What It Takes (25 page)

In fact, there were many things that George Bush knew that later emerged in the confluence of revelation that came to be known as Iran-contra. He knew, for starters, the administration shipped arms to Iran. In fact, he was for it, in a quiet, barely traceable way, not because he thought it would work, but it might ...
and the President was for it
. He knew that if the deal went down as hoped (“planned” was too grand a word), the U.S. hostages would all come home. He knew Bud McFarlane, Ollie North, and John Poindexter were running the show. He knew the Israelis had started the whole deal, were in it up to their eyeballs, in it for their own reasons, not necessarily those of the U.S. And he knew the President didn’t quite grasp the details of the operation.

On the contra side of the ledger, he had also come to awareness of most of the pertinent facts. He knew Ollie North was a cowboy. He knew Ollie was shaking every tree in the forest for money for the contras. (In fact, he was going to speak at one of North’s fund-raisers, and backed off only when his staff counsel warned him he might get into trouble.) He knew—in fact, his was the first office in the White House to learn—a former CIA op named Eugene Hasenfus was shot down while flying aid to the contras. He knew Hasenfus was not the only demi-spook running around on this secret, airborne, aid-the-contras operation.

In short, George Bush had come in contact, by various means, at various times, with nearly every salient fact that later emerged in the
Post
’s special sections that bore the headline:
THE SCANDAL.
But that did not mean he ever put them together. Why would he, when all he had to know, the only thing he could afford to know, was that the President was for them? Why should he commit the act of overtly informing himself, when none of these matters was
on his plate!
And so, by a capital feat of knowing-not-knowing, of yin-and-yang Washington art, he was not informed, could not be shown to have been informed, of the scandal itself. As he later pointed out, he was
out of the loop
! He was not culpable of knowing anything.

What he was culpable of, on the great historical scoreboard, at least, was of practicing his art of Washington knowing to the end, to the exclusion of all else. George Bush was aware that the U.S. was shipping arms to Iran, and he did not say a word to derail the deal. George Bush was aware they were secretly shipping aid to the contras, and he did not say a word. The only time he went to the mat, spent his capital to affect the flow of events, was after the fact, when the only issue was what should come out and when, what they were allowed to admit awareness of, what they were going to be culpable of knowing. That’s when he went in
as hard as he could
. ... But, of course, no one outside the White House knew that. They were only asking a question that meant nothing: Did Bush know?

He was right, of course, about the President digging them in deeper with the press conference, the following day. Don Regan marched the old man out, and he screwed things up to a fare-thee-well. First, Reagan denied the deal was arms for hostages—when no one in the country believed that anymore. Then he denied the U.S. had anything to do with Israel’s shipments—when Regan (as reporters pointed out) had already admitted that the U.S. condoned an Israeli shipment in September of ’85. Then Reagan said there were no mistakes in the deal with Iran—they’d got three hostages back and he’d continue on the same path.

It was chaos! The spokesman, Larry Speakes, had to put out a “statement from the President” within twenty minutes to correct the stuff about Israel. Don Regan was back in the Blue Room, pounding the table and swearing he wasn’t gonna be hung out in the wind as the leaker on this. Goddammit, he was gonna hold his own press conference! Poindexter wrote the correction and put in the same lies about everything fitting into one cargo plane. After that performance, seven out of ten Americans said they didn’t believe Ronald Reagan anymore.

Sure enough, Bush saw the ship sinking around his ears, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to patch the hull. He had his own small staff in an uproar, trying to do what the whole West Wing couldn’t or wouldn’t do: “Just get the goddam facts,” Bush said. He took Craig Fuller off other business—what other business was there now?—to get to Ollie North and find out what the hell happened. He pulled Boyden Gray, his counsel, off the next big speech, the address to the American Enterprise Institute, to find out whether any laws were broken. He told his National Security man, Don Gregg, to find out what happened in Iran. Facts, he wanted. And he wanted them now. So, for days they ran around like fevered gerbils, gathering shreds of fact where they could, which they called in the same day, or they sent in memos, mostly to Fuller. ... No one wanted to get in Bush’s face when he got like this. Atwater and the politics guys stayed away altogether. Bush was in a state. If he did happen to pick up a phone while they called in, they each, to a man, felt they’d better talk fast. “Yeah. Yeah. What else?” Bush would snap on the other end. They could almost hear his fingers drumming the desk.

And every day or two, reporters would call his press office with another story they were about to unleash. And his press guy, Marlin Fitzwater, would have to walk into Bush’s big office and coax a statement out of him. Usually, Bush was at his desk, working through papers, and he’d push back from the desk with a deliberate shove of both hands, and slouch back in his leather chair, with his head down, fiddling with his pen. His eyes would stay on the pen, which he rotated in his fingers, while Fitzwater told him what
The Wall Street Journal
, or the
Post
, wanted to know today. And Bush would listen with his head down, quiet, with the air of a man beleaguered, a man who had to stay composed. Then, he’d say to his pen:

“This is so unfair! Don Gregg had
nothing
to do with this.”

Or, simply: “Look. The President has asked Ed Meese to find out what the facts are. When we know the facts, we’ll make them public.”

And then Fitzwater would have to go at it again, until he got a statement he could use.

“So I can say, ‘Vice President Bush
was categorically not involved in
’ ...” Fitzwater would look up from his notepad, hoping the Veep would finish the sentence. But he’d always have to do it himself. “... ‘
directing or overseeing the contra resupply
’? ...”

And Bush would say quietly, head down, to his pen, or off to the side, to one of his desk drawers: “Absolutely.”

It was the weekend after the press conference that Bush got the word: Meese wanted to see him. He waited at the Residence for two days. He couldn’t even sit still to read the papers. But Meese never showed up. It turned out Meese was closeted with Ollie North, to clean up “the chronology.” (That was the weekend Ollie and Fawn were so busy with the shredder.)

It wasn’t till Monday afternoon that Meese finally came by to see Bush, and then only for about ten minutes, just to drop this bombshell: the money from the Iran deal went to the contras. Swiss bank account. Ollie had the number. Poindexter had to know, too. They’d both have to go. There might be others. Meese was going to tell the President that same afternoon.

Bush didn’t sleep that night. He came in Tuesday, looking like a man who’d got bad news on his cancer test. His mouth was a grim, lipless line. There was no expression in his eyes, no light of recognition when the staff said good morning, like Bush was looking at his own private blank wall. He had pulled completely within himself. No one had to tell Bush what this meant: a secret trail of money, had to be laws broken somehow, investigations, a Special Prosecutor, hearings in Congress ... all they’d done for six years could go down the chute, along with his campaign. It was his ass out there now. They had to do something to curtail the damage. They had to move, and move fast, before this steamroller crushed them. ...

But at the 9:00
A.M.
Oval Office briefing, it was clear the President didn’t know what to do. Meese laid out what he knew of the diversion. He said it was all in memos. (Ollie put the damn thing on paper!) Poindexter said he’d known that Ollie was up to something, but no one else did. Regan had already told Poindexter he’d have to go. Regan wanted a commission, some kind of blue-ribbon thing ... appointed today, announced at a press conference. They had to get out in front of this. But Ronald Reagan wasn’t sure. ...

At 9:30, instead of the National Security Council briefing, Poindexter walked in, with his undertaker’s face, and told the President he was sorry, he was resigning. Reagan didn’t even ask what happened. He just said, “I understand ...” Then he brightened, and with the brave smile you see at the end of war movies, he added: “But it’s in the best tradition of the Navy ... the captain accepting responsibility ...” There was a full NSC meeting scheduled after that, so they all went in, except Poindexter. Alton Keel, his deputy, ran the meeting in his stead, and
no one said anything about it
. That’s what was driving Bush crazy: they were acting so normal. At the end of the meeting, he ducked back into his West Wing office for a minute, stood at the fireplace mantel, leaned on it like it was holding him up. What the hell was going on? Was he crazy? The ship was going down and they kept on dancing!

Bush said to Fuller: “This is disaster. ... We don’t even know who handled the money ...”

Fuller started to tell him what he’d picked up from his friend Al Keel that morning. Total weirdness! Poindexter had some early meeting, so Al ran the normal 7:30 NSC staff meeting. About 8:30, Keel walks into Poindexter’s office to brief him on the staff meeting. And Poindexter’s sitting there, eating a yogurt at his desk. Keel’s reporting, and Poindexter just says, “Uh huh, yeah, uh huh,” eating yogurt. Then he says: “By the way, Al, I’m resigning today.”

Bush, still with his eyes down, withdrawn into the gloom in his own head, seemed hardly to hear the story.

“I’ve got to go back,” Bush said. “Got the leadership meeting. Jesus. This is the worst.”

So he went back to the Cabinet Room for the meeting with the Leaders of Congress, and then back again, after the President’s noon press conference, for a lunch with Reagan and the Supreme Court, and then to the afternoon National Security Planning Group. ... He walked through the day like the rest of them: reading off the cards in their pockets, going through the schedule, through the motions, acting like the ship was still afloat. ... But he couldn’t stop the baneful monologue in his head:

Disaster ... everything they’d done, the second term, the campaign, George Bush out there to take the heat, they’ll clobber Reagan, he doesn’t understand, thinks it’s a movie ... they’ll kill him! ...

By the end of the day, it was screaming in his head. It was surreal, the way no one said anything—like it would all go away if they went to their meetings! Like The Blob That Ate Cleveland didn’t exist! By the end of the day, Bush was back in his office, at his desk, his eyes on the blotter, head in his left hand, staring down, not seeing ...

“It’s like they don’t realize ... what’s going on,” Bush said to the desk.

Fuller said, across the room: “Or that it
is
going on.”

And Bush looked up with his lips white, all the pain apparent now in the long lines of his face.

“Don’t they realize what this
means
?”

Watergate
... was the first thing that flashed through Bob Dole’s mind, in the Cabinet Room, at the leadership briefing, when Meese dropped the bomb about the diversion. Dole stopped in at the White House to catch the briefing on his way to the airport. He had to get to Boston, then to Iowa, for the Other Thing ... plane was waiting.

Meese ran through the tale, said Ollie North did the deal on his own. That fell onto the long, gleaming table with a thud you could almost hear. The Leaders, the Speaker, looked at one another in silence. Lieutenant colonels didn’t
do
deals on their own. The only thing Reagan added was that Poindexter knew about it ... and so, in the best tradition of the Navy ... you know, the captain taking responsibility ...

Reagan didn’t understand. There’s only one captain in the White House. Only one man could take responsibility. ...
Watergate
... Dole remembered his friend, Bryce Harlow, in an office just down the hall from this Cabinet Room. Harlow was a Washington sage, an insider, adviser to Nixon, a man Dole looked up to. “That break-in story doesn’t have any legs,” Harlow said, back in ’72. Dole was head of the Party, and he wanted to say something, to let people know the Republican Party had nothing to do with Watergate. But Harlow advised him: “It’ll fade in two or three days ...” So Dole didn’t make any statements, tried to pass it off with a joke.

Dole sat up at the table now, his eyes shifting from face to face. He was trying to see the whole court. Jim Wright, Leader of the House Democrats, was already on that portentous question:

Was this done with knowledge or approval of others?

Who else in the White House knew?

Did the CIA know?

Meese was trying to convince him that Ollie was the only one who really knew. Poindexter only knew Ollie was up to something. Israel handled the deal, Meese said. The Israelis thought it up, did the deed without any help ...

Dole could see Wright didn’t believe it. Who
would
believe it? He looked down the line to Bob Byrd, his colleague, Leader of the Senate Democrats. Byrd would have a field day, his legalistic way ... hearings, three or four committees ... he’d
never
let it go, the whole next Congress, it’d eat up the session, the whole campaign, the Other Thing, ’88. ... Maybe Reagan thought they’d help him, put it behind, move on. But Reagan didn’t understand. Byrd always spoke with the air of the statesman, but don’t get in a dark alley with him. ... Hell, he was trying to take Dole’s office. Trying to throw his whole staff out! One of Byrd’s guys took Dole on a tour, to show him the “new rooms” his staff might use. They were coal bins! Walked Dole down into the basement, took him through rooms he wouldn’t take his dog in ... unless it was raining, or cold, dog wouldn’t go out. ... If they thought Byrd was going to cut them a break, well ...