The paragraph letting Weinberger and Shultz off the hook, however, wound up on the cutting-room floor. President Reagan’s political advisors killed it, believing the passage diluted the main message, the President’s willingness to accept full responsibility. I was unhappy about the omission. Ten days later, in his weekly Saturday radio broadcast, however, the President did at least say that Secretary Shultz and Secretary Weinberger “advised me strongly not to pursue the initiative.”
Ronald Reagan had made his public mea culpa. But in his heart of hearts he remained pure. For the rest of his term, we learned to avoid the subject like poison ivy. Once anybody accidentally hit the tripwire, Reagan would launch into a twenty-minute monologue on why the deal had not been arms-for-hostages; and how did we know there were no Iranian moderates?
Three issues dominated the NSC. First was the changed East-West dynamic created by Mikhail Gorbachev. Next was the muddle in Central America made even muddier by the Iran-contra revelations. And finally there was the Middle East, where Iran and Iraq were still warring and endangering the free flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, and where American hostages were still held captive in hiding places in Lebanon, despite the arms given to Iran.
To perform our NSC role, we had to add to the alphabet soup that drives citizens outside the Beltway crazy. Since the NSC was responsible for pulling together positions from several departments and agencies for the President’s consideration, we needed a coordinating body, and created the PRG, the Policy Review Group. We put together an outstanding collection of subcabinet officials. Rich Armitage attended from DOD, which for me was like having my brother and bodyguard present. From State, Mike Armacost, the undersecretary for political affairs, attended. A career foreign service officer, Armacost had also been a White House Fellow, and we had known each other for years. The JCS was represented by Lieutenant General John Moellering and later by Vice Admiral Jon Howe. Howe, who replaced me as military assistant to Carlucci, also served at the State Department as director of political military affairs and as Vice President Nelson Rockefeller’s national security advisor. The CIA was represented by Dick Kerr, the agency’s number three man. Don Gregg, Vice President’s Bush’s advisor on national security, also attended. Others were added, depending on the issue on the table. But the above group was the core. We all knew each other well and knew the Washington ropes and snares.
Just ten days after my arrival, on January 12, the Persian Gulf became the PRG’s first order of business. All departments were informed that henceforth only one channel of communication existed between the United States and Iran, the State Department. No more arms hustlers or James Bondian NSC staffers bearing cakes and Bibles (as Ollie North had done on a secret trip to Tehran) were to speak for the United States. We also made clear that Iran would not get so much as a slingshot from America while the arms embargo lasted. And since the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf was as crucial to us as blood pumping through an artery, Iraqi and Iranian threats to Kuwaiti oil tankers would be met. We advised the Kuwaiti government that the United States was willing to respond to its request to put its tankers under U.S. flags, thus placing the vessels under America’s protection. What we were trying to create, which had not existed before, was a policy that everybody understood and agreed on. Because the President was so passive, a few people had previously made end runs around his authority unknown to others. Because Weinberger and Shultz were continually scrapping, we often had more fights than cooperation. Carlucci and I wanted clear positions that the cabinet helped shape, that the President blessed, and that the Congress understood.
When, for example, a few months later, the U.S.S. Stark was accidentally attacked by an Iraqi Exocet missile in the Persian Gulf, we had a policy in place, so that we did not have to explain to Congress why the ship was there in the first place. The attack had been a tragedy, costing the lives of thirty-seven American sailors; but it was a tragedy that had occurred in the course of an overall coherent goal—to keep the oil lanes open. When a Kuwaiti tanker carrying a U.S. flag hit a mine in the Gulf we could manage the resulting flap because the incident happened in the context of the same policy—to keep the oil flowing. Such coherence had been missing previously and had led to the Iran-contra debacle. The Policy Review Group became our instrument for achieving a broadly understood and agreed-upon foreign policy within the administration.
The next big question was what to do about the contras, who were still fighting the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The back-door aid to the contras that Ollie North had arranged to get around a congressional ban had created the messiest part of the Iran-contra affair. But that fact did not detract from the justice of the contra cause. How to deal with the contras, however, produced a fault line that split the administration right down the middle, even among those who supported them. George Shultz at State saw the contras as useful for keeping pressure on the Sandinistas to come to the bargaining table, where we hoped to persuade them to democratize their country and stop exporting communism. Cap Weinberger saw the contras in a romantic vein, like the mujahedin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. To him, these Nicaraguans were freedom fighters deserving of our full support in a serious bid to throw off the Marxist yoke in Managua.
I like to get my truth from the ground level. In this case, the best source was a man named Alan Fiers, head of the Central American Task Force at the CIA, who was responsible for getting weapons, ammunition, transportation, food, and medical supplies to the contras. At one PRG meeting, I asked Fiers, “How large a force could the contras ultimately field?” Maybe fifteen thousand men tops, he said. “Is there any hope that this force can come out of the hills and beat the Sandinista army?” Not a chance, Fiers said. “Is there any possibility the Nicaraguan people will rise up to support the contras?” Unlikely, Fiers answered. That settled it for me. The contras were a card to play in pressing for a negotiated solution; but not a solution themselves.
We had recruited a fiery anti-Castro Cuban, José Sorzano, to guide us on Latin American affairs. José addressed me as mi general, reminding me that Latin Americans had over two centuries of practice with this salutation.
To give me a better feel for the contras, José arranged for me to meet with several of their leaders who were being supported by the CIA in Miami. I found a mixed bag. Colonel Enrique Bermúdez, military commander of the contras, impressed me as a true fighter ready to die for his cause. Others were just unregenerate veterans of the corrupt regime of Anastasio Somoza, who had found themselves on the wrong side when the Sandinistas took over. “Gucci comandantes,” someone dubbed them. But in the old days of East-West polarization, we worked with what we had.
Working with José Sorzano and two White House legislative aides, Dave Addington and Alan Kranowitz, I became the chief administration advocate, trying to win enough congressional support to keep the contras afloat. Every few months, Congress had another contra-funding bill before it. We had little trouble winning support for nonlethal aid. And I could count on staunch bipartisan support for lethal arms aid from congressmen like Representatives Bob Michel and Mickey Edwards and Senators David Boren, Warren Rudman, and Ted Stevens. But among most Democrats, it was next to impossible to get approval for weapons and ammunition.
One night, during a conference committee debate on still another bill, I found myself getting nowhere trying to convince the Democratic side that you did not summarily cut off aid to men fighting for democracy in the middle of the fight. “Let me tell you a story,” I said. “I’ve been in the jungle. I’ve been where the contras are now, except that it was in Vietnam in 1963. You can’t imagine how desperately we waited for that Marine helicopter to supply us every two weeks. Our lives, not just our comfort, hung on that delivery. It’s no different for the contras today.” This was not some foreign policy seminar we were conducting in a fancy air-conditioned room, I pointed out. “We’re talking about whether men who placed their trust in the United States are going to live or be le
ft to die.” The room became still, and some of the Democrats nodded. Within an hour, we had almost worked out a deal. We took a break to give both sides a chance to caucus.
On our return, I noticed Ted Stevens and Warren Rudman lagging behind, whispering to each other. After we were seated again in the conference room, I was about to tell Democratic Congressman Dave Obey that we had an agreement when Ted Stevens jumped up and said he could not go along unless the Democrats also agreed to a new date by which Congress must consider additional aid to the contras, a demand previously turned down by the Democrats. Rudman shouted that he agreed with Stevens, and the two of them started walking out. At that point, everyone wanted to go home, and so the Democrats wearily conceded. After the meeting, I was rounding a corner in the Capitol with Stevens and Rudman when both men broke out laughing. Their walkout had been a performance, and it had worked. They said I was too “non-political” to have been cut in on the game. I may have been a graduate student at the Pentagon and White House. But at Congressional U., I was still a freshman.
Overarching all other concerns was our relationship with the Soviet Union. Our defense strategy and budget were almost wholly a reflection of Soviet capabilities and intentions as we read them. The size and state of the Red Army were the measures against which we built our forces. Our choosing sides in conflicts around the world was almost always decided on the basis of East-West competition. The new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, however, was turning the old Cold War formulas on their head. Gorbachev appeared to be more intent on solving the Soviet Union’s internal failings than in embarking on fruitless adventures from Angola to Afghanistan. He had little interest in continuing to pick up the tab for huge Cuban and Nicaraguan deficits. Only by reducing East-West tensions could he cut the Soviet Union’s voracious defense spending and turn the country’s resources to crying civilian needs. Consequently, by late summer of 1987, Gorbachev had shown a willingness to negotiate away intermediate-range nuclear forces—INF missiles. That meant eliminating the Soviets’ SS-20 missiles and for us, the Army’s Pershing II missiles and the Air Force’s ground-launched cruise missiles. Ronald Reagan was operating from a position of political and military strength. From this posture, he had the vision and flexibility, lacking in many knee-jerk Cold Warriors, to recognize that Gorbachev was a new man in a new age offering new opportunities for peace. The prospects brightened that we could get an INF treaty; and that meant that for the first time since the dawning of the atomic age, a class of nuclear weapons would be destroyed.
While we were tackling global issues at the NSC, the country’s attention was riveted to the joint congressional hearings on the Iran-contra affair, which started on May 5 and were drawing audiences like a soap opera. During the hearings, the country witnessed the extraordinary performance of Ollie North, who had been cast by the committee as villain, but brilliantly managed to emerge as an appealing patriot for at least half the viewers. I was not one of them. However well-intended his motives, North, along with Poindexter and others, had used the weapons sales to raise money for purposes prohibited by the elected representatives of the American people. He had done so in a way that avoided accountability to the President and Congress. It was wrong.
I was not called to testify by the congressional investigating committee, but on June 19 I did give a deposition to committee lawyers concerning my role in helping arrange the transfer of the TOWs to the CIA. I met in the White House Situation Room with Arthur Liman, chief Senate counsel, and Joseph Saba, staff counsel for the House of Representatives. They were most interested in finding out why the Department of Defense had transferred the TOWs to the CIA rather than directly to Iran. I repeated Secretary Weinberger’s reasoning. “He did not see it as something that was the Defense Department’s role—the transferring of weapons to a country such as Iran. To the extent that such a transaction was going to take place, it should be handled by elements of the government that are able and agree to handle such transactions.”
Offhandedly, Liman said, “Maybe I should know this, but did the Secretary keep a diary?”
“The Secretary, to my knowledge, did not keep a diary,” I answered. “Whatever notes he kept, I don’t know how he uses them or what he does with them.” I had never seen anything that would meet the common understanding of a diary. But I alluded to “notes,” because I remembered the little white pads Cap kept in his desk drawer. I had never read these jottings, so I did not think that they should be characterized by me as a diary. I expected the lawyers to press me with follow-up questions, but they went on to other matters. The notes were not a secret. Time magazine later printed a picture of Weinberger packing them on his last week in office. They were subsequently placed in the Library of Congress and not destroyed or spirited away.
I hoped this session would mark the end of my involvement in this affair. However, those notepads would surface again as Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel, prolonged his investigation of Iran-contra ad infinitum. In 1991, four years after my first interview, the independent counsel’s staff reviewed the pads at the Library of Congress. They concluded, erroneously in my view, that Cap had not been truthful when he said that he did not know that Hawk missile parts had been shipped to Iran in the fall of 1985, prior to the President’s formal authorization in January 1986. The staff questioned me at length on entries in the pads, which I was now permitted to read for the first time. Weinberger’s lawyer, Bob Bennett, then asked me to give a deposition on the matter. In that deposition, I made one casual reference to the notepads as a “diary.”
Bingo! That did it. The independent counsel figured he had caught me in a contradiction. Four years before, I had said Weinberger did not have a diary to my knowledge, though I had made the allusion to notes. Now, having seen those notes and having been questioned on them by the prosecutor’s staff, I had referred to them as a diary. That was sufficient offense for Walsh to write me up in his final report.
When that report came out on December 3, 1993, it said that I, too, “was privy to detailed information regarding arms shipments to Iran” during 1985. Dead wrong. I knew of proposals to ship missiles at the time. I did not know that shipments had actually been made until sometime in 1986, after President Reagan signed the Finding of Necessity authorizing the deal with Iran. “Powell’s early statements regarding the initiative were forthright and consistent,” the report concluded. It went on to say, “… but some were questionable and seem generally designed to protect Weinberger. Because independent counsel had no direct evidence that Powell intentionally made false statements, however, these matters were not pursued.” I was furious at the implication. I was not to be judged on whether or not I actually made false statements. Walsh simply implied that I did and dropped the matter, leaving the unfair and unfounded conclusion. I was not alone. Rich Armitage and others received similar unjust treatment.
But at least the report ended Iran-contra for me. The independent counsel, however, was tough on Weinberger. He was indicted, though President Bush pardoned him just before leaving office. Along with many others, I had spoken to the President recommending the pardon. Weinberger was a proud and honorable man. His indictment was a disgrace. This was the man who, from day one, had branded the scheme of arms for hostages as “absurd.” He fought it every step of the way and only stopped fighting when President Reagan made the decision to go ahead. Instead of being praised, he was quibbled to death by an out-of-control independent counsel with unlimited time and money at his disposal. The charge against Cap Weinberger was a travesty of justice.
Frank Carlucci left the PRG meetings almost entirely in my hands. Having suffered through endless, pointless, mindless time-wasters for years, I had evolved certain rules for holding meetings. First, everyone got a chance to recommend items for the agenda beforehand, but I controlled the final agenda, which I distributed before the meeting. Once a meeting started, no one was allowed to switch the agenda. Everyone knew that the meeting would last exactly one hour. The first fi
ve minutes and the last ten minutes belonged to me. In those first five minutes, I reviewed why we were meeting and what had to be decided by the end of the session. For the next twenty minutes, participants were allowed to present their positions, uninterrupted. After that, we had a free-for-all to strip away posturing, attack lame reasoning, gang up on outrageous views, and generally have some fun. Fifty minutes into the hour, I resumed control, and for five minutes summarized everyone’s views as I understood them. Participants could take issue with my summation for one minute. In the last four to five minutes, I laid out the conclusions and decisions to be presented as the consensus of the participants. Then it was over. Those disapproving of the outcome could go back home and complain to their bosses, who could appeal to Carlucci. This approach seemed to work.
Late in May, the family returned to William and Mary for Linda’s graduation. On the way home, Linda told us that she was dead serious about an acting career. All our children had been active in school dramatics; but a profession? The lottery offered better odds. Linda also screwed up the courage to ask if I would support her through acting school. Much to her astonishment, I am sure, I agreed. But then, what is a father but a banker provided by nature? Linda enrolled in a two-year program at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in Manhattan. I found it strange that one of my children was going back to the New York roots I had willingly left nearly thirty years before.
I returned to my office on the afternoon of June 27 just as Lieutenant General Andy Chambers, still commanding VII Corps in Germany, phoned me. I was happy to hear from Andy, but wondered what he wanted—was it to talk about my son, Mike? I was right, and it was bad news. “Mike’s been badly hurt,” Andy said, adding quickly, “but he’s not going to die.” He gave me the sketchy details. Mike and another lieutenant, Ulrich Brechbuhl, had been riding in a jeep driven by an enlisted driver, Specialist Boese. The jeep went out of control on the autobahn and flipped over. Mike was thrown out, and the vehicle landed on him before rolling to a halt. The other two men had suffered only minor injuries. I would soon be getting a call from the Army hospital in Nuremberg with details on Mike’s condition. It is futile to try to recapture one’s reaction to such news, with part of the mind reeling, the other part struggling to figure out what to do. I told Florence Gantt that I was going home to break the news to Alma. Florence immediately started arranging to get us to West Germany.
My American Journey Page 42