Reagan Officials Wage War Over Iran-Contra : McFarlane: Why ‘Cap’ Is Wrong

Headlines about the Iran-Contra affair have subsided, but questions of responsibility for the fiasco have not. In a new book, former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger places the blame squarely on former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane. An angry McFarlane, in a magazine article to be published this week, says there is enough blame for all to share. Here are excerpts from the book and the article.

For most of our history we have been able to count on public figures to contribute to our political maturation through memoirs dealing with their stewardship in office. Such records are necessarily biased, for they describe events from one person’s perspective. Yet, because most of our statesmen have been just that, and honest as well, such modest exaggerations and even errors as their testaments may include are forgivable. . . . Not so for former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

(Weinberger’s book) is an astonishing, anti-intellectual, ad hominem tract; a mean-spirited assemblage of distortions and falsities, of which I am the chief though not the only target.

But it takes a second reading to absorb that the defamations are only tactical devices, libelous provocations put forth to distract the reader and allow the author to evade the central issues that any public official is obligated to address in a memoir: “How well or poorly did our institutions function during your service? What was your role? What can we learn from your experience?”

One example illustrates this consistent use of slander as a device for evading responsibility. The secretary implies in one reference that I urged offering Egypt “ ‘several’ . . . American supporting divisions, to invade Libya.” Elsewhere, regarding the tragic U.S. involvement in Beirut, he states that I “demanded that we commit more troops and military resources, presumably to ‘save’ Beirut.” Both references are simply and verifiably false. . . .

My reporting cables from Beirut presented the following facts so that the President and his Cabinet in Washington could use them in making decisions: Both our Marine forces and our diplomatic presence in Beirut were vulnerable to almost daily artillery shelling. Yet counterattack by our forces, if we were seen to be taking sides, risked compromising our role as arbiters. The President deserved to know those facts if he was to forge a sensible politico-military strategy for walking that fine line. But my cables were far less important in this decision process than what happened to them back in Washington. Because of Secretary Weinberger’s obstructionist tactics, no such strategy was ever devised. . . .

Regarding the (Iran-Contra) affair, Weinberger alleges variously that I gave intelligence on Iraqi positions to the Iranians; that President Reagan never approved the Israeli transfer of arms starting in August, 1985; and that he (Weinberger) was unaware that any American was engaged in meetings with Israelis on the subject of establishing contact with Iranian pragmatists, until he read of it in intelligence reports which started in September of 1985.

The first charge--that I passed intelligence on Iraqi positions to Iran--is an outright lie. . . . In his book, the secretary characterizes the Iraqi regime as having rational, limited aims. This is the same Iraq led by Saddam Hussein, who recently notified the world, with murderous pride, that he had the means and the will to use ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors.

The secretary’s second point, regarding President Reagan’s approval of the Israeli transfer, was explored thoroughly by the Tower Board and the Joint Congressional Committee. Both believed that the President did in fact approve the policy. Secretary Weinberger ignores the very existence of these verdicts. . . .

Is it sensible to expect that I would have approved Israel’s selling missiles which could only be replaced by Secretary Weinberger’s Pentagon, when I knew that he was opposed to it? Not likely.

The secretary’s last point--that he was unaware of my meetings with David Kimche, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, or the basic plan until September--is also false. . . . To his credit, he opposed it, but he was surely aware of the original idea and its key antecedents. . . .

If he felt as strongly as he states, he could have offered to resign and, if necessary, resigned. His justification--that he could not have affected anything by such action--is ridiculous. . . .

What are the real issues behind the abortive attempt to restore a dialogue with Iran? Was it reasonable in 1985 to attempt to determine whether or not there were any pragmatists in Tehran? Should we not have been interested in deying to the Soviet Union (which at the time had more than 100,000 troops next door in Afghanistan) a prize whose oil and geographic proximity to the largest oil deposits in the world, if lost, could bring the international economy to its knees? Of course we should. . . .

We cannot count on dealing with paragons of liberal philosophy as we seek to defend our interests and promote democracy. Bear in mind that 19 years ago, during our secret diplomacy which preceded the U.S. opening to China, that country was still emerging from a revolution in which it had murdered huge numbers of its own citizens--just like in Iran in 1985.

The glaring error of the Iran affair--my error and the President’s--was in allowing arms to be introduced into the equation before it was clear that those with whom we were dealing were both committed to changing Iranian policies and strong enough to do so. . . . Neither requirement was met in 1985, and it was for that reason that I recommended to President Reagan in December, 1985, as I left government, and again in May, 1986, after the trip to Tehran that he had asked me to undertake, that the opening to Iran be closed.

Secretary Weinberger knows this, for he was at the Dec. 10 briefing in the Oval Office sitting across from me and next to the President. At the end of my debriefing to President Reagan, in which I recommended that he break off the contacts, Weinberger interrupted and said, “Mr. President, Bud is right, we must bring this effort to a close; it is simply too risky.” By drawing you in with these sensational charges, Weinberger avoids treatment of the relevant question: “Was the Reagan Administration capable of developing and implementing coherent politico-military strategy?” In most cases, the answer was no, as a direct consequence of Secretary Weinberger’s personal animus toward Secretaries of State Alexander Haig and George Shultz and his ambition to succeed them. . . .

When I voluntarily testified in the Iran-Contra hearings and before the Tower Board, I told everything I knew. I described the paralysis that affected foreign-policy planning in the Reagan Administration because of the personal and policy struggle between the State and Defense Departments’ leadership. It is well known in Washington that Weinberger was the official most to blame for this struggle and therefore most responsible for the inability of the Administration to develop policy in an orderly and coherent way. Weinberger’s book presents his own self-interested version of this history. . . .

We should all be trying to learn from Iran-Contra, and there is enough blame to go around. Prose written out of pride to redeem a dubious public record, like Weinberger’s version of Iran-Contra, makes this almost impossible. He was party to our getting into this quagmire. Now he refuses to help get us out of it. Instead, he offers his readers a scapegoat. . . .

by National Review, Inc., 150 E. 35th St., New York, N.Y. 10016. Reprinted by permission.