Power Game (111 page)

How this one Marine colonel got so much control of policy is a case study in the backstage power game. Early on, Shultz and Weinberger probably could have stopped the NSC staff’s Iranian operation. But once it was rolling, by late January 1986, probably nothing short of their resignations could have shaken Reagan sufficiently or broken the NSC staff’s momentum.

Actually, the NSC’s stunning ascent had been foreshadowed by David Stockman’s preeminence on the budget. Reagan’s hands-off habit of delegating great authority pays a premium to aides who are sharp and aggressive. In fact, Reagan’s permissive style was the most important element in the rise of his NSC staff. Ironically, in September 1986, just two months before the Iran disaster burst Reagan’s bubble,
Fortune
magazine carried a flattering cover story on Reagan’s management style. It promised:
WHAT MANAGERS CAN LEARN FROM MANAGER REAGAN
. Beside a head shot of Reagan was his formula: “Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere.”

That formula made a virtue out of Reagan’s shortcomings. If Jimmy Carter got mired in excessive concern with detail, Reagan’s weakness was being inattentive not only to detail but the whole sweep of policy implementation. Aides kept defending him as a strong leader, tenacious about his goals. But the Iran hearings in Congress underscored how lax he was, how rarely he pressed tough questions, prodded for explanations, checked the odds and consequences of failure, kept his staff on its toes. Even when the Iranian operation blew up in his face, Reagan was neither curious nor alert enough to ask Poindexter for an explanation of the diversion of Iranian funds (or so he said).

This fit Reagan’s pattern on foreign affairs. He would set a general course, but his understanding was often so hazy and simplistic that he was at the mercy of aides—more than most presidents. Republican senators, coming away from the Oval Office, told me of their shock at his weak grasp of important issues. Most Reagan aides loyally defended him, but some admitted embarrassment at his gaps or his mental
laziness. Others reported having to step in and handle conversations for Reagan so that he did not look stupid. McFarlane complained that Reagan sometimes did not listen and did not absorb what he was told.

One high State Department official told me of his dismay at Reagan’s comments—after an hour’s briefing by other officials—”that showed he simply had not understood what we had been talking about. I got the impression on that occasion and others that his knowledge is shallow and superficial. The people around him can manipulate things to get his general approval on something and then keep complications away from him.”

Although Shultz, Weinberger, and Poindexter defensively disputed such a portrait of Reagan, the Tower board portrayed him as a slack, absentee boss. Former Senator Edmund Muskie, a Tower board member, said, “We were appalled by the absence of the kind of alertness and vigilance to his job and to these policies that one expects of a president.” Typical was Reagan’s flip-flop on whether in August 1985 he had approved in advance the first Israeli shipments of American arms to Iran. First, Reagan agreed with Bud McFarlane’s version that he had orally approved the shipments; then he shifted and agreed with Don Regan that he did not approve them beforehand. Finally, he said he could not recall. “I’m afraid that I let myself be influenced by others’ recollections, not my own,” he confessed weakly.

Reagan’s formula is made to order for an assertive, activist national security staff, taking general cues from the president and translating his wishes into orders to other agencies. That gives the NSC staff great leeway to speak for the president, leaving no one but the president in a position to challenge its word.

The second key ingredient in the NSC staff’s ascendancy was its own boldness. Despite the publicity given North and Poindexter, the quiet-spoken McFarlane, as national security adviser in May 1985, was the one who moved in on Iran policy, just as he had on SDI. McFarlane grabbed State’s normal diplomatic role after Shultz and Weinberger dismissed the idea of an opening to Iran. McFarlane had asked for their reactions to a CIA paper urging a policy shift to permit arms sales to Iran—to offset supposedly growing Soviet influence in Iran.

“Perverse,” Shultz responded. “Contrary to our own interests.” Prophetically, Shultz said it was wrong in principle, bound to be exposed, and thus damaging to the president.

“This is almost too absurd to comment on,” Weinberger jotted in the margin.

Stymied by the normal process, McFarlane launched his own back-channel
diplomacy, seeking a link to Iran through Israel. His emissary was Michael Ledeen, a Georgetown University professor and part-time NSC consultant who had close contacts with high-ranking Israelis. In early May 1985, Ledeen went to Israel with McFarlane’s blessing and came back reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres wanted to know if the United States would approve a shipment of American-made arms to Iran.

Shultz was touchy about others invading his diplomatic turf. In 1983, he had threatened to resign when he learned that McFarlane had made a mission to the Middle East without State’s knowledge. The new NSC staff initiative offended Shultz, and he protested to McFarlane, noting that Israel’s diplomatic interests were different from Washington’s. A channel to Iran through Israel, Shultz warned, “contains the seeds of … serious error unless straightened out quickly.” McFarlane, playing down his links to Ledeen, replied to Shultz, “I am turning it off entirely.” But in fact, McFarlane pressed ahead, spurred by the Israelis. By mid-July 1985, two Israeli emissaries had urged McFarlane to use Israel as a channel for arms deals with Iran, and McFarlane got the president to let him explore the idea.

Here was a classic pattern of bureaucratic infighting, seen again and again in the Iranian operation—the NSC staff pushing, Shultz objecting, Shultz thinking the operation had stopped, the NSC proceeding on its own. At each stage, the NSC became more ambitious. McFarlane maneuvered the NSC staff into control of an active diplomatic channel. Shultz was still wary but significantly, he did not block the effort. Instead, he left the field to the NSC, asking only that State be kept informed. Shultz’s acquiescence at that point was crucial. It opened the way for the whole operation.

McFarlane grabbed the action, and within a couple of weeks, his man Ledeen was back in Israel, meeting not only with Israeli middlemen but with the Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who put the arms-for-hostages issue on the table. Next, McFarlane jumped the chain of command and opened a back channel to the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, without telling Shultz. McFarlane’s operation led to three arms shipments to Iran but only one hostage release. When McFarlane resigned in disgust in December 1985, Poindexter took over, providing protection for North. “I never carried out a single act, not one … in which I did not have authority from my superiors,” North told Congress.
⁴⁷

The third element in North’s rise to power was Bill Casey—North’s operational patron, tutor, adviser, de facto boss, and the mastermind
behind North’s operations in Central America, according to North’s testimony. North was in awe of Casey as a spymaster and intellectual. And Casey evidently admired North’s can-do daring, and saw him as a soul mate, perhaps even as a son. They thought alike, and they were in almost constant contact. Records showed they had at least thirty-five meetings, and probably many more. Casey had an office “down the hall” from North on the third floor of the Executive Office Building (next to the White House).

North said it was Casey in 1983, expecting Congress to restrict CIA operations in Nicaragua, who moved North to set up a private network for covert operations. “Casey suggested [my] setting up outside entities, and he gave me the name of General Secord as a person who could do it,” North told the Iran-
contra
hearing. In 1984, Casey instructed North how to set up a revolving operational cash fund to keep North’s operations secret from Congress. Casey worried about Soviet eavesdropping picking up North’s phone calls and persuaded North to shift to communicating with encryption devices. Casey warned North to face the prospect of torture and to be prepared to commit suicide on a mission to Iran in early 1986. North first shared the idea of diverting Iranian funds to the
contras
with Casey. (Casey loved it, North said, thought it was “the ultimate irony, the ultimate covert operation.”) In early October 1986, North said, Casey warned him that the Iranian operation was about to “unravel” and it was time to “clean things up”—meaning North should destroy his cash accounts ledger, notes, and official documents, in order to quash evidence of the “full-service covert operation.”
⁴⁸

Most importantly, North filled a need for Casey. The crucial moment was October 12, 1984, when Congress passed a ban against further aid—direct or indirect—to the
contras
by the CIA, Pentagon, or any other agency “involved in intelligence activities.”
⁴⁹
That created a vacuum, by taking the CIA out of the
contra
war. Ahead of time, Casey and North had laid the groundwork for North to step into the vacuum and replace the CIA as point man for raising funds, organizing support, delivering arms to the
contras
—in short, running the war for Casey and the president. Once Congress voted the aid ban, North pushed the argument that the law did not cover the NSC staff because it was not an agency “involved in intelligence activities”—a euphemism for covert operations. Casey also claimed a loophole for the NSC staff, and evidently got the rationale to Reagan, who wanted a way to get around Congress.

CIA officials buttressed North’s testimony that Casey guided North
and gave his blessing for key CIA officials to help North, but masking the CIA’s involvement to the rest of the administration and Congress. For example, Tomas Castillo (cover name), the CIA station chief in Costa Rica, provided maps and information for North’s air drops to the
contras
, helped locate a site for a clandestine air base that North wanted in Costa Rica, and tried to shift munitions from one
contra
group to another.
⁵⁰
North also got help from Dewey Clarridge, chief of the CIA’s Central American Task Force, in arranging for planes from Southern Air Transport, a CIA proprietary firm, to fly Israeli arms to Iran and other arms back to Nicaragua. He also worked with Clarridge’s successor, Alan Fiers, and Clair George, the CIA deputy director for operations.

“Bill Casey knew that he had a terminal illness as long as two years before his death [May 6, 1987],” McFarlane told me, “and I think that he was a person of such conviction and loyalty—conviction on policy and loyalty to Reagan—that he decided to take upon himself steps which he believed essential to promoting the president’s interests and, he believed, the national interest vis-à-vis the Sandinistas. But as a matter of loyalty, he did these things without the president being aware of it.”
⁵¹

The fourth element in North’s rise was the extraordinary leverage he gained by force of personality, by his cocksure manner, by acting when others hesitated—and that tells a great deal about the inside power game. North knew how to exploit his White House power base and the mystique of secrecy. For the messianic, gung-ho Marine lieutenant colonel with a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts from Vietnam—still boyish-looking at forty-three—ran circles around a bureaucracy often mired in red tape or endless policy disputes.

The swashbuckling Hollywood touches that were North’s trademark attracted Reagan, who had played Rambo movie roles back in Hollywood, once helping free Errol Flynn from a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. The president evidently identified with the exploits of the fervently patriotic Marine, who went by the code name of Steelhammer, who was a true believer in the Reagan doctrine of anti-Communist guerrilla wars. The day after firing North, Reagan telephoned the colonel to praise him as a hero and express gratitude. Referring to new revelations of North’s channeling Ayatollah Khomeini’s funds to the Nicaraguan
contras
, the president joked: “This is going to make a great movie one day.”
⁵²

As his congressional appearances demonstrated, North’s energy and magnetism cannot be underestimated. One colleague called him a
“whirling dervish,” a one-man band for the
contras
. He contacted ten or more countries to obtain arms and funds for the
contras
, flew to Honduras to bolster
contra
morale, stashed money for them in his office safe (once as much as $1 million), acted as paymaster for
contra
leaders, masterminded their arms drops, prodded them to open up new military fronts, urged them to take over a part of Nicaragua and declare their independence.

North’s White House base was crucial to his power game—enabling him to act in the name of the president and to press officials in other agencies into helping him. North’s formal title was deputy director of the NSC’s Division of Political-Military Affairs, but that title masked his importance as an action officer. Presidents and cabinet secretaries rarely know how to get things done; they need aides to make operations click.

North was once unofficial crisis staff officer for the White House Situation Room, the President’s command post and communications center. An irrepressible workaholic, North was an important figure in planning the invasion of Grenada, the interception of the
Achille Lauro
hijackers, and the curbing of death squads in El Salvador. In 1985, North was deep into counterterrorism, working on the TWA hijacking, and in 1986, he became cochairman of the “Operations Sub-Group,” the NSC unit on terrorism. Those activities gave him important links in the Pentagon, State, and CIA. Moreover, having joined the NSC staff in August 1981, North lasted through four national security advisers; near the end, he knew more than his bosses about actual operations. Their dependence on him gave him power.