We need an independent media to hold people like me to account.
—GEORGE W. BUSH
AFTER PRESIDENT NIXON RESIGNED, VICE PRESIDENT Gerald Ford was sworn in that same day. Ford had been named vice president eight months earlier after Spiro Agnew was forced to resign. Agnew had been accused of extortion, bribery, and income tax violations going back to when he was governor of Maryland. He took more than $100,000 in illegal payments from contractors both as governor and as vice president. With Nixon in line for impeachment, it would not have looked good to have an indicted Agnew succeed him.
Agnew’s lawyers argued his innocence and that a sitting vice president could not be indicted, that the only way he could be removed was impeachment. But prosecutors made a compelling argument that he could be indicted, and on October 10, 1973, after a secret plea-bargain, Agnew copped to one count of income tax evasion and resigned. He paid a fine and was on unsupervised probation for three years.
Gerald Ford, who Nixon named to replace Agnew, was the only man in history to serve as president and vice president without ever being elected.
Ford had always said he never wanted to be president. He had spent twenty-four years in the House and never wanted to leave. He was chosen to replace the disgraced Agnew because Congress wanted an honest and admired man. Ford, the minority leader in the House, was highly respected. After the turmoil of the Nixon and Agnew presidency, Ford brought the country integrity and honesty.
One of Ford’s first acts upon assuming the presidency was pardoning Richard Nixon for his criminal enterprise. The pardon was absolute. Nixon could not be tried for his crimes.
As a result of the Watergate investigation, forty government officials were either indicted or imprisoned. Those jailed included Nixon’s right-hand men H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, his White House counsel John Dean, attorney general John Mitchell, and two men involved in the break-in, Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.
Had Ford not pardoned him, Nixon well might have stood trial for his crimes. He would have been held responsible for obstructing justice and perhaps other violations.
Most important for us today—a Nixon trial for obstruction of justice in the 1970s would have provided an answer to that very question that faced Robert Mueller in 2019 when Attorney General Barr told him that President Trump could not be criminally charged for obstruction of justice. When can a president, as head of the executive branch, lawfully obstruct an investigation in the executive branch? Does the “unitary executive” theory or any other sweeping concept of presidential power make it impossible to ever charge a president with obstructing a federal investigation? Or is such a theory of executive power inconsistent with the founders’ intent that no man—not even the president—should be above the law?
Nixon was never tried, so the federal courts never had to give an answer.
Robert Mueller’s 2019 report, which we discuss in Chapter 30, strongly suggests that a president can be criminally charged for obstructing a Justice Department investigation by abusing his presidential power, but it reaches no definitive conclusion on that question because Mueller was required to defer to Attorney General Barr on that other open question raised in the 1973 Spiro Agnew case—whether a sitting president or vice president can be charged for any crime before leaving office. A trial of Richard Nixon after he left office at least would have addressed the “obstruction of justice” question, and a Nixon criminal conviction might have served as a warning to future presidents not to abuse their power in this way.
But because of Ford’s pardon, the Nixon trial never happened.
In the end, Ford granted Nixon a pardon because, as he said, he wanted the national nightmare of Watergate to be over.
Ford didn’t want to polarize the public, but the pardon probably lost him the presidential election to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Carter was very open about his Christianity. He emphasized morality and ethics, and he tried hard to live up to expectations. But even his administration had some pitfalls.
One of his appointees, Bert Lance, his director of the Office of Management and Budget, was indicted for financial improprieties in running a Georgia bank. He resigned. At trial Lance was found not guilty.
The biggest crisis of Carter’s presidency wasn’t of his own doing. The seeds of the Iranian crisis had been planted years before.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, an American ally since he took over the country in 1941, had gradually become a tyrannical dictator. The Russians during World War II occupied parts of Iran. So did Allied forces. Both the Russians and the Allies agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the end of the war. However, when this deadline came in early 1946, the Soviets stayed, and local pro-Soviet Iranians proclaimed a separatist People’s Republic of Azerbaijan. In late 1945, the Republic of Mahabad also was formed by Kurdish separatists.
A crisis in Iran occurred in 1953 when the shah attempted to fire Prime Minister Mossadegh, who was in the thrall of the Russians. Mohammad Mossadegh was popular, and his supporters tried to throw the shah out. Not a week later, American and British forces staged a coup against Mossadegh, returning the shah to power as the sole leader of Iran.
In an attempt to make his country more Western, the shah in 1963 began a government program that included infrastructure development, land reform, women’s suffrage, and illiteracy reduction. His “White Revolution” was virulently criticized by ultra-conservative mullahs, the Islamic leaders. Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shiite cleric, called for the overthrow of the shah. The shah exiled Khomeini to neighboring Iraq.
As religious discontent grew in Iran, the shah became more repressive. He used his secret police, SAVAK, which was formed under CIA guidance in 1957 and trained by Israel’s Mossad.
In 1978, public demonstrations against the shah broke out in major cities in Iran, and on September 8, 1978, the shah’s security guards fired on a crowd of protesters, killing hundreds and wounding thousands. Two months later, the people rioted, destroying symbols of the West including banks and liquor stores.
On December 11, 1978, a group of soldiers mutinied, attacking the shah and his security forces. The shah fled.
On November 4, 1979, Islamic militants stormed the US embassy and captured the fifty-two Americans inside. With Khomeini now in charge of the country, the militants demanded in exchange for the Americans the return of the shah so he could stand trial for his crimes.
President Carter refused to negotiate, and the situation escalated when Carter allowed the shah to come to the United States to be treated for cancer.
On April 24, 1980, Carter tried to free the American hostages. He sent the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz into Iranian waters. Eight attack helicopters landed in a remote desert in Iran. The pilots weren’t informed of a severe sandstorm, and two of the helicopters were disabled. When a third helicopter experienced hydraulic system failure, the mission, which was already in jeopardy, was called off. As the remaining helicopters refueled, one ran into a C-130 cargo plane, killing eight servicemen and injuring several others.
When the failure became public, Khomeini said it was the work of God. President Carter went on television and explained what had gone wrong, probably ending any chances for his reelection.
The captured Americans remained prisoners for 444 days while Carter continued to negotiate for their release, and Khomeini refused to let them go so long as Carter was president.
On January 20, 1981, as Ronald Reagan gave his inaugural address to the nation, Khomeini put the hostages on a plane in Tehran and allowed them to leave.
What followed was a conspiracy theory that Ronald Reagan had conspired with Khomeini to influence the American presidential election. Jimmy Carter called for an investigation, but no evidence of collusion was found.
The collusion theory was allowed to die.
Then in 1986, the Iran-Contra scandal broke. The Reagan administration was accused of doing what it denied in 1981. It was reportedly selling arms to Iran at inflated prices and taking the profits to arm the Reagan- and CIA-backed Contras in Nicaragua against the socialist Sandinista regime. The Sandinistas, named after Augusto César Sandino, a Nicaraguan general and rebel leader, assassinated President Anastasio Somoza and took control of the Nicaraguan government in 1979. The Contras, backed by the United States, fought them for control during the 1980s.
No part of the arms-for-the-Contras deal was in any way legal. Arms sales to Iran were prohibited, and it was illegal to fund the Contras above congressionally set limits.
After Congress in 1984 approved the Boland Amendment, barring military aid to the Contras, Reagan administration officials didn’t hide their disdain for the law. Oliver North, a National Security Council staff member, was in charge of arranging “private” funding for the Contras. North had drafted a memo to bypass the Boland Amendment, and Reagan approved the request.
North then recruited John Singlaub, a former general, to raise the money. Two former CIA officers, Donald Gregg and Nestor Sanchez, also were involved.
A Beirut weekly newspaper revealed that National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane was meeting with Iranian representatives to sell them anti-tank weapons. (Meanwhile, the Reagan administration accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism.)
When Reagan confirmed the McFarlane meeting, reporters immediately saw the connection between that meeting and the sales of arms to the Contras.
The United States was secretly selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the Contra war in Nicaragua.
The Reagan administration had broken the law.
Reagan’s reputation suffered, and Oliver North became a household name. Senator John Kerry led an investigation that proved that Contra gunrunners were also smuggling drugs to the United States.
Eleven members of the Reagan administration were convicted of criminal charges. Among them, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was indicted on five counts of perjury and false statements about a secret shipment of Hawk missiles to Iran. He was sentenced to five years in prison for each count and fined $250,000.
Oliver North was charged and found guilty on twelve felony counts. He was sentenced to a three-year suspended prison term, two years’ probation, $150,000 in fines, and 1,200 hours of community service.
John Poindexter, national security advisor to the Reagan administration, was found guilty of five criminal charges including conspiracy, false statements, and destruction and removal of documents. He was sentenced to six months in prison on each count to be served concurrently. A year later the verdict was reversed in appellate court, and the indictment dismissed.
McFarlane pleaded guilty to four counts of withholding information from Congress. Elliott Abrams pled guilty to two counts of the same. Clair George was found guilty of two felony charges of making false statements to Congress. Richard Miller pled guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Maj. Gen. Richard Secord was charged in the Iran-Contra affair in 1987 and on March 16, 1988, was indicted on six felony charges. Secord pled guilty to one felony count of false statements to Congress and was sentenced to two years’ probation. In 1992 the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia expunged the conviction on the grounds that the US Supreme Court had earlier found the underlying indictment to be illegal and without effect. The Justice Department did not oppose the matter. For Secord, the Iran-Contra brouhaha was over.
After his indictment, Secord started a legal defense fund. Shortly thereafter, an Iranian arms dealer transferred $500,000 from a secret Swiss bank account into the fund.
In a congressional investigation, Secord said he wasn’t sure exactly where the funds had come from but said they were from acquaintances outraged by what the committee was doing to him.
Noel Koch, a former Pentagon anti-terrorism expert, resigned because of the mysterious windfall. He told a congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair he didn’t know who made the contribution or whether Secord had any connection to the Swiss bank account. But, he said, the money “had a peculiar odor to it.”
CIA Director William Casey undoubtedly would have been criminally charged, but he died in 1987 before charges could be brought.
In his book, Under Fire, published in 1991, Oliver North wrote that “Ronald Reagan knew of and approved a great deal of what went on with both the Iranian initiative and private efforts on behalf of the contras and he received regular, detailed briefings on both.” North also wrote: “I have no doubt that he was told about the use of residuals for the contras, and that he approved it. Enthusiastically.”
In response, Reagan denied any knowledge of the Iran-Contra scandal.
“I cannot recall virtually any specific details of the affair,” Reagan said in a deposition.
On Christmas Day 1992, President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan as president in 1989, pardoned six of the Iran-Contra defendants (some already convicted and some awaiting trial) including Elliott Abrams, Robert McFarlane, and Caspar Weinberger. President Bush issued the pardons on the advice of Attorney General William Barr (the same William Barr who again was appointed as attorney general in 2019 by President Trump).
Independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh saw the pardons as a way for Bush to keep himself from being implicated. Walsh charged that despite several requests, then–Vice President Bush had refused to turn over his diaries and other notes.
“The Iran-Contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed,” said Walsh bitterly.
Bush complained that the Walsh investigation and prosecution reflected “a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of political differences.”
He concluded, “The proper forum is the voting booth, not the courtroom.”
Bush said he pardoned the men “to put the bitterness behind us.”
In a statement, independent counsel Walsh commented, “President Bush’s pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-Contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office—deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence.”