The Watchers

by Shane Harris

  In addition to Bohn’s work I relied significantly on the following: “The Voyage of the Achille Lauro” by William Smith in Time magazine, October 21, 1985; the detailed spot reporting of the New York Times, which covered the story from multiple cities and continents (see especially a lengthy article penned by E. J. Dionne and Joseph Berger from October 13, 1985, “Italy Said to Free 2 P.L.O. Aides; U.S. Issues Warrant for One; Hostages Tell of ‘Death List’; Account of Ordeal”; contemporaneous broadcast news transcripts; and David Martin and John Walcott’s Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism (New York: HarperCollins, 1988). I also conducted detailed interviews about the Achille Lauro episode on two occasions in 2008 with Poindexter. Unless otherwise noted, all statements, thoughts, and actions attributed to him come from those discussions.

  40 Abu Abbas, the founder of the PLF: Abbas was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003. He later died in U.S. custody the following year. According to a Pentagon spokesman at the time, Abbas died of natural causes.

  42 “He’s lying,” Poindexter told his colleagues flatly: Interview with John Poindexter. See also Bob Woodward’s Veil (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), in which the author writes about Mubarak’s communications having been intercepted by U.S. intelligence. Poindexter did not acknowledge how the government came to know that Mubarak was lying.

  43 At Poindexter’s instruction, North had cultivated a relationship with the military attaché at the Israeli embassy in Washington, General Uri Simhoni: Interview with Poindexter. Also see Michael Ledeen’s Perilous Statecraft: An Insider’s Account of the Iran-Contra Affair (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988).

  44 “Just confirm to me that you are not acting on your own”: Interview with Uri Simhoni in The Reagan Presidency: An Oral History of the Era, by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, published by Brassey’s of Dulles, Va., in 2003, which is an updated edition of the authors’ Reagan: The Man and His Presidency (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998).

  45 “Let me ask him,” McFarlane replied: McFarlane’s interaction with the president is also recounted by Robert Timberg, in The Nightingale’s Song (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

  46 Eventually, Weinberger reached Reagan aboard Air Force One using a public radio frequency: See “Reagan Knew Phone Hookup Wasn’t Private,” Associated Press, and “Hostages and Hijackers; U.S. Plans Were Made on Open Line,” by Bill Keller for the New York Times, both from October 15, 1985.

  46 As the pilots approached they could make out the shape of a 737 against the starry sky: The accounts of the midair interception were chronicled by Bohn, Martin, and Walcott, based in large part on contemporaneous news reports. Martin and Walcott also interviewed participants in the crisis, and they obtained transcripts of the air-to-air dialogue between the U.S. and Egyptian pilots through the Freedom of Information Act.

  48 North called a friend who knew the prime minister’s mistress and tracked them down at his residence in Rome: The friend was Michael Ledeen, author of Perilous Statecraft. Poindexter confirmed Ledeen’s role, and Simhoni spoke of it as well, in the oral history compiled by Strober and Strober.

  49 “Thank you, Mr. President. But you should really salute the Navy”: Interview with Poindexter. Also see Timberg’s re-creation of the scene in Nightingale’s Song.

  CHAPTER 4: UNODIR

  Unless otherwise noted, all statements, thoughts, and actions attributed to Poindexter in this chapter come from interviews conducted in 2004 and 2008, as well as in numerous electronic messages we exchanged in the intervening years. To my knowledge Poindexter has not given detailed interviews about his role in the Iran-Contra affair to any journalist.

  Much of the narrative of Iran-Contra comes from official investigations and histories. For a thorough and concise account of the enormous volume of information on the operations, and of the days and months preceding their exposure, see “Iran-Contra: The Final Report,” by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. Bob Woodward’s Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), provides a narrative account based substantially on the point of view of former secretary of state George Shultz. And the “Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair,” with its “minority report,” provides much historical information and, equally as important, political context. The National Security Archive’s The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History (New York: The New Press, 1993) is an unmatched collection of original documents from the era, including the second finding on the Iran arms initiative written by Poindexter.

  50 Reagan had admonished his NSC staff to “keep the Contras alive, body and soul”: See Walsh.

  52 In the corridors of the State Department and the Pentagon, there were agitated complaints and whispers about a rogue NSC staff that had “gone operational”: This is conveyed in the aforementioned histories, and it was reiterated during interviews I conducted with former NSC staff officials who served in the Clinton and then the Bush administrations, all of whom were working in the long wake of Iran-Contra.

  52 Poindexter wrote a lengthy national security directive, which Reagan signed in September 1984, that established a high-level committee to set security policies for sensitive government computer networks: The directive is number 145, titled “National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security,” www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd145.htm.

  54 “I think we ought to keep trying,” Reagan said, after the others had stopped talking. “I just couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t take all possible action to get them back”: Some accounts of this meeting have Reagan saying, “The American people will never forgive me.” Woodward recounts it this way in Shadow, based on notes taken by Shultz’s executive assistant, Charles Hill. Poindexter, however, recalls that the president said, “I just couldn’t live with myself.” I cannot explain the discrepancy, and although the distinction might appear trivial, since both accounts make it clear that Reagan was personally committed to action regardless of the political or legal consequences, I have concluded that the second version is more accurate. Poindexter vividly recalled the scene, imparting such details as what Reagan was wearing and how he sat on the ottoman. This meeting clearly made an impression on him. I also think that Poindexter knew Reagan’s mind as well as any of his aides at this time. It is also clear to me from other sources—most notably the president’s own diary entries and his public statements—that he held himself responsible for the fate of the hostages.

  55 Poindexter had no intention of notifying Congress; indeed, he took an expansive reading of the law’s requirement that Congress be apprised of all findings in a “timely manner”: The National Security Act requires that the president notify the intelligence committees of any covert operations in a timely manner, and the lack of specificity in that deadline has been a source of contention for decades. I mention this here because on many occasions Poindexter emphasized to me that he used a literal reading of this requirement to his advantage. The law does not say what “timely” means, so, in the absence of any firm definition, Poindexter felt that it was generally the president’s prerogative to decide when a covert intelligence operation could, and should, be revealed to Congress.

  The law gives the president broad discretion to delay notification until after the operation has commenced, so Poindexter’s reading might have been legally defensible. But politically, it was dangerous. He knew as well as anyone that the committees despised learning of covert operations after the fact. In particular, operations conducted in Latin America had been the subject of intense debate on Capitol Hill, and when the administration failed to keep Congress fully and currently informed, it threatened to erode the tenuous trust that intelligence committee members had built with CIA director Bill Casey. In April 1984 the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that the CIA had been planting mines in the harbors of Nicaragua. Democrats and Republicans considered this an act of war, and they were furious tha
t Casey hadn’t brought the operation to their attention; it turned out that he buried the news in a piece of lengthy testimony that he delivered to the committee more than a month earlier. The “notification,” such that it was, had gone unnoticed.

  By the time Poindexter took over as national security adviser he was well aware that Congress had inserted itself into the administration’s national security policy in large measure because members felt that they hadn’t been told all the facts. By not notifying them of the Iran initiative he was playing with fire.

  55 Poindexter knew the president saw things much more simply, as a straight exchange of missiles for influence: This may be one of the most misunderstood points of the entire Iran-Contra affair. For as much as the administration tried to portray the Iran operation as more than a simple arms-for-hostages swap, the president always saw it that way. It’s clear from my interviews with Poindexter, as well as Reagan’s inability to articulate the reasons for the initiative after it was exposed, that the president always saw the plan as a simple quid pro quo. To me, the fact that Poindexter also knew this and yet tried to articulate a broader rationale in the second finding reveals two important truths: First, he believed that the American public was up to the task of understanding a complex, multifaceted policy. And second, he believed that the president would never be forgiven if it turned out that his ostensibly elaborate plan was actually very simple. In both these assumptions, Poindexter erred. Iran-Contra was so convoluted that not even its participants discerned all the moving parts. And as it turned out, while Reagan’s legacy was certainly tarnished by the scandal of a cover-up, his basically good intentions to bring Americans home shone through, and perhaps helped save his presidency.

  I once asked Poindexter, If you could do anything over again from the Iran-Contra days, what would it be? He thought a moment and said, “I’d have come up with a public relations strategy, because we always knew that if we were exposed, we’d have a hard time explaining to people what we’d been doing.” I think that Poindexter thought too much. He probably takes that criticism as a point of pride. “Nobody is obliged to be ignorant,” he has told me on several occasions. But Poindexter often puts unrealistic demands on people, and sets impossible expectations. The fact is, he is vastly smarter than most, and he has lived most of his life being rewarded for that intelligence. But during Iran-Contra, and years later, it betrayed him.

  57 “You can meet with anyone in our government at any time,” Poindexter promised the relatives. . . . “He’s a classy guy,” the daughter of one hostage told a reporter: Joan Mower, “Families of Hostages in Lebanon Visit White House, Embassies, Capitol Hill,” Associated Press, January 21, 1986.

  58 They were lies. Or, in the most charitable light, deliberately misleading partial truths: See Walsh’s Iran-Contra report. Walsh called these claims, as well as “virtually identical” statements in a letter sent September 12, 1985, to Rep. Michael Barnes, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, “false denials of contra-aid activities.” Walsh writes, “In addition to written representations, McFarlane on September 5, 1985, met with leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and assured them no laws had been broken and no NSC staff member had aided the contras or solicited funds on their behalf. On September 10, 1985, he made similar assurances in a meeting with Hamilton and other House Intelligence Committee members; the Hamilton meeting was followed up with written questions and answers, in which McFarlane again misrepresented the facts. In these responses, he stated that North had not helped facilitate the movement of supplies to the contras and that no one on the NSC staff had an official or unofficial relationship to fund-raising for the contras.” Walsh also notes that “McFarlane later admitted that his responses to Congress were ‘too categorical’ and they were at the least, overstated. He claimed, however, that he did not lie.” On March 11, 1988, McFarlane pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress. He was sentenced to two years’ probation, $20,000 in fines, and 200 hours community service. Reagan pardoned him on December 24, 1992.

  59 Poindexter expressed his satisfaction to North in an electronic mail message: “Bravo Zulu,” the naval signal for “well done”: See The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History for communications between North and Poindexter. In an interview Poindexter emphasized, regretfully, that he hadn’t meant to seem to praise North for successfully lying to members of Congress. He didn’t believe that he’d done so. Rather, Poindexter thought North had performed well by not revealing the operation while still answering the committee’s questions.

  59 The sole survivor, an American named Eugene Hasenfus, told his Sandinista captors that he worked for the CIA: See Walsh’s Iran-Contra report.

  60 Administration officials told Congress that Hasenfus did not work for the CIA, which was true. He worked for North: Ibid.

  60 in due course discovered that their Iranian contacts were utter charlatans: After McFarlane and company had played out the charade with their alleged intermediaries, it was clear that Ghorbanifar could not make good on his promises because he was in no position to assist the Americans with gaining the hostages’ release. Walsh also notes that Ghorbanifar was unfavorably regarded in the intelligence community well before he became the NSC staff’s “first channel” among Iran, the United States, and Israel. “Ghorbanifar was . . . well known to the American intelligence community as a prevaricator. The CIA had concluded, after past interaction with Ghorbanifar, that he could not be trusted to act in anyone’s interest but his own. So strong were the CIA’s views on Ghorbanifar that the Agency issued a ‘burn notice’ in July 1984, effectively recommending that no U.S. agency have any dealings with him.”

  61 Look on the bright side, North encouraged: See Walsh’s Iran-Contra report.

  61 “Oh shit,” McFarlane thought: Ibid.

  61 George Shultz, the secretary of state, was apoplectic: For a recounting of the tense meeting in which Poindexter pushed back at Shultz, see Woodward’s Shadow.

  63 But as the mock journalists volleyed questions at the president, he forgot his lines: Interview with Poindexter. Also see Larry Speakes’s memoir, cowritten with Robert Pack, Speaking Out: Inside the Reagan White House (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), and Edmund Morris’s Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999).

  64 “Oh, shit,” Meese said: See Woodward’s Shadow. Walsh’s independent counsel report also chronicles how Meese and his colleagues exposed the link between the Iran and Contra operations, but it omits the former attorney general’s expletive.

  65 With the click of a button, he deleted them: Interviews with Poindexter in 2004 and 2008. Also see Walsh’s Iran-Contra report.

  65 Reagan took his pen and across the top of the article scrawled a note of praise: “Great—RR”: Poindexter kept the original copy with Reagan’s note; he showed it to me and gave me a copy.

  66 Poindexter fixed his eyes on the twenty-five-year-old jury foreman: David Johnston of the New York Times provided the most vivid accounts of the trial that I found. His rendering of the day of the verdict ran on April 7, 1990, under the headline “Poindexter Is Found Guilty of All 5 Criminal Charges for Iran-Contra Cover-up.”

  67 “an overwhelming set of facts”: Another Johnston piece, “Foreman of the Jury in Poindexter’s Trial Discusses the Case,” ran on April 9, 1990.

  CHAPTER 5: A CONSTANT TENSION

  71 There was a time when everyone was linked to a lug nut, and the agents of the FBI liked it that way: My reporting on the evolution of telecommunications and surveillance technology, beginning in the mid-1980s, involved interviews over the years with dozens of law enforcement officials, technology experts, telecom executives, and lawyers. But I make special note here of a few who were instrumental in helping me to understand the issues involved in the subject of this chapter, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act: James Kallstrom, who ran wiretapping operations for
the FBI in its New York field office; Jerry Berman, an attorney who helped craft the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and CALEA and who founded the Center for Democracy and Technology; Beryl Howell, who worked for Senator Patrick Leahy on the CALEA legislation; and Al Gidari, a lawyer who represented wireless telecom carriers. Interviews with all these experts took place in 2008. I’m especially grateful to Berman, who hosted me at his home for an afternoon and provided contacts to more sources of expertise and history.

  71 Agents had insinuated themselves into the inner workings of their targets by surreptitiously snatching their own words off copper phone lines: Kallstrom provided valuable, firsthand accounts of the relationship between FBI agents and the telecom companies. He also gave me vivid descriptions of the telephone switching stations.

  71 “Go up on RR326”: Kallstrom’s words.

  72 The FBI’s friends in the phone company put the bureau on notice: Kallstrom recalled that this was a period of tremendous anxiety within the bureau and especially in the New York field office.

  73 “If we don’t do something, we’ll be out of the wiretapping business”: Interview with Kallstrom. These were his words to officials in Washington.

  75 Beginning in August 1994, senior law enforcement officials sat down for meetings in Washington with a coalition: Interviews with Berman and Howell, as well as others involved in the negotiations who asked not to be named here.