“I am entitled to complete the record,” CIA Director Casey chimed in, to remind everybody of the presidential finding on Nicaragua that Reagan had signed. “Jim Baker said that if we tried to get money from third countries without notifying the oversight committees, it could be a problem and he was informed that the [presidential] finding does provide for the participation and cooperation of third countries. Once he learned that the finding does encourage cooperation from third countries, Jim Baker immediately dropped his view that this could be an impeachable offense.”
“I think,” Shultz suggested, “we need to get an opinion from the attorney general on whether we can help the Contras obtain money from third sources. It would be the prudent thing to do.”
After a brief argument about the feeble prospects of a diplomatic push in Central America, Casey circled the conversation back to finding money for the Contras. “It is essential that we tell the Congress what will happen if they fail to provide the funding for the [Contras]. At the same time, we can go ahead in trying to help obtain funding for the [Contras] from other sources; the finding does say explicitly ‘the United States should cooperate with other governments and seek support of other governments.’ ”
“As another nonpracticing lawyer,” offered Ed Meese, a longtime presidential counselor, who was then more or less auditioning for the role of attorney general, “I want to emphasize that it’s important to tell the Department of Justice that we want them to find the proper and legal basis which will permit the United States to assist in obtaining third party resources for the anti-Sandinistas. You have to give lawyers guidance when asking them a question.”
A few minutes later, Casey seconded Meese: “We need the legal opinion which makes clear that the US has the authority to facilitate third country funding for the [Contras].”
As the meeting finally wound down, Vice President George Bush made a rare interjection, a tepid endorsement for the plan, with a tepid caveat: “How can anyone object to the US encouraging third parties to provide help to [Contras] under the finding? The only problem that might come up is if the United States were to promise to give these third parties something in return so that some people could interpret this as some kind of an exchange.”
National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane, clearly concerned about a discussion that had led off with the specter of impeachment, suggested extreme caution. “I propose that there be no authority for anyone to seek third-party support for the [Contras] until we have the information we need,” he told the group, “and I certainly hope none of this discussion will be made public in any way.”
Reagan agreed wholeheartedly with his national security adviser’s assertion of the need for absolute discretion. It was clear that he expected his team to keep their traps shut about this plan: “If such a story gets out,” the president said to close the meeting, “we’ll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House until we found out who did it.”
Four months after that meeting, when Congress did cut off money for the US government to carry on with the Contras, the White House did not pause to consider the legal niceties of making its (covert) push for funding from third countries. Good news was that King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia was already on board to the tune of a million dollars a month in direct aid to the Contras; the king was probably most appreciative for the 450 Stinger missiles Reagan had expressed to Saudi Arabia under the guise of presidential emergency powers, and for the US president’s promise to ask Congress for more. During Fahd’s visit to Washington in February 1985, the king capped a delightful private breakfast with the president with a promise to double his monthly donation. In all, Saudi Arabia would give about $32 million in aid to the Contras, or more precisely to the Enterprise. The only real disappointment for the president in his relations with Fahd was when the king tried to give Reagan a gift of four Arabian horses. He complained in his diary, “I couldn’t accept them as a gift—due to our stupid regulations.”
Word also got around in our hemisphere that the US president was up for bargaining with any country that would indulge him on his Contra obsession. Reagan used emergency powers to get Honduras $20 million worth of military supplies from the Pentagon. El Salvador wanted trade concessions. The Guatemalan president asked the United States to double its economic assistance package to his country, and triple the military package. Panamanian president Manuel Noriega offered to assassinate the leadership of the Nicaraguan government, but in return he wanted a commitment from the White House to lift the ban on US weapons sales to Panama, and also, maybe, a little help in revitalizing his image would be nice. The whole “dictatorial strongman” thing was apparently beginning to eat at Noriega. Reagan took a pass on the Noriega deal.
President Reagan left no continent undisturbed in his quest for “Contra-butions.” When, after Reagan had left office, an independent counsel attorney presented him with a document that suggested he had asked the leader of an Asian country to ship weapons to the Contras, Reagan stammered out a remarkable truth, under oath: “I know this man of course, very well, met with him a number of times in his own country…. I don’t recall seeing this and… my policy was not to involve others in this. I mean, I wanted them involved but I didn’t want to be on the record of doing it.”
That was the way Reagan liked to work, off the record. But those Marines on his national security staff—Bud McFarlane, John Poindexter, and Oliver North—heard the president loud and clear when he tasked them to keep the Contras alive “body and soul.” According to an independent counsel’s report on the Iran-Contra affair published after more than five years of investigation, “North described how he and Secord, in order to replace the CIA in assisting the Contras, in their covert-action Enterprise created a ‘mirror image outside the government of what the CIA had done.’ [North] claimed he never made a single trip or contact ‘without the permission, express permission, of either Mr. McFarlane or Admiral Poindexter, and usually, when I could, with the concurrence of Director Casey.’”
North turned out to be one hell of an operator; he understood that the president’s appreciation for “third party” assistance to the Contras went well beyond foreign royalty and foreign governments. North managed a team of private fund-raisers and arms dealers who kept the Contras alive in the year of living without congressional funding. He’d shake the change out of the pockets of wealthy donors at fund-raisers hosted by the (newly created, not-for-profit, all-contributions-tax-deductible) National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, and he’d make sure the best check writers got a private audience—and a picture, of course—with the president. The president was happy to help.
With a combination of Saudi dollars and contributions from private American citizens funneled into the Enterprise’s Swiss bank accounts, North and his friend Secord kept those Contras in millions of dollars (though not as many as they raised, but more on that later) of beans, boots, Band-Aids, and bullets. By June 1985, Secord’s Enterprise was acting as the sole purchasing agent and weapons supplier of the Nicaraguan Contras. Contra leaders had no access to the money given them; North and Secord controlled it.
By spring 1986 North, Secord and partners also controlled and directed the logistics of the Contra resupply efforts (this would be known as Project Democracy) and its $4 million in assets comprising two C-123 cargo jets, two C-7 planes, and a $75,000 Maule aircraft paid for single-handedly by a wealthy Republican, Ellen Garwood, after a private meeting with the president. Ms. Ellen’s two and a half million dollars also helped pay for a maintenance base in Miami, living quarters in El Salvador for eighteen or so resupply employees, and an airstrip in Costa Rica known as “The Plantation.” This was essentially the closest North could come to the “mirror image” of the CIA’s secret support to the Contras.
But unlike the CIA, which had to depend on money from Congress, this privately funded entity had added value: the privatization of Reagan’s foreign policy initiative turned out to be just the ticket for evading all those barriers the legislature had erected. (Stupid regulations!) How could the president be obligated to report the activities of a private enterprise to Congress or anyone else? The Boland Amendment didn’t stop the administration from helping concerned citizens who just wanted to help the Contras. This quasi-privatization—with fronts like the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, and for-profit companies like Secord’s Stanford Technology Trading Group International and Project Democracy’s Corporate Air Services—allowed the White House to run its Nicaragua operation unmoored from the Constitution and its fetters, free from congressional or statutory constraints, and clear of accountability. If anything went wrong, there was a firewall. Even though the Reagan administration directed the covert activity, there was a break in the formal chain of command; the orders up and down the line weren’t really traceable. So confident in the firewall of deniability was the White House that when the House Intelligence Committee got wind of the Contra resupply operation, Reagan’s NSC staff simply lied to Congress. “None of us has solicited funds, facilitated contacts for prospective potential donors, or otherwise organized or coordinated the military or paramilitary efforts of the resistance,” the national security adviser told House Intelligence Committee members. “There has not been, nor will there be, any such activities by the National
