by Kai Bird
On December 12, 1978, Carter told the press, “I fully expect the Shah to maintain power in Iran. . . . I think the predictions of doom and disaster that come from some sources have certainly not been realized at all. The Shah has our support and he also has our confidence.”11
A little more than a month later, the shah fled his country, leaving behind a civilian government that would collapse just eleven days after the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile on February 1, 1979. Partly because the Carter administration had supported the shah until the bitter end, relations with the new revolutionary government in Teheran were difficult. To make matters worse, the fate of the shah quickly became a bone of contention in Iranian-U.S. relations. Though the Carter administration had initially offered the shah, Queen Farah Diba, and their family sanctuary in America, the monarch had decided first to visit Anwar Sadat in Egypt. After only six days in Egypt, the royal party left for Morocco. More than two months later, when it was clear he had worn out his welcome in Morocco, the shah wanted to seek permanent refuge in America. But by then, the Carter administration had decided the timing was wrong. Anti-Americanism in Iran was such that the U.S. diplomats were warning Washington that their embassy might be stormed by mobs if the shah were permitted to go to America.
The State Department put out discreet inquiries everywhere, but only two countries offered him sanctuary—South Africa and Paraguay—and the shah did not want to go to either. Nevertheless, Secretary of State Vance called Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller and asked if either of them would be willing to tell the shah that it would be best if he postponed any visit to America. Both men indignantly refused, and began to make their own calls around the world in search of a haven for the shah.12 Hours before the Pahlevi party was virtually pushed onto a plane in Morocco, Rockefeller arranged for a haven in the Bahamas. He sent his late brother Nelson’s public-relations man, Robert Armao, to greet the shah. Armao would thereafter serve as the monarch’s spokesman, accompanying him throughout his journeys in exile. Rockefeller’s personal assistant at Chase Manhattan, Joseph V. Reed, was assigned to handle the shah’s finances and the logistics of his security needs. And later, when the shah’s health deteriorated, Rockefeller dispatched a close personal friend, Dr. Benjamin Kean, to supervise his medical care.
With the shah temporarily ensconced in a beach-front villa in the Bahamas, Rockefeller and Kissinger turned their attention back to Washington, where they were determined to persuade the Carter administration to allow their friend permanent U.S. asylum. To this end, they organized a “special project,” code-named Project Alpha. David Rockefeller dipped into his private funds to pay Chase Bank and Milbank, Tweed employees for the time they spent working on Project Alpha. Milbank, Tweed lawyers like McCloy and Jackson deducted the hours they spent on the project from their daily log sheets. Thousands of dollars were spent on phone, travel, and legal expenses over the next year. At one point, they paid an academic specialist on the Middle East $40,000 to write a short book intended to answer the shah’s critics.13 It was a remarkable effort, something only a Rockefeller could have mounted. Frequent strategy meetings were held at One Chase Plaza, and the ever exuberant Joseph Reed kept everyone informed of the latest developments through a flurry of “personal and confidential” memos. The shah was given his own code name—the “Eagle”—and Reed referred to Rockefeller, Kissinger, and McCloy as the “Triumpherate” (sic).14
Over the next seven months, Project Alpha pestered the Carter administration into providing sanctuary for the “Eagle.” Kissinger fired the first volley. On April 7, 1979, he called Brzezinski in the White House and berated him “in rather sharp terms” for the administration’s stance.15 Kissinger disliked Brzezinski, and Brzezinski knew it. Just three months earlier, Kissinger had entertained the entire first-class lounge of a Pan Am 747 flight crossing the Atlantic with his caustic comments on the “amateurishness” and “incompetence” of the Carter administration. Brzezinski, he had loudly said, was the kind of man who “knows everything and understands nothing.”16
But Brzezinski happened to agree with Kissinger’s belief that Carter’s emphasis on human rights and liberalization was “naive.”17 He also agreed that the shah should have been offered sanctuary. At the end of their conversation, Brzezinski encouraged Kissinger to call the president directly. Kissinger did this almost immediately and reminded Carter that he had an appointment to see David Rockefeller in two days. He told the president that he would be behind whatever Rockefeller had to say about the shah’s predicament. “I said,” Kissinger recalled, “I felt very strongly about this.” Two days later, Brzezinski reported to Carter his conversation with Kissinger and irritated the president by saying that the asylum matter was a question of principle: “We simply had to stand by those who had been our friends.”18
Carter heard the same sentiments from Rockefeller when the Chase chairman visited the White House on April 9, 1979. The president sat “stiff and formal” as he listened to Rockefeller tell him that a “great power such as ours should not submit to blackmail.” Rockefeller left with the “impression that the president didn’t want to hear about it.” On one level, Carter was certainly sympathetic to the shah’s personal plight. But he was annoyed by the not-so-subtle lobbying. That night, he wrote in his diary of Rockefeller’s visit: “The main purpose of this visit, apparently, is to try to induce me to let the Shah come into our country. Rockefeller, Kissinger, and Brzezinski seem to be adopting this as a joint project.” He felt there were good reasons to keep the shah out. “Circumstances had changed since I had offered the Shah a haven. Now many Americans would be threatened, and there was no urgent need for the Shah to come here.”19 As he told his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, “. . . it makes no sense to bring him [the shah] here and destroy whatever slim chance we have of rebuilding a relationship with Iran. It boils down to a choice between the Shah’s preferences as to where he lives and the interests of our country.”20
Kissinger and company, however, were not about to accept Carter’s evaluation of the national interest. After learning from Rockefeller that the president had been unmoved by their private appeals, Kissinger decided to go public. That same evening, he told a Harvard Business School dinner in Manhattan that “a man who for 37 years was a friend of the United States should not be treated like a Flying Dutchman looking for a port of call.” It was all too apt a metaphor—though not the one Kissinger intended—since the Flying Dutchman of the legend was condemned to his eternal wanderings at sea for high crimes against man and God. But Kissinger had made his point, and the press picked up on the phrase and broadcast it widely. The conservative columnist George Will castigated the administration in his April 19 column: “It is sad that an Administration that knows so much about morality has so little dignity.”21
This was only the beginning of a well-orchestrated and persistent revolt by a private foreign-policy establishment against the Carter administration.22 On the same day Will’s critical column appeared, the president’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, noted in her diary, “We can’t get away from Iran. Many people—Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Howard Baker, John McCloy, Gerald Ford—all are after Jimmy to bring the shah to the United States, but Jimmy says it’s been too long, and anti-American and anti-shah sentiments have escalated so that he doesn’t want to. Jimmy said he explained to all of them that the Iranians might kidnap our Americans who are still there. . . .”23
McCloy thought Carter’s refusal to provide sanctuary to an old U.S. ally was “ungentlemanly,” and he did not take seriously Carter’s fears that American lives in Iran might be jeopardized.24 So, even though he’d had his differences with Kissinger as secretary of state, McCloy now became a determined foot soldier in the campaign to challenge Carter’s efforts to normalize relations with revolutionary Iran. The same week Kissinger let loose his broadside at the administration, he called McCloy and asked him to see what he could do. Over Easter weekend, McCloy talked on the phone with Brzezinski, Vance, a
nd Dean Rusk. Vance told him to write a memo with his views on the matter to his deputy, Warren Christopher.
This McCloy did at considerable length, writing a four-page single-spaced letter to the undersecretary of state. He said that, though he was well aware of the “difficult dilemma” involved, he nevertheless believed the United States could not afford to be seen turning its back on the shah. To do so, he argued, would be “taken as persuasive evidence of our unreliability as a protector of our former friends. . . . It could seriously impair our ability in the future to obtain the support of those of whom we might well stand in need.” It was, McCloy believed, precisely the conspicuous character of the shah, and “his pronounced support of United States interests,” that made it imperative to respond favorably to his request for asylum.
Having marshaled his arguments, he told Christopher how the whole matter ought to be handled. Referring to Rockefeller’s Project Alpha, he said, “It cannot be left to a group of private citizens to cope with it.” The administration should appoint someone to deal with “whatever logistics may be involved in acting promptly in response to the Shah’s request.” He had in mind a soldier with substantial staff experience: “I think of Lucius Clay when he was a young major on the general staff.” Perhaps a “young Bob Murphy” should accompany this envoy to the Bahamas to handle the political aspects. The two men should reconnoiter the situation, confer with the shah, and arrange for the logistics of the shah’s next move. Some “reasonable form of security” should be offered the monarch. McCloy concluded his memo by admitting that “many awkward consequences” might follow from acting upon this advice, but the administration had to meet its “responsibilities.” There was “no time to lose. . . .”25
He had his memo hand-delivered to Christopher the same day to underscore the urgency of his message. But the State Department official replied two days later with a note that was obviously designed to put McCloy off. Although Christopher acknowledged many of McCloy’s points regarding the shah’s past services to the United States, he pointed out that the department was “deeply concerned” about the safety of Americans residing in Iran. “Now the risks to these Americans are great, but they could lessen over time, and we do not exclude the possibility of the Shah’s coming here at a future time.” Christopher thanked McCloy for his concerns, and closed by saying, “. . . you are one of those distinguished Americans to whom we look for insight and wisdom.”26
McCloy did not let the matter drop. He immediately wrote Christopher another letter, saying that, in his judgment, the matter could not be “postponed to an indefinite date.” He felt “time may soon be running out and events may well overtake us and restrict our options.” And even if it wasn’t a “propitious” moment to admit the shah to the United States, McCloy suggested that his idea of appointing a “planner” to go to meet with the shah in the Bahamas was not inconsistent with “your quite proper concern for the safety of our personnel in Iran.”27
Even though he received no reply to this second overture, McCloy did not give up. Vance later recalled, “John is a very prolific letter writer. The morning mail often contained something from him about the Shah.”28 McCloy felt no inhibitions about picking up the phone and calling the secretary of state; Vance was, after all, an old friend, a fellow Wall Street lawyer, and a member of his intimate luncheon club, Nisi Prius. McCloy claimed no special knowledge, but Vance recalled he always spoke with “passion” on the issue of the shah.” ‘Right or wrong,’ he told me,” recalled Vance, ‘he’s our ally, and if you treat him otherwise, you could appear wobbly.’ ” Vance argned with his friend, telling him that the situation had changed, and that much of the shah’s predicament was of his own making. “But this just never penetrated McCloy’s thinking.” Vance thought McCloy’s attitude was a sign of the “rigidity that came with old age.”29 McCloy thought Vance “too timid.”30
He pestered not only Vance and Christopher, but also Undersecretary of State David Newsom, whom he had frequently seen during the early 1970s on Middle East oil issues. He was beginning to sound like a broken record. “To a certain extent,” recalled Newsom, “he was a man who lived in the past. I remember him saying, ‘I have been in contact with some of the chancellors in Europe about this issue and they are outraged at our conduct.” When Newsom asked him which chancellors he was speaking of, McCloy replied breezily, “Oh, I was talking the other day with [Harold] Macmillan.” At this point, Macmillan had been out of office for over twelve years. Newsom didn’t by any means think the eighty-four-year-old McCloy was senile, just that he was out of touch.31 McCloy had never been very knowledgeable about the Third World, and he had no clue as to the deep-rooted hatred the Iranian people felt for their exiled monarch. He acted as if the issue were strictly a matter of personal loyalty. “The shah wasn’t as enlightened a despot as he might have been,” he admitted in 1985, “but we did importune him so many times to assist in guarding our interests that we owed him a certain decency when he got in trouble.”32
Later in the crisis, McCloy began seeing Carter’s U.N. ambassador, Donald F. McHenry. On five or six occasions, he called McHenry and asked to see him on short notice. He insisted that the meetings should be entirely secret, that even McHenry’s secretary should not be aware of where he was going. And so, though McHenry thought it all rather curious, he would leave his office and meet McCloy in some Manhattan restaurant. There he would be subjected to the same speeches McCloy had made before Brzezinski, Vance, and Christopher. McCloy repeated his arguments, McHenry recalled, “ad nauseam.” He wanted to know if McHenry was aware of all the shah’s “good deeds.” No honorable nation, he said, “would turn its back on a man who had been so helpful to it.” McHenry listened politely to these little sermons, but privately he thought the old man had a “myopic view of the shah’s deeds.” McCloy exhibited no interest in Iran per se; he was concerned only with appearances and what he thought were “unseemly” aspects of U.S. policy.33
He didn’t restrict his campaign to only the highest-ranking officials. Gary Sick was a relatively junior officer attached to Brzezinski’s office. But when McCloy learned that Sick, a retired Navy captain, was Brzezinski’s point man on the Middle East, he called him up. Sick was startled to receive a call from someone who he knew was in the habit of calling presidents, not lowly NSC aides. After clearing it with Brzezinski, Sick accepted McCloy’s invitation to a private luncheon, which he thoroughly enjoyed. What McCloy had to say about the shah was all very familiar, but Sick was greatly flattered that the old man had bothered to “track me down to make a point.”34
By midsummer of 1979, the campaign was beginning to have an effect on the administration. After a final push from Kissinger, Vice-President Walter Mondale told Carter that he had changed his mind, and now supported asylum for the shah. In a late-July meeting, Brzezinski and Mondale so annoyed the president with their arguments that he finally cut them off by saying, “Fuck the Shah. I’m not going to welcome him here when he has other places to go where he’ll be safe.”35 According to Brzezinski, he complained that “Kissinger, Rockefeller and McCloy had been waging a constant campaign on the subject. . . .” Prophetically, he said he did not want the shah “here playing tennis while Americans in Teheran were being kidnapped or even killed.”36
It was not so easy, however, to dismiss all this high-powered lobbying. Carter needed the cooperation of men like McCloy and Kissinger on other issues of immediate concern to his administration. Like presidents before him, Carter had used McCloy on occasion as a private emissary—to Germany and, surprisingly, to China, in the autumn of 1978.37 McCloy had already lent his prestige to helping the administration win Senate ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty in the spring of 1978. He and Harriman had formed a “Committee of Americans for the Canal Treaties,” and McCloy’s testimony on Capitol Hill had been forceful and persuasive.38 Now Carter was encountering stiff resistance in the Senate regarding ratification of SALT II, the arms-control treaty he had just signed with t
he Soviets in June 1979. Through an organization called the Committee on the Present Danger, a coalition of the Republican old guard and a number of prominent conservative Democrats had succeeded in casting doubt on the treaty. The support that summer of an elder “Wise Man” like McCloy was a powerful counterbalance to the antiSALT testimony of Paul Nitze and other critics of the measure. The president could not afford to alienate McCloy.
Unfortunately, relations between the two men had never been very good. Reflecting the personal dislike Germany’s Helmut Schmidt felt for Carter, McCloy had gotten it into his head that the Carter administration was snubbing his German friends. The president, he thought, was just not sensitive enough to West European concerns. To make matters worse, Carter had offended McCloy when he made the mistake of inviting the eighty-four-year-old lawyer to the White House, ostensibly to discuss SALT II. When McCloy arrived at the White House, on May 16, 1979, he found himself herded into the East Room with an eclectic assortment of fifty-odd private citizens. “It was a cattle show,” McCloy later told Time columnist Hugh Sidey.39
A month later, the president tried to make amends by inviting McCloy to a private lunch. They met first in the Oval Office, where McCloy presented the president with a gift, an antique hunting rifle. Carter then escorted his elderly, slightly stooped guest outside, where the two men sat down at a small round table on the terrace and lunched alone. They spent an hour talking about the state of the world, and once again McCloy outlined his reasons for providing the shah with sanctuary. Carter listened politely. Afterward, he scrawled a short note to McCloy, saying, “Enjoyed having lunch with you today.”40
Such efforts on Carter’s part to build bridges to the Establishment failed to stem the pressure to do something to help the shah. By the summer of 1979, the Carter administration found itself on the defensive on several fronts. Taking advantage of the Iran crisis, the oil companies and OPEC once again were forcing major price increases on Western consumers. High fuel prices and long lines at gasoline stations around the country inevitably reflected poorly on the administration. Republicans began capitalizing on this disgruntlement by blaming Carter for having “lost Iran.” Carter was being depicted as a weak president, a man who had also given away too much in the SALT II Treaty. The administration responded by making SALT II ratification its number-one priority.41 This in turn made the administration even more vulnerable to pressure from the Kissinger-McCloy campaign to accommodate the shah. At the end of July 1979, Kissinger made the linkage explicit when he bluntly told Brzezinski that his continued support for SALT II was linked to a “more forthcoming attitude on our part regarding the Shah.”42 Carter was thoroughly annoyed by this linkage, but he decided to allow Vance to begin working on contingency plans to bring the shah into the country.