An American Life

by Ronald Reagan

  During the first twenty-four hours, the White House received 126,000 phone calls—15,000 couldn’t get through—in response to the attack, and in the following twenty-four hours, there were 160,000 calls and 16,000 couldn’t get through. They were more than seventy percent favorable.

  Tragically, one of our missiles went off track during the attack and caused fatalities in a civilian neighborhood. We had intended to strike military targets only, and I deeply regretted the mishap. I was also deeply saddened that two crewmen were shot down and lost, and that another American may have died as a result of the attack: After the bombing, according to reports that we found credible, Qaddafi sought out the terrorists who had kidnapped Peter Kilburn, librarian at the American University in Beirut, and paid them a fortune to ransom him. Then Kilburn and two British hostages (apparently because of Britain’s cooperation with us during the raid) were murdered in cold blood.

  As tragic as the loss of life was, I don’t think they were lives lost in vain: After the attack on Tripoli, we didn’t hear much more from Qaddafi’s terrorists.

  The following month, Bud McFarlane, interrupting his brief retirement, made a secret mission to Teheran. The Israeli go-betweens involved in the Iranian initiative told him that he would meet face-to-face with the moderate Iranians who supposedly wanted to establish a dialogue with the United States. Following the meeting, he was told, the four surviving hostages—Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson, Father Lawrence Jenco, Thomas Sutherland, and David Jacobsen—would be freed.

  Bud and a small delegation arrived in Teheran on May 25. According to the plan, the hostages were to be released by the Hizballah no later than May 28. Shortly after his arrival, however, Bud called on a secure communications link and told me that we had been misled by the go-betweens; he had doubts, he said, about the trustworthiness of the Iranians he had met. He later called again and said that they had outrageous demands as a price for the Hizballah’s release of our hostages—including Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan Heights and South Lebanon and our agreement to ensure that Kuwait released a group of convicted terrorists. When Bud told them the deal was off, they said they wanted to continue negotiating, but in the end, he returned home without the hostages. “It was a heart breaking disappointment for all of us,” I wrote in my diary.

  68

  IN LATE JULY, a short time after the celebration of the hundredth birthday of the Statue of Liberty, Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, former head of Catholic Relief Services in Lebanon, was given his freedom in Beirut. “He’s in West Germany on his way home,” I wrote in the diary July 26. “The Hizballah sent a video tape out with him on which one of the remaining hostages—[David] Jacobsen dressed me and our govt. down for not lifting a finger to try and get their freedom. This release of Jenco is a delayed step in a plan we’ve been working on for months. It gives us hope the rest of the plan will take place. We’d about given up on this.”

  Talk about a roller coaster ride: First, our expectations had soared because of promises by the people we were dealing with that all the hostages would be coming home soon; then, our hopes dropped when they didn’t deliver and we realized that they had exaggerated their ability to get out the hostages. Then, from Beirut, another hostage would come out.

  It was a roller coaster ride, but I still felt good about the Iranian initiative. Apparently risking their lives by dealing with us, the moderates in Teheran had demonstrated a second time that they could deliver. John Poindexter said Father Jenco’s release had been arranged by the same Iranians and Israelis who had brought out the Reverend Benjamin Weir from Beirut the previous September, and was a direct result of Bud McFarlane’s Iranian mission in May. He said that the same group expected to arrange the release of all of the hostages shortly. Moreover, he said, there was another encouraging result of our Iranian initiative: Public pronouncements by Iranian officials had been conveying a more conciliatory tone toward the United States.

  Not that there weren’t problems: The Hizballah kidnappers were trying to become more independent of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and were demanding, as a price for releasing the remaining Americans, that the United States exert pressure on Kuwait to free seventeen Shiite terrorists imprisoned in that country after they had bombed the U.S. and French embassies there in 1983. There was no way we could do that. This was something nonnegotiable on our part: We wanted our hostages back, but we couldn’t ask another country to go easy on convicted terrorists at the same time that we were asking the world to crack down on terrorism.

  Despite this problem and various delays, disappointments, and frustrations, the Iranian initiative seemed to be working—and we were not trading arms for hostages. None of the arms we’d shipped to Iran had gone to the terrorists who had kidnapped our citizens.

  After Father Jenco’s release, Bill Casey and the NSC staff suggested we authorize a small additional shipment of spare missile parts to the Iranian military forces as a demonstration of goodwill and gratitude. If we didn’t, Casey said, it was possible that our principal contact in the Iranian government might lose face and even be executed by those in Iran who were opposed to what he was doing. There was also the possibility, he said, that if we didn’t give them a show of goodwill, one or more of the remaining three hostages might be killed. I authorized this additional shipment, and we went back to anxiously waiting for the other hostages to be set free.

  About this same time, George Shultz came to me and said he wanted to resign; although he had never stopped letting me know that he didn’t approve of the Iranian policy, that wasn’t his reason: He thought that Cap Weinberger, Bill Casey, and John Poindexter were ganging up on him and pushing foreign policy issues that he opposed behind his back. He felt that I’d lost faith in him. “That isn’t true,” I wrote in the diary. “As far as I’m concerned, he can stay as long as I’m here.” George came to the Oval Office and I told him that we were on the same wavelength and talked him out of resigning. I thank the Lord I did, because he was to be indispensable in our upcoming arms control negotiations with the Soviets.

  I don’t know what I expected when Father Jenco visited the Oval Office with his family shortly after his release, after a flight from Rome where he had had an audience with the pope. He was a warm man with an impressive gentleness, and very likable—but I was surprised at his reluctance to condemn his captors. I almost sensed he felt sympathy for the Muslims who had held him captive for nineteen months. He didn’t seem to want to criticize them, and had no apparent bitterness, making me wonder if it was an example of the “Stockholm syndrome”—when, after a long time together, captives sometimes relate to their captors—or if it was simply his holy nature to forgive even those who had mistreated him.

  Father Jenco handed me two letters. The first was a copy of a letter he had written to Pope John Paul II at the request of his captors. It was essentially a condemnation of the West by Shiite Muslims for “exploiting the female body.” It also called on the Pope to help the Muslim Shiites—“the poorest of the poor”—who, Jenco said, complained of being denied proper housing, health care, educational opportunities, dignified work, and a voice in government.

  Then he gave me a letter addressed to me:

  Dear President Reagan:

  An hour before I left my last prison, the leader of the group that held us hostage these past months verbally gave me messages to give to His Holiness Pope John Paul II, to you, and the families of Terry Anderson, David Jacobsen and Thomas Sutherland. He also wished me to convey to the Anderson family their condolences on the deaths of Terry Anderson’s father and brother and their condolences to Rev. Ben Weir on the tragic death of his daughter in Cairo, Egypt.

  The message that I was to give to you was to be confidential and I was to divulge its contents to no one else, but you and the families of the remaining three Americans and ask them to hold this message in strictest confidence. I wish, Mr. President, that I could be a bearer of good news. The message, Mr. President, is: “The condit
ion for the release of Mr. Terry Anderson, Mr. David Jacobsen and Mr. Thomas Sutherland is the release of the seventeen being held in Kuwait. Their lives and the lives of other Americans are dependent on that condition being realized . . . and soon.”

  They believe that all you have to do, Mr. President, is pick up the phone and call the Emir of Kuwait and tell him to set the 17 free. I wish it were that easy.

  One hour prior to that final conversation another leader informed me of the deaths of Terry Anderson’s father and brother and of Rev. Ben Weir’s daughter. He also said that they killed Mr. William Buckley because he was an evil man, he was the head of the C.I.A. in that region of the world. I personally believe Mr. Buckley died a natural death and my captors want other radical groups to believe they did execute him.

  Both leaders asked forgiveness from me for the 19 months of suffering I had to endure; both quoted the final words of Jesus: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Also they expressed their sadness about the kidnappings. They know kidnapping is wrong but they have no other forum to present their cause to the world.

  They also asked that the American government’s foreign policy in the Middle East be just. Presently, it is one sided: pro-Israel. And not all Arabs are oil millionaires. There are millions of poor Arabs in the Middle East who have legitimate human needs and rights that are denied them.

  My captors in those final minutes stressed that they do not want the Syrians to be involved in any negotiations on the release of the other three Americans.

  I have given you the message that I gave the Pope in Rome, John Paul II. I do this so that you know its contents. I did not tell them of the condition of the 17 of Kuwait. I am sure they know.

  I pray to our dearest God I have recalled well those final conversations and I have honestly conveyed their messages.

  Mr. President, there were times I did not have kind and charitable thoughts about my government, my Servite order, my church and the C.R.S. I have asked God’s forgiveness for these sinful [thoughts] and ask your forgiveness, too. Thank you for your prayers and all that you have done on our behalf. In the future, I might still get angry—bear with me.

  May the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Jesus, of Mohammed, our God, answer our prayers, for the release of our fellow Americans . . . still held hostage somewhere.

  With gratitude.

  Father Lawrence Martin Jenco

  Servite

  In the weeks after the release of Father Jenco, we had more disappointments—three more Americans were kidnapped in Beirut, not by the same faction of the Hizballah but by another terrorist group. On the plus side, the NSC succeeded in opening up what seemed to be a promising second channel of communication with high-level people in the Iranian government, involving a relative close to one of these officials; this relative seemed to share our concerns about the potential Soviet threat to Iran and wanted to patch up U.S.-Iranian relations. The young man was brought secretly to the United States for talks. Although I didn’t meet him, John Poindexter told me that the official had asked his relative to bring him back signed photographs of me and other gifts, including a Christian bible. At John’s request, I signed the bible and inscribed what I was told was one of the official’s favorite verses.

  Early fall 1986 was a busy time for all of us at the White House: Besides completing work on the tax reform act, there was the crisis set off by the arrest of American journalist Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow, my second summit conference with Mikhail Gorbachev, and other matters that kept us hopping, including congressional elections.

  In early November, we got new evidence that the Iran initiative was working when a third American hostage, David Jacobsen, was freed in Beirut, and the Muslims who had held him promised to release the last two hostages they were holding within forty-eight hours.

  When they released Jacobsen, his captors indicated vaguely that they were responding to unspecified American overtures. I decided that the only way to assure that the other hostages were released, as well as to protect our new channel in Teheran, was to say nothing about it: The United States would publicly keep at arm’s length from Jacobsen’s release. The day after he was freed—November 3, 1986—as we waited for the release of Anderson and Sutherland, a small magazine in Beirut published a story that asserted that America was trading arms for hostages, and mentioned Bud McFarlane’s mission to Beirut in May.

  That, of course, ignited a firestorm in the press. Pretty soon every newspaper and television station in America was repeating the same erroneous report—that I not only had traded arms for hostages but had been dealing with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

  My diary entry for November 7 read:

  Usual meetings. Discussion of how to handle press who are off on a wild story built on unfounded story originating in Beirut that we bought hostage Jacobsen’s freedom with weapons to Iran. We’ve tried “no comment.” I’ve proposed and our message will be: “We can’t and won’t answer any questions on this subject because to do so will endanger the lives of those we are trying to help.”

  I wanted to keep quiet about the events in Iran and Beirut, not because they were something I was ashamed of—getting out three hostages was something I was proud of—but because I didn’t want anything to interfere with the impending release of the other hostages or to endanger the Iranians who were helping us. But this was a case when silence did not beget silence.

  David Jacobsen came to the White House on November 7 with his family. He was even more upset than I was over the press reports about the hostage negotiations. The situation faced by the other hostages was desperate, he told me, and if the drum beat of publicity continued, the Hizballah would not release Anderson and Sutherland. Then he went with me into the Rose Garden and begged the press to use restraint: “In the name of God, would you please just be responsible and back off?”

  But the journalistic firestorm got larger and larger and, in it, I saw our expectations of bringing home Terry Anderson and Thomas Sutherland go up in smoke. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my presidency to watch this happen—hoping it would not happen, then accepting the reality that the other hostages weren’t going to be coming home. My diary entry on November 10, three days after Jacobsen’s visit to the White House, read:

  A bright, pretty day. . . . At 11:30 a meeting in Oval Office—Don R., George Shultz, George Bush, Cap W., Bill Casey, Ed Meese, John P. and two of his staff. Subject the press storm charging that we are negotiating with terrorist kidnappers for the release of hostages using sale of arms as ransom. Also that we are violating our own law about arms sales to Iran. They quote as gospel every unnamed source plus such authorities as a Danish sailor who claims to have served on a ship carrying arms from Israel to Iran etc. . . . etc. . . . etc. I ordered a statement to effect we were not dealing in ransom, etc., but that we would not respond to charges or questions that could endanger hostage lives or lives of people we are using to make contact with the terrorists.

  On November 12, my exasperation over the tenor of the coverage showed up again in this entry in my diary:

  This whole irresponsible press bilge about hostages and Iran has gotten totally out of hand. The media looks like it’s trying to create another Watergate. I laid down the law in the morning meetings. I want to go public personally and tell the people the truth. We’re trying to arrange it for tomorrow.

  In a twelve-minute address to the nation the following night, I made public the Iranian initiative and said: “We did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we.”

  If I thought candor and forthrightness would calm the storm, I was wrong. At a press conference, I tried again to explain what my motivations had been for the initiative and acknowledged that George Shultz and Cap Weinberger had opposed it. “I weighed their views,” I said. “I considered the risks of failure and the rewards of success, and I decided to proceed. And the responsibility for the decision and the operation is mine and mine alone. As M
r. Lincoln said of another presidential decision: If it turns out right, the criticism will not matter. If it turns out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right will make no difference.”

  Although they never said “I told you so,” George and Cap had been wise and correct: Whatever the truth of the matter, the Iranian initiative was made to look like an arms-for-hostage deal. We learned that the secrecy of our covert operation had first been revealed by an enemy of Rafsanjani’s who wanted to embarrass him politically and leaked the story to that paper in Beirut. Except that he told it wrong. He said we were doing business with the government of Iran—in other words, the ayatollah himself—and that we were trading arms for hostages. Then our press took it up and printed the same false story—to this day, they still are—that we were doing business with the ayatollah, trading arms for hostages. We weren’t. We had never had any contacts with the kidnappers, had seen to it that the defensive weapons that went to Iran never got into the hands of the people who held our hostages. But the press took the word of the Beirut paper over ours.

  On November 20, a Thursday, after the furor had been going on for more than two weeks, Don Regan told me that George Shultz, who by then had gone public with his unhappiness over the Iran affair, wanted to see me to lay down an ultimatum: Either I fire John Poindexter, or George would quit. I invited George and Don to the living quarters at the White House that evening to discuss the situation. George, as I’d been warned, was extremely upset and urged me to fire Poindexter. He said Poindexter had misled me and others in the administration about the weapons shipments. Although George didn’t threaten to quit, I wrote in the diary: “I fear he may be getting ready to say, ‘either someone else is fired or I quit.’ I’ve called a Monday afternoon meeting of him and Don, me and Cap W., Bill Casey, John P. and the VP to get everything about the Iran effort out on the table.”