Reagan: The Life (95 page)

“Can I follow up please, if I may, on that?” Bierbauer said. “The contacts that you’re suggesting are with moderates in the Iranian government and in the Iranian system.
Barry Goldwater tonight said in his judgment there are no moderates in Iran. I don’t mean to suggest that there may not be, but how did you know that you were reaching the moderates? And how do you define a moderate in that kind of a government?”

Reagan dodged once more. “Well, again, you’re asking questions that I cannot get into with regard to the answers,” he said. “But believe me, we had information that led us to believe that there are factions within Iran, and many of them with an eye toward the fact that they think sooner rather than later there is going to be a change in the government there. And there is great dissatisfaction among the people in Iran.”

The next questioner inquired, “Could we turn to U.S.-Soviet relations for a moment, please?”

Reagan seized the chance for a laugh. “I’d be delighted,” he said. The room duly chuckled.

The respite lasted only a moment, though, and the grilling resumed. “Mr. President, going back over your answers tonight about the arms shipments and the numbers of them,” a reporter asked, “are you telling us tonight that the only shipments with which we were involved were the one or two that followed your January 17th finding and that, whatever your aides have said on background or on the record, there were no other shipments which the U.S. condoned?”

“That’s right,” Reagan said, then caught himself. “I’m saying nothing,”
he amended. He nonetheless added, “But the missiles that we sold—and remember, there are too many people that are saying ‘gave.’ They bought them.”

Andrea Mitchell of
NBC tried to pin Reagan down. “Mr. President, to follow up on that,” she said. “We’ve been told by the chief of staff, Donald Regan, that we condoned—this government condoned—an Israeli shipment in September of 1985, shortly before the release of hostage
Benjamin Weir. That was four months before your intelligence finding on January 17th that you say gave you the legal authority not to notify Congress. Now, can you clear that up—why this government was not in violation of its arms embargo and of the notification to Congress for having condoned American-made weapons shipped to Iran in September of 1985?”

Reagan pleaded ignorance. “Well, no, I’ve never heard Mr. Regan say that, and I’ll ask him about that. Because we believe in the embargo, and as I say, we waived it for a specific purpose, in fact, with four goals in mind. Yes.”

Mitchell pushed harder. “Can I just follow up on that for a second, sir, because what is unclear to, I think, many people in the American public is why—if you are saying tonight that there will be no further arms shipments to Iran—why you won’t cancel the January 17th intelligence finding so that you can put to rest any suggestion that you might again, without notification and in complete secrecy and perhaps with the objection of some of your cabinet members, continue to ship weapons if you think that it is necessary?”

“No, I have no intention of doing that,” Reagan said, leaving his listeners potentially confused as to what he had no intention of doing: canceling the finding or shipping more weapons. “But at the same time, we are hopeful that we’re going to be able to continue our meetings with these people, these individuals.”

Mitchell sought clarity. “You won’t cancel the intelligence finding?” she asked.

Reagan hedged. “I don’t know whether it’s called for or whether I have to wait until we’ve reported to Congress and all. I don’t know just what the technicality legally is on that.”

A reporter brought the American people into the picture. “Do you think—its strategic position notwithstanding—the American people would ever support weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini?” he asked.

“We weren’t giving them to the Ayatollah Khomeini,” Reagan said. “It’s a strange situation. As I say, we were dealing with individuals, and we
believe that those—and some of those individuals are in government, in positions in government. But it was not a meeting officially of the United States head of state and the Iranian head of state. But these people, we believed, and their closeness to the Iran military was such that this was necessary to let them know, number one, that we were serious and sincere in our effort about good relations and also that they were dealing with the head of government over here, that this wasn’t something coming out of some agency or bureau, that I was behind it.”

“Mr. President,” a fresh questioner asked, “you said that you were not swapping, or you did not think you were swapping, arms for hostages. But did it ever occur to you, or did it never occur to you, that certainly the Iranians would see it that way and that they might take it as an inducement to take more hostages, especially in light of the fact that they’ve released three but taken three more?”

Reagan had been saying for years that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism. Now the president found himself having to deny that Iran controlled those it sponsored. “No, to the best of our knowledge, Iran does not own or have authority over the
Hezbollah. They cannot order them to do something.” He decided to qualify this. “It is apparent that they, evidently, have either some persuasion—and they don’t always succeed—but they can sometimes persuade or pressure the Hezbollah into doing what they did in this instance. And as I say, the Iranian government had no hostages, and they bought a shipment from us.” He repeated that the arms were merely a token of good faith. He said the administration reminded the Iranians of America’s antiterrorist policy. “We told them that we did not want to do business with any nation that openly backed terrorism. And they gave us information that they did not. And they said also that they had some evidence that there had been a lessening of this on the part of Khomeini and the government and that they’d made some progress. As a matter of fact, some individuals associated with terrorist acts had been put in prison there. And so that was when we said, ‘Well, there’s a very easy way for you to verify that if that’s the way you feel, and they’re being held hostage in Lebanon.’ ”

“If I can follow up,” the reporter said. “If your arms shipments had no effect on the release of the hostages, then how do you explain the release of the hostages at the same time that the shipments were coming in?”

“No, I said that—at the time—I said to them that there was something they could do to show their sincerity,” Reagan replied. “And if they
really meant it that they were not in favor of backing terrorists, they could begin by releasing our hostages.”

Reagan’s discomfort had been obvious and growing. He now attempted a counterattack against his questioners. “As a matter of fact, I believe and have reason to believe that we would have had all five of them by this last weekend, had it not been for the attendant confusion that arose here in the reporting room.”

“On that point,” a reporter rejoined, “you said earlier, and you said just now again, that, but for the publicity, two other hostages would have been returned home by now. As you know, the publicity began in a Syrian-backed, pro-Syrian magazine in Lebanon. My question is, therefore, are you suggesting that someone who was a party to this sabotaged it by deliberately leaking that original report?”

“To our best information,” Reagan replied, “the leak came from a person in government in Iran and not one of the people that we were dealing with, someone that would be more hostile to us. And that individual gave the story to the magazine, and the magazine then printed the story there in Beirut.”

“Mr. President, there has been an obvious change in policy towards Iran: from refusing to deal with a terrorist state to even sending weapons as a gesture of good will,” a reporter said. “Would you consider, in the name of the same geopolitical interest that you invoked with Iran, changing your policy towards Nicaragua?”

“No,” Reagan said, more convincingly than on several of his previous answers. But then he wandered back into the weeds. “I believe that I’ve answered that question, I think, more than once here—that no, we still hold to our position, and Iran officially is still on our list of nations that have been supporting terrorism. But I’m talking about the people that we were doing business with, and they gave us indication and evidence that that policy was changing. And so, as I said, to give them more prestige and muscle there where they were, we made this sale.”

A reporter offered Reagan a chance to cut his way out of the thicket. “Mr. President, there is a mood in Washington tonight of a president who is very much beleaguered, very much on the defensive. Why don’t you seize the offensive by giving your secretary of state a vote of confidence declaring that all future covert activities will have his support and by shaking up the National Security Council in such a way as to satisfy the concerns in Congress that it has been running a paramilitary operation
out of the basement of the White House in defiance of the State Department and the Congress?”

Reagan rambled before finding something to grasp. “The State Department—or the secretary of state—was involved. The director of the CIA was involved, in what we were doing and, as I said before, there are certain laws in which, for certain actions, I would not have been able to keep them a secret as they were. But these people you’ve mentioned have been involved—do know what was going on. And I don’t see that the action that you’ve suggested has called for it. But what you’ve disappointed me the most in is suggesting that I sound defensive up here. I’ve just been trying to answer all your questions as well as I can. And I don’t feel that I have anything to defend about at all. With the circumstances the way they were, the decision I made I still believe was the correct decision, and I believe that we achieved some portion of our goals.”

“Mr. President, do you believe that any of the additional hostages will be released?” a reporter asked.

“I have to believe that,” Reagan said.

“Mr. President, you made an exception for the arms embargo when you thought it was in the U.S. interest to do so. Why shouldn’t other nations ship weapons to Iran when they think it’s in their interests?”

“Well, I would like to see the indication as to how it could be in their interest,” Reagan said. “I know that there are other nations that feel as we do that the Western world should be trying to find an avenue to get Iran back where it once was—and that is in the family of democratic nations and the family of nations that want peace in the Middle East and so forth.”

“How, Mr. President—if I may follow up—how does shipping weapons to Iran help bring them back into the community of nations? You’ve acknowledged that you were dealing with only a small portion of the government.”

“I was talking of strengthening a particular group who needed the prestige that that could give them, who needed that, well, that bargaining power, themselves, within their own ranks,” Reagan said.

Jeremiah O’Leary of the Republican-friendly
Washington Times
corrected a Reagan misstatement from earlier in the news conference. “Mr. President, I believe you may have been slightly in error in describing a TOW as a shoulder-mounted weapon. It’s a ground-to-ground weapon. Redeye is the shoulder weapon, but that’s beside the point. TOWs are used to destroy tanks.”

“Yes, I know, Jerry,” Reagan said. “I know it’s a tank weapon.”

“I don’t think it’s fired from your shoulder.”

“Well, now, if I have been misinformed, then I will yield on that,” Reagan said. “But it was my understanding that that is a man-carried weapon, and we have a number of other shoulder-borne weapons.”

“I did have a question, though,” O’Leary said. “I just wanted to ask you what would be wrong at this stage of the game, since everything seems to have gone wrong that could possibly go wrong, like the Murphy Law, the Reagan Law, the O’Leary Law, this week—what would be wrong in saying that a mistake was made on a very high-risk gamble so that you can get on with the next two years?”

Reagan stood his ground, eroded though it was. “Because I don’t think a mistake was made,” he said. “It was a high-risk gamble, and it was a gamble that, as I’ve said, I believe the circumstances warranted. And I don’t see that it has been a fiasco or a great failure of any kind. We still have those contacts. We still have made some ground. We got our hostages back—three of them. And so, I think that what we did was right, and we’re going to continue on this path.”

I
T WAS A
harrowing experience. Reagan had never spent a more uncomfortable hour in public, on camera. Characteristically, he blamed his interrogators. “
They were out for blood,” he wrote that night. “Every Q. had a sharp barb.” But he thought he had handled himself well. “Our gang seems to feel ‘I done good.’ ”

Reagan remained a sucker for favorable reviews. Optimism had been part of his personality since childhood; whether innate or learned, it helped him survive the uncertainties of life with an alcoholic father. His favorite story, one his inner circle heard so often they couldn’t stand it any longer, told of a child who wants a horse for Christmas but wakes to find a pile of manure instead. Undaunted, the child grabs a shovel and starts digging. “There’s got to be a horse in here somewhere!” he explains delightedly. Reagan focused on the positive parts of any experience, convinced they held the key to its meaning. This habit constituted one of his great personal strengths, making him almost unsinkable emotionally. It was also central to his political success. Pessimism pervades the thinking of conservatives, who tend to believe the world is going to hell in a handbasket. They might be right, but they aren’t fun to be around.
Barry Goldwater appealed to people’s heads, but he left their hearts cold. Reagan was as conservative philosophically as Goldwater, but his sunny mien made Americans feel good about themselves and their country and made him irresistible at the polls.

Yet Reagan’s insistence on seeing the good side sometimes worked against him. His staff buoyed their boss by sharing favorable responses and arranging appearances before friendly crowds. They told him he
“done good” even when he hadn’t. This kept the spring in his step and the smile on his face, but it also kept him from hearing bad news he needed to hear.