, Poindexter did too.
Speaker 9: The ruling was nearly identical to one that dismissed charges
Speaker 9: against former White House Aid Oliver North.
Speaker 12: Poindexter had been By.
Speaker 1: This point, George H. W. Bush was well into his presidency.
Speaker 1: It had been an eventful period.
Speaker 13: The Iron Curking between East Germany and West Berlin has
Speaker 13: come tumbling down.
Speaker 1: The Berlin Wall had come down. In Central America, the
Speaker 1: US had invaded Panama and arrested its leader Manuel Noriega
Speaker 1: on drug trafficking charges.
Speaker 3: American military forces a nighttime invasion of Panama and sporadic
Speaker 3: fighting continuing this evening.
Speaker 1: In the least, Bush had ordered air strikes on Iraq
Speaker 1: and deployed half a million ground troops as part of
Speaker 1: the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 3: President Borch says it will not stop until Iraq gives
Speaker 3: up Kooi.
Speaker 1: Throughout all this, the Walsh investigation continued, the prosecutors weren't
Speaker 1: just interested in the people who had overseen the eurot
Speaker 1: initiative or had been in on the secret contray supply effort.
Speaker 1: They were interested in anyone who had lied to investigators
Speaker 1: about either scheme after the fact. In other words, they
Speaker 1: were interested in the possibility of a cover up, the
Speaker 1: very thing that some of Reagan's advisors had hoped to
Speaker 1: avoid after the Iran weapons sales became public and in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen ninety one, that led Walsh and his
Speaker 1: team to focus on a very senior member of Reagan's cabinet,
Speaker 1: former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger.
Speaker 11: Casper Weinberger was the Secretary of Defense from the start
Speaker 11: of the Reagan administration into nineteen eighty seven, so for
Speaker 11: the long run of years that included this activity.
Speaker 1: Biberger's personal hero was Winston Churchill, and like Churchill, he
Speaker 1: could be confrontational and stubborn. Weinberger had strongly opposed the
Speaker 1: Iran weapons program, and he had tried to convince the
Speaker 1: President it was a bad idea. Later, when testifying before Congress,
Speaker 1: Weinberger said he believed he had been successful, only to
Speaker 1: find out that Reagan had gone ahead with the arms tipments.
Speaker 11: After all, he was strongly opposed to the initiative. If
Speaker 11: he will, the idea that we should make arms deals
Speaker 11: with Iranians, the question was did he know it was
Speaker 11: going forward or not? Despite his opposition.
Speaker 1: Walsh's team had asked Weinberger to provide them with any
Speaker 1: contemporaneous notes he had taken about the Iran weapons sales,
Speaker 1: but Weinberger said he hadn't taken systematic notes on meetings
Speaker 1: during the years in question. He may have jotted things
Speaker 1: down on an informal basis, but he was too busy
Speaker 1: to produce a comprehensive record of events as they unfolded.
Speaker 11: And his general story was that he didn't have personal records,
Speaker 11: that he wasn't a diary keeper, that he didn't have notes.
Speaker 5: It's perfectly conceivable that it may have reflected something at
Speaker 5: the meeting which I didn't make notes on. I don't
Speaker 5: take short end and.
Speaker 7: I do not recall that particular subject coming up, had
Speaker 7: it come up.
Speaker 1: But then in nineteen ninety, Walsh's office obtained a document
Speaker 1: in which former Secretary of State George Schultz expressed frustration
Speaker 1: at having to share his personal notes with the Independent Council,
Speaker 1: while his colleague Casper Weinberger had managed to keep his
Speaker 1: to himself.
Speaker 11: And then he says, and the note taker writes it down.
Speaker 11: Capp never referred to his notes, so he never had
Speaker 11: to cough them up. And cap is Casper Weinberger. That's
Speaker 11: a incredibly direct statement and a tantalizing lead. And we
Speaker 11: pursued that.
Speaker 1: When pressed on the issue, Weinberger's lawyer told prosecutors that
Speaker 1: anything his client had written down had either been turned
Speaker 1: over already or was in the Library of Congress. It
Speaker 1: turned out that a cash of Weinberger's personal papers had
Speaker 1: been sent there after he stepped down as Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense in nineteen eighty seven. It was amid those personal
Speaker 1: papers at Walsh's prosecutors discovered something surprising about Casper Weinberger.
Speaker 11: And it turned out that Casper Weinberger was a habitual,
Speaker 11: meticulous note taker. You know, lived each day with a
Speaker 11: white pad at his side and logged his activities and
Speaker 11: sometimes added detail of what he learned in a meeting,
Speaker 11: what he heard from a caller. In addition, in every
Speaker 11: meeting he took his white pad and he kept meeting notes,
Speaker 11: and those also were really sort of informal transcripts of
Speaker 11: who said what as a meeting went around the room,
Speaker 11: and none of that had been produced.
Speaker 1: There were more than seventeen hundred pages of Iran contra
Speaker 1: notes in Weinberger's Library of Congress archive. They offered a
Speaker 1: window onto the internal debates that took place while the
Speaker 1: Iran arms initiative was revving up. One note quoted Reagan
Speaker 1: saying that he could answer charges of illegality, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't answer charges that bigs strong. President Reagan had passed
Speaker 1: up a chance to free hostages. Another note indicated that
Speaker 1: members of the National Security Council staff intended to present
Speaker 1: the arm sales as a means of quote helping a
Speaker 1: group that wants to overthrow the government in Iran.
Speaker 11: The notes were really a transcript of cabinet level knowledge
Speaker 11: in real time as the initiatives are going forward, and
Speaker 11: then as the investigations are occurring.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of information in Weinberger's notes.
Speaker 1: But even if you put that aside, and even if
Speaker 1: you put aside the question of whether Weinberger hid the
Speaker 1: notes in the library of Congress on purpose. The mere
Speaker 1: existence of the notes suggested that he had been lying
Speaker 1: when he said he didn't have them. The truth was
Speaker 1: that Weinberger took notes obsessively and systematically. As Walsh would
Speaker 1: later write in his memoir, Weinberger often stood at a
Speaker 1: reading desk and wrote on a five x seven inch
Speaker 1: government notepad or a legal pad. He always kept both
Speaker 1: on his desk, and when a pad was full, he
Speaker 1: would put it into a desk drawer. When the desk
Speaker 1: drawer was full, he would move the pads into the
Speaker 1: bedroom that was attached to his office.
Speaker 11: The analogy that mister Weinberger's attorneys used was it was
Speaker 11: unconscious he took notes like he brushed his teeth. I
Speaker 11: do remember Judge Walls saying at one point, I often
Speaker 11: don't remember when I brush my teeth, but I know
Speaker 11: I do brush my teeth. And what Weinberger was asked
Speaker 11: was not you know when did you last take notes?
Speaker 11: But do you take notes?
Speaker 15: You know?
Speaker 11: Obviously to deny that, given the physical evidence and so forth,
Speaker 11: was false. It couldn't be anything other than false. And
Speaker 11: I think he had a I'm a good guy and
Speaker 11: it's none of your damn business attitude. That really was
Speaker 11: his motivation to lie to those investigators.
Speaker 1: In June of nineteen ninety two, a grand jury indicted
Speaker 1: Weinberger on felony charges.
Speaker 9: Former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger was indicted today by a
Speaker 9: fel federal grand jury on five criminal charges related to
Speaker 9: the Iran contra scandal.
Speaker 8: They aimed.
Speaker 1: The charges included withholding his notes and making false statements
Speaker 1: about them, and claiming falsely that he had been unaware
Speaker 1: of the first armstreapments to Iran. Weinberger, who by this
Speaker 1: point was the publisher of Forbes magazine, rejected Walsh's accusations.
Speaker 13: Werenberger again portrayed himself as a man who had no
Speaker 13: knowledge of early arm sales to Iran and called the
Speaker 13: charges grotesque.
Speaker 2: The decision to indict me is a grotesque distortion with
Speaker 2: a prosecutorial power and the moral and a legal outrage.
Speaker 1: The indictment of Casper Weinberger signaled that more than five
Speaker 1: years after Walsh's appointment, the Independent Council was still actively
Speaker 1: pursuing new targets, and that he was aiming at the
Speaker 1: upper echelons of the Reagan administration.
Speaker 9: Weinberger is the highest ranking member of the Reagan administration
Speaker 9: to be charged.
Speaker 7: It appears that the Independent Council believes that there's been
Speaker 7: an ongoing cover up starting in November.
Speaker 16: Of nineteen eighty six that goes on through today.
Speaker 1: Weinberger's indictment catapulted Iran Contra into the middle of yet
Speaker 1: another presidential election, this one pitting George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 1: who was running for a second term, against the Democratic
Speaker 1: challenger Bill Clinton. Republicans were outraged by the indictment. Some
Speaker 1: called on Walsh to voluntarily close his office and stop
Speaker 1: wasting taxpayer money. Others called on President Bush to fire him.
Speaker 17: You've got a tired special prosecutor and some aggressive on
Speaker 17: the federal payroll and scalp hunters who are out to
Speaker 17: get Ronald Reagan. I think that's clear, and the means
Speaker 17: they've chosen to do it is to try to intimidate
Speaker 17: the cap Weinberger, and that's.
Speaker 1: The most vocal critic of the Weinberger indictment was Bush's
Speaker 1: one time rival for the Republican nomination, Bob Dole, was
Speaker 1: now serving as Senate Minority Leader. He described Walsh and
Speaker 1: his staff as a squad of highly paid assassins and
Speaker 1: accused them of trying to pressure Weinberger into testifying against Reagan.
Speaker 16: Spent five years now on somewhere between thirty and fifty
Speaker 16: million dollars, and he haven't got much to show for.
Speaker 16: And they keep perpetuating themselves in office, hoping they might
Speaker 16: sooner or later be able to get something on Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 16: They should have been closed up two or three years ago.
Speaker 16: If Congress spent fifty million dollars in this kind of chicanery,
Speaker 16: the liberal media around this town would be investigating.
Speaker 1: But Walsh's office did not shut down. Instead, two months later,
Speaker 1: the prosecutors dropped a second bomb when they filed a
Speaker 1: brief that contained an intriguing footnote. It quoted from a
Speaker 1: previously undisclosed memo about a nineteen eighty seven phone conversation
Speaker 1: between Weinberger and then Secretary of State George Schultz.
Speaker 2: Iran contrary is the creature that just won't die no
Speaker 2: matter how many times George Buyce tries to drive a
Speaker 2: stake through its heart.
Speaker 1: The memo dated to when Bush was still Reagan's VP.
Speaker 1: In an interview with The Washington Post, Bush claimed not
Speaker 1: to have realized that both Weinberger and Schultz had been
Speaker 1: against the Iran arm sales. The memo indicated Weinberger had
Speaker 1: seen Bush's comments and called Schultz to complain. Why did
Speaker 1: he say that, Weinberger asked, he was on the other side.
Speaker 1: The phone call suggested that Bush had actively supported the
Speaker 1: Iran weapons program. When the memo came out, Democratic lawmakers
Speaker 1: were quick to pounce on it.
Speaker 18: Well, it turns out that the president's recollection of affairs
Speaker 18: of state a mere six years ago when he was
Speaker 18: vice president of the United States a contradicted by Secretary
Speaker 18: Weinberger and Secretary Schultz. Well, on the floor of the House,
Speaker 18: I can't say that the President of the United States lied,
Speaker 18: but the case is clear from the Washington vot.
Speaker 1: Bush tried to dodge questions about the memo.
Speaker 4: I don't know about that. I've told very openly everything
Speaker 4: I have to say about it. I don't know about
Speaker 4: that memo.
Speaker 10: So I saw a story on it.
Speaker 4: To be honest with you, I didn't read it.
Speaker 6: Do you know what they're talking about?
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton started bringing up the memo on the trail,
Speaker 1: offering it as a retort questions about his draft deferment,
Speaker 1: which he called a hill of beans. Compared to Bush's
Speaker 1: support for a legal conduct. Clinton's running mate Al Gore
Speaker 1: got it on the action too well.
Speaker 6: The new evidence came out in the form of notes,
Speaker 6: and they asked him about it, and he just sah,
Speaker 6: I didn't read that story and just brushed it off. Well,
Speaker 6: I would like for him to concentrate on that and
Speaker 6: see whether he can remember what he said and what
Speaker 6: he did.
Speaker 1: On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety two, Bush was interviewed by
Speaker 1: Katie Kirk.
Speaker 9: Do you have any knowledge of the Iran contra ars
Speaker 9: for hostages deal?
Speaker 5: While you went.
Speaker 4: Ars Topay one hundred and fifty times under oath, some
Speaker 4: of them in our staff thirty five hundred.
Speaker 19: Yes.
Speaker 4: I said all along that I knew about the arms
Speaker 4: going and I supported the present. I gave speeches about it.
Speaker 1: Remember, up to this point, Bush had insisted that he
Speaker 1: did not know the weapons sales were part of an
Speaker 1: armed for hostages trade. Now he seemed to be admitting
Speaker 1: that he did and pretending that he had been saying
Speaker 1: so all along.
Speaker 2: Late today, Whinehouse aide said Bush misunderstood Katie Kurk's question
Speaker 2: the AIDS say when the arms deal was cooked up?
Speaker 2: He did not fully understand it because he was not
Speaker 2: in the loop.
Speaker 1: While Bush and Clinton battled over Iran Kantra in the media,
Speaker 1: defense lawyers for Casper Weinberger battled Walsh and his prosecutors
Speaker 1: in court. By the end of October, the Independent Council's
Speaker 1: Office was preparing to file a superseding indictment against Weinberger,
Speaker 1: essentially an addendum that introduced more specifics to the case
Speaker 1: against him. One of those specifics came from a note
Speaker 1: discovered in Weinberger's files. Weinberger's note said the President had
Speaker 1: decided to go with the Israeli Iranian offer to release
Speaker 1: our five hostages in return for the sale of four
Speaker 1: thousand TOE missiles. George Schultz and I opposed VP favored
Speaker 1: VP favored. Here was something better than a huffy phone
Speaker 1: call between two cabinet members. It was a contemporaneous record
Speaker 1: of Bush's support for the arms for hostages scheme.
Speaker 8: And there we were faced with the question do we
Speaker 8: take out the VP favors or do we leave it in.
Speaker 1: This is Jim Brosnahan, a prosecutor on Walsh's team. He
Speaker 1: remembers reading a draft of the superseding indictment before it
Speaker 1: was filed, and talking to Walsh about whether VP favored
Speaker 1: should be taken out. Under normal circumstances, they might not
Speaker 1: have even considered it. But this was the last week
Speaker 1: of October, just days before Americans would be going to
Speaker 1: the polls. Was VP favored too explosive to release so
Speaker 1: close to election day?
Speaker 8: And my decision was, and I take responsibility for a
Speaker 8: lot of a lot of Washington peoples thought this was wrong.
Speaker 8: I respect their opinion, but I thought it. I wasn't
Speaker 8: going to remove it. May may successful the Vice president's
Speaker 8: cover up. He had been dissembling with the American public.
Speaker 8: I wasn't going to take it out.
Speaker 1: In the press room at the Federal Courthouse in Washington,
Speaker 1: reporters combed through the indictment for new information.
Speaker 8: And everybody in the press room was going about their
Speaker 8: business and doing other things, and over in the corner
Speaker 8: is a reporter and he's typing furiously. All the other
Speaker 8: reporters went over to see what he was madly typing about,
Speaker 8: and so they all looked at it, and they saw
Speaker 8: VP favors. And that Friday night, the three leading television
Speaker 8: channels ran the story of the Vice President and all
Speaker 8: help broke.
Speaker 3: Loose new material that directly contradicts President Bush's claim that
Speaker 3: he was out of the loop in the Iran Contra affair.
Speaker 2: George schultzen I posed Bill Casey Etmees, and Vice President
Speaker 2: Bush favored.
Speaker 8: Campaigning in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 9: Clinton quickly interrupted his schedule to pounce on the revelations
Speaker 9: in the Weinberger indictment.
Speaker 7: Secretary Weinberger's notes clearly show that President Bush has not
Speaker 7: been telling the truth when he says he was out
Speaker 7: of the loop.
Speaker 1: As Bush and Clinton were making their closing arguments in
Speaker 1: the campaign, Bush's claims about Iran Contra were under scrutiny.
Speaker 1: Had he lied about his involvement, and if so, was
Speaker 1: he lying to protect Reagan or himself. Bush responded to
Speaker 1: the news the same way he had been responding to
Speaker 1: questions about Iran Contra since nineteen eighty six, by insisting
Speaker 1: that he had never been inconsistent and denying that Weinberger's
Speaker 1: notes on the meeting were in any way revelatory.
Speaker 8: We have a call from Little Rock.
Speaker 1: During an appearance on Larry King Live, Bush was confronted
Speaker 1: on the air by one of Clinton's top aides.
Speaker 8: From George Stephanopolis.
Speaker 2: Oh no, oh, no, guy ahead.
Speaker 16: He has Governor Clinton's campaign manager. This is an open
Speaker 16: phonet ess and he dialed in directly.
Speaker 2: It was lucked in at number.
Speaker 19: Go ahead, George, the president you asked us to find
Speaker 19: out what the smoking gun was, and this memo clearly
Speaker 19: shows that it wasn't these arms for hostages, five hostages
Speaker 19: in return for the sale of four thousand total missiles,
Speaker 19: and that she knew it then, according to mister Weinberger.
Speaker 8: Yeah reply now.
Speaker 4: Let me let me tell you now, mister Stephanopp, let's
Speaker 4: very able, young man. It is the Democrats who have
Speaker 4: been pushing to the tune of some forty million dollars.
Speaker 1: These hearings, Bush suggested that Walsh had included VP favored
Speaker 1: in his indictment in order to help the Clinton campaign.
Speaker 8: Are you implying or saying that Walsh did that today politically?
Speaker 4: No, I'm asking, isn't it strange? I'm not implying anything.
Speaker 4: Let the American people. Let the American people be the judge.
Speaker 10: Let's the American people.
Speaker 1: Four days later, Bush lost the election.
Speaker 14: The American people have voted to make a new beginning.
Speaker 17: A landslide victory ushers in the Clinton era Today Wednesday, November.
Speaker 6: It's been a humiliating defeat for Republicans.
Speaker 10: The landslide was in the electoral votes.
Speaker 2: Maybe you didn't read the election returns.
Speaker 4: It didn't work out quite the way we wanted it.
Speaker 6: He told his supporters He's going to finish the job
Speaker 6: with style.
Speaker 1: Bush had been voted out of office as a one
Speaker 1: term president, but he still had more than two months
Speaker 1: left in the White House. Speculation began almost immediately that
Speaker 1: Walsh's superseding indictment of Weinberger had cost Bush the White House.
Speaker 1: Bob Dole called it a deliberate hit job by the
Speaker 1: anti Reagan, anti Bush. Independent Council's Office.
Speaker 2: Aide say Bush is not angry at Clintonland, but there
Speaker 2: is anger at a ran contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh for
Speaker 2: what the White House claims is a witch hunt that
Speaker 2: hurt Bush in the election.
Speaker 1: Here's John Q. Barrett again.
Speaker 11: You know whether it was sincerely believed or just was
Speaker 11: a convenient punching bag. A lot of people said that
Speaker 11: the Walsh receiving indictment in the phrase VP favored had
Speaker 11: caused Bush to lose.
Speaker 1: A Los Angeles Times exit poll found that the recent
Speaker 1: Iran contrain news had not swayed many voters. The truth
Speaker 1: was Bush had been trailing Clinton since the summer, but
Speaker 1: he had been gaining momentum in recent weeks, and it
Speaker 1: did fade away after Walsh's big reveal. At a meeting
Speaker 1: of Republican Party leaders, Bob Dole accused Walsh of being
Speaker 1: in the tank for Clinton.
Speaker 16: I'd say to mister Walsh, why don't you have a
Speaker 16: little in house investigation. Why don't you take a look
Speaker 16: see if you can find one Republican on your staff,
Speaker 16: mister Walsh.
Speaker 1: In fact, Walsh himself was a lifelong Republican. He was
Speaker 1: appointed to serve as a federal judge by President Eisenhower
Speaker 1: and later served as his deputy attorney General. Nevertheless, four
Speaker 1: Senate Republicans made a formal request the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: appoint a new independent council to investigate.
Speaker 4: The old one.
Speaker 1: It was an ironic move. Republicans had recently killed the
Speaker 1: independent council law put in place after Watergate. The law
Speaker 1: was set to expire in a few weeks, which meant
Speaker 1: there was just enough time to get one more independent council.
Speaker 1: Investigation started Bob Dole prepared a list of criminal statutes
Speaker 1: he thought Walsh may have violated, and he sent it
Speaker 1: to Bush's Attorney General, Bill Barr. In a memo. Barr
Speaker 1: was advised against appointing another independent council. The author of
Speaker 1: the memo was the head of DOJ's Criminal Division, Robert Muller.
Speaker 1: In the end, Barr decided Muhller had it right. Instead
Speaker 1: of appointing a new Independent Council, he referred the Walsh
Speaker 1: matter to the Criminal Division. Around the same time, the
Speaker 1: Independent Council's spokesperson, Mary Belcher was asked to come in
Speaker 1: for an interview with the FBI. They wanted to know
Speaker 1: if she had given the Clinton campaign advance warning that
Speaker 1: the superseding indictment of Casper Weinberger was coming.
Speaker 12: And I don't know if anybody knows this, but I
Speaker 12: was in fact interviewed by the FBI to ask me
Speaker 12: whether or not I had leaked information to the Clinton campaign.
Speaker 1: Republicans had been raising the possibility of a leak in
Speaker 1: the media. They were suspicious because a statement issued by
Speaker 1: the Clinton campaign about the VP favored memo had been
Speaker 1: dated October twenty ninth, one day before the indictment of
Speaker 1: Casper Weinberger was filed. The explanation from the Clinton camp
Speaker 1: was that someone had simply entered the wrong date by mistake.
Speaker 1: In a Virginia FBI field office. Agents asked Mary Belcher
Speaker 1: if she was personally acquainted with Clinton's communications director George Stephanopolis.
Speaker 1: How did it come to be that FBI agents were
Speaker 1: asking about this?
Speaker 12: I don't know. I assume somebody high up thought that
Speaker 12: there was a story there, there was something worth investigating,
Speaker 12: some criminal activity, that Judge Walsh's office was somehow working
Speaker 12: in concert with presidential hopeful Bill Clinton.
Speaker 1: I asked Belcher if she thought her questioning had been
Speaker 1: part of an FBI investigation into Walsh's office. She said
Speaker 1: it had never really occurred to her to wonder, and
Speaker 1: that she had never discussed it with any of her colleagues.
Speaker 12: You know, I guess I could request the FBI three
Speaker 12: OHO two with my name on it. A three O
Speaker 12: two is a record of an investigation. It's generally a
Speaker 12: one or two sheet thing. It would be kind of
Speaker 12: funny to see it, but it was serious business. I
Speaker 12: don't want to make light of it, but I really
Speaker 12: don't know anything more about it.
Speaker 1: With the integrity of their office under attack, Walsh and
Speaker 1: his prosecutors continued to prepare for the trial of Kasper Weinberger,
Speaker 1: in which they would try to convince a jury that
Speaker 1: he had illegally withheld his notes from Iran Contra investigators. Then,
Speaker 1: on December eleventh, nineteen ninety two, the Walsh team received
Speaker 1: an astonishing piece of information. George H. W. Bush had
Speaker 1: kept a diary. A few months earlier. One of Bush's
Speaker 1: administrative assistants had found the diary while taking inventory in
Speaker 1: the White House. She thought it looked relevant to the
Speaker 1: Independent Council's investigation, so she shared it with Bush's White
Speaker 1: House Council. He kept a diary to himself until after
Speaker 1: the election. When Walsh found out about the diary, he
Speaker 1: didn't say anything about the matter publicly, and it was
Speaker 1: unclear what, if anything, he was going to do about it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: George H. W. Bush was now a lame duck president,
Speaker 1: but he was still in charge, and, as conservative commentators
Speaker 1: reminded him over and over again in the weeks after
Speaker 1: his defeat, that meant he had the power to issue pardons.
Speaker 2: Some top Republicans are urging Bush to retaliate by pardoning
Speaker 2: former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and other Iran Contra defendants.
Speaker 17: I think what happened to Cap Weinberger is one of
Speaker 17: the most disgusting things I have seen in fourteen years
Speaker 17: in Washington.
Speaker 8: He should do.
Speaker 1: He be crowned with gar respector of pardons for the
Speaker 1: Iran Contra defendants had been hanging over Walsh's investigation from
Speaker 1: the very beginning. Some had expected Ronald Reagan to issue
Speaker 1: pardons before leaving office, but Reagan didn't do it, and
Speaker 1: the idea that Bush should started gaining purchase among Republicans.
Speaker 1: After his loss, Attorney General Bill Barr gave an interview
Speaker 1: in which he said the Iran Contra defendants had been
Speaker 1: treated very unfairly. Barr declined to say at the time
Speaker 1: whether he was advising the president to issue pardons, but
Speaker 1: years later he would confirm that he was strongly in favor.
Speaker 1: John Barrett says he didn't think pardons were likely.
Speaker 11: The things that were kind of in play between the
Speaker 11: election and the end of nineteen ninety two, or between
Speaker 11: the election and Christmas, where that George Bush had withheld
Speaker 11: responsive documents that the White House Counsel's Office had been
Speaker 11: part of wittingly or unwittingly withholding those documents, and that
Speaker 11: George Bush was on notice that he was likely to
Speaker 11: be called as a witness in the Weinberger trial. All
Speaker 11: of that added up to a situation where I thought
Speaker 11: it would be unlikely, because of the self interest, that
Speaker 11: is palpable, that President Bush would exercise his pardon power.
Speaker 2: I was wrong.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 10: The Christmas Eve bombshall from President Bush today.
Speaker 13: It ended President Bush pardon Casper Weinberger, accused of lying
Speaker 13: to Congress and five others in the scandal. Bush called
Speaker 13: it an act of healing the Iran Contra.
Speaker 1: Prosecutor pardons were announced on Christmas Eve. There were six
Speaker 1: in all, three of them going to people associated with
Speaker 1: the CIA, and one to former State Department official Elliott Abrams.
Speaker 1: Another went to Bud McFarlane, who had pleaded guilty to
Speaker 1: withholding information from Congress. MacFarlane's colleagues Oliver North and John
Speaker 1: Poindexter didn't need pardons because their convictions had been overturned.
Speaker 1: That left Casper Weinberger, who was still awaiting trial. Bush's
Speaker 1: sixth pardon went to him.
Speaker 13: By barring a Weinberger trial and pardoning others who he
Speaker 13: said had acted out of patriotic motives. Bush tried to
Speaker 13: put the Iran Contra prosecutors out of business.
Speaker 1: In announcing the pardons, Bush called Casper Weinberger a true
Speaker 1: American patriot. Some may argue that this will prevent full
Speaker 1: disclosure of some new key facts to the American people.
Speaker 1: Bush said that is not true. The matter has been
Speaker 1: investigated exhaustively. Lawrence Walsh wasted no time in reacting, and
Speaker 1: he held nothing back.
Speaker 10: Prosecutor Walsh responded today, saying the pardons undermined the principle
Speaker 10: that no man is above the law.
Speaker 1: Walsh called the pardoners the last card in the cover up.
Speaker 1: He also disclosed for the first time the existence of
Speaker 1: Bush's diaries and the fact that they had been withheld
Speaker 1: from prosecutors until after the election.
Speaker 5: He is pardoning a person who committed the same type
Speaker 5: of misconduct that he did. President Bush withheld notes that
Speaker 5: should have been made available to Congress in the spring
Speaker 5: of nineteen eighty seven and into my office at the
Speaker 5: same time.
Speaker 1: To some, it looked an awful lot like Bush had
Speaker 1: pardoned Casper Weinberger in order to avoid further scrutiny of
Speaker 1: his own role in Iran contrat and his newly discovered diaries.
Speaker 13: The President acted as he faces a demand for notes
Speaker 13: that could still be embarrassing. Now he may try to
Speaker 13: resist on the grounds that Iran contract is all over.
Speaker 11: I can't speak to President Bush's thought process or the
Speaker 11: lawyers who are advising him, Boyden Gray and Bill Barr,
Speaker 11: but it's a sure thing that if Bush had testified
Speaker 11: in the Weinberger trial and his diary had been produced,
Speaker 11: I mean, we would have gotten and produced it and
Speaker 11: shared with the defense, he would have been examined or
Speaker 11: cross examined or refreshed based on those diary entries. And
Speaker 11: a pardon made it a sure thing that there would
Speaker 11: be no trial, and thus that he would never have
Speaker 11: to testify, and thus that those diary entries would never
Speaker 11: be used in trial evidence.
Speaker 1: Walsh was asked if he might bring criminal charges against
Speaker 1: Bush after he left the White House. Walsh indicated that
Speaker 1: he had not ruled it out.
Speaker 10: Is it remotely conceivable there could be a prosecution of
Speaker 10: President Bush?
Speaker 5: I could not comment on that. He's a subject now
Speaker 5: of our investigation.
Speaker 1: Bush, meanwhile, was devastated by his loss in the election.
Speaker 1: In his diary, he noted that he had slept well
Speaker 1: except for waking up in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: thrashing around about the prosecutor. But after some consideration, the
Speaker 1: prosecutor and his team decided not to charge Bush with
Speaker 1: a crime.
Speaker 11: We had extensive discussions. We all of course reassembled, you know,
Speaker 11: right after Christmas or right after the first of the year,
Speaker 11: and the consensus of the office was that, you know, really,
Speaker 11: this was the conclusion. A former president of the United
Speaker 11: States is a very special category of subject. It's almost
Speaker 11: inconceivable that one would be charged with a federal crime.
Speaker 11: Almost inconceivable.
Speaker 1: For the prosecutors in Walsh's office. The only thing left
Speaker 1: to do was assemble their findings and present them to Congress.
Speaker 1: Their twelve hundred page report was released in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, seven years after Walsh was first appointed.
Speaker 10: After a seven year investigation, Independent Council Lawrence Walsh concluded
Speaker 10: that there was a cover up by the Reagan administration
Speaker 10: of its nineteen eighty five arms sales to Iran for
Speaker 10: the purpose of releasing hostages and its funding of the
Speaker 10: Nicaraguan contras.
Speaker 1: Walsh's conclusion was that President Reagan had not committed any crime,
Speaker 1: but that he had quote set the stage for the
Speaker 1: illegal activities of others by encouraging and in general terms,
Speaker 1: ordering support of the contras. Bush hadn't committed any crimes either,
Speaker 1: Walsh said, and it turned out his diaries didn't contain
Speaker 1: much new information. Despite that first entry, in which Bush
Speaker 1: called himself one of the few people who knew the details,
Speaker 1: most of what followed was pretty anodyne. In a press conference,
Speaker 1: Walsh emphasized that Iran Contra had not been the work
Speaker 1: of a few rogue operators, that it had come from
Speaker 1: the top. Even if Reagan himself wasn't fully engaged in
Speaker 1: the details of what was happening.
Speaker 5: They didn't run off by themselves to violate the law.
Speaker 5: They thought they were carrying out his wishes. They had
Speaker 5: the backing of very high government officials in the agencies,
Speaker 5: in the State Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA,
Speaker 5: so it is in no sense of rogue operation.
Speaker 1: Walsh reserved his harshest criticism from Bush's decision to issue pardons.
Speaker 5: I think President Bush will always have to answer for
Speaker 5: his pardons. I think that was the most unjustifiable act.
Speaker 5: There was no public purpose served by that President. Reagan,
Speaker 5: on the other hand, was carrying out policies that he
Speaker 5: strongly believed in. He thought he was serving the country
Speaker 5: and what he did, and the fact that he disregarded
Speaker 5: certain laws and statutes in the course of it was
Speaker 5: not because of any possibly self centered purpose.
Speaker 1: By the time Walsh's report was published, George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush was living as a retiree in Houston, and Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan was suffering privately from the early stages of Alzheimer's Bill.
Speaker 1: Clinton was dealing with the fallout from a magazine article
Speaker 1: in which a group of Arkansas state troopers alleged that
Speaker 1: he had had a sexual encounter in a hotel room
Speaker 1: with a woman named Paula. Meanwhile, in Central America, the
Speaker 1: leader of the Sandinistas, Don yell Or Tega, had been
Speaker 1: voted out as president of Nicaragua and succeeded by the
Speaker 1: US back candidate Violetta Chamorro. As for the American hostages
Speaker 1: in Lebanon, most of them had been released. Two who
Speaker 1: never came home, including CIA station chief William Buckley, had
Speaker 1: died in captivity and their bones had been found on
Speaker 1: the side of the road in Beirut Iran contra was over.
Speaker 1: Any remaining questions about why it happened and who deserved
Speaker 1: the blame would have to be examined through a rear
Speaker 1: view mirror. On March first, two thousand and three, just
Speaker 1: over ten years after Bush issued as Christmas Eve Pardons,
Speaker 1: Oliver North was scheduled to set sail for the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: North was hosting a week long celebration billed as the
Speaker 1: Freedom Cruise to mark the twentieth anniversary of the US
Speaker 1: invasion of Grenada. As you heard in our first episode,
Speaker 1: Grenada was taken over by hardline communists during a coup
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three. A group of American medical students
Speaker 1: studying on the island were believed to be in danger.
Speaker 1: The Reagan administration saw an opportunity to intervene and strike
Speaker 1: a blow against communism in the Western Hemisphere. Oliver North
Speaker 1: had helped plan the operation. Twenty years later, North was
Speaker 1: set to lead a private tour of Grenada as part
Speaker 1: of the Freedom Cruise. Other special guests would include Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan's Attorney General, Ed Meese, but at the last minute
Speaker 1: Oliver North had to cancel his trip target Iraq.
Speaker 17: Here is Tom Brokaw.
Speaker 9: Good evening everyone.
Speaker 8: It has been an evening of tense expectations.
Speaker 3: The forty eight hour doubline for Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 1: President George W. Bush was preparing to invade Iraq.
Speaker 14: Saddam Hussein will be stopped.
Speaker 1: For the past two years, North had been hosting a
Speaker 1: show on Fox News called War Stories, about extraordinary events
Speaker 1: in military head.
Speaker 2: I'm Oliver North.
Speaker 7: Welcome to War Stories.
Speaker 11: This is the deck of the USS New Jersey now permanently.
Speaker 1: Now Fox News was sending North to the Middle East.
Speaker 5: Now Oli.
Speaker 12: North joins us on the phone.
Speaker 11: He is on the east bank of the Tigris River
Speaker 11: looking into the city.
Speaker 15: In fact, the camera's probably panning around towards oli.
Speaker 12: Oli, of course, is with the.
Speaker 1: On March twelfth, while the Grenada Freedom crewise went on
Speaker 1: without him, North appeared on the Fox News show Hannity
Speaker 1: and Colmes to talk about the mood on the ground.
Speaker 1: These marines have been out here for almost two months
Speaker 1: and they're ready.
Speaker 15: North said, We're kind of like divers at the end
Speaker 15: of the board, poised and ready to plunge and waiting
Speaker 15: for somebody to give us the signal to jump off
Speaker 15: the board we've got.
Speaker 1: North said, one of the nice things about being with
Speaker 1: the troops was that everyone was blissfully unaware of anti
Speaker 1: war protesters and the machinations of politicians in Washington. Out Here,
Speaker 1: the focuses on the mission, North said, and what they
Speaker 1: really want to do is simply get on with it.
Speaker 1: And that is it for this season of Fiasco. Keep
Speaker 1: an eye out for our season on the Bengazi scandal,
Speaker 1: which will soon be appearing in this feed. For a
Speaker 1: list of books, articles, and documentaries we used in our research,
Speaker 1: follow the link in the show notes. Fiasco is a
Speaker 1: production of Prolog Projects, and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline kaplan, Ula Kulpa,
Speaker 1: and me Leon Mayvock. Our editor was Camilla Hammer. Our
Speaker 1: researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Nick Silvester. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at
Speaker 1: Chips and y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Rayphiel
Speaker 1: and Johnny Vince Evans. Copyright council provided by Peter Yassi
Speaker 1: at Yassi Butler PLOC. Thanks to Brian Bonnell, Carrie Baker,
Speaker 1: Melissa Kaplan, TC Winter, Alice Gregory, Marcella Nadel, Caitlin Phillips,
Speaker 1: ed Winsteed, Ryan Swikert, Mark Feeney, Shane Harris, Malcolm Burne,
Speaker 1: Joe Weisberg, Jacob Weisberg, Stephen Fisher, Ed Claris, Alexia Badott,
Speaker 1: Jessica Hanson, Evan Bell, Lisa de Leone, Jennifer Valdez, Adam Davidson,
Speaker 1: Laura Mayer, Michael Wright and Jill Burkhart, Richard Plepler, Ken
Speaker 1: Druckerman and everyone at left right, Jill Abramson, John Davidson
Speaker 1: and Interface Media Group, Matt Sachs, Jamie Lynes, Becky ver
Speaker 1: Haey and everyone at Luminary. Thanks also to Sam Graham, Felsen,
Speaker 1: Kotzikam Kova, Sirea Shockley, and Sam Lee Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alexandra Garretton, Sarah Bruguer and the whole team at Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening,