CHARLIE ALLEN, the senior CIA analyst on the Iran project and the counterterrorist NIO, was increasingly troubled as the operation spun out of control. NSA coverage was so complete that Ghorbanifar, the Israelis and other middlemen could hardly make a move without something being picked up, and Allen began noticing an incredible price markup on the Iranian arms. Millions of dollars were missing or unaccounted for; $3.5 million left over from the first 1985 shipment; $24 million left in one Swiss account from December 1985; $3 million in interest for one thirty-day period. A covert operation was normally controlled down to the nearest fifty cents. In this operation, there was an enormous profit pool of extra cash. Allen examined the intercepts; there were lots of complaints from the Iranians and those who had put up some of the money, such as Khashoggi. The same people, General Secord and his team, were directly supplying both the contras and the Iranians. Allen went to see Gates.
“I’m deeply concerned,” he said to the DDCI. “The creditors are demanding payment. This is going to be exposed if something isn’t done. Perhaps the money has been diverted to the contras. I can’t prove it.”
Gates said he didn’t want to hear any more. He didn’t want to know about funding for the contras; it was illegal for the agency to be involved; the less he knew, the better.
Allen said it was not a rumor, but an analytic judgement based on the intercept material.
Disturbed, Gates said they better get this information to Casey. It didn’t happen for six days.
On October 7, Allen told Casey about the possible diversion to the contras. Casey said he had just talked with an old friend and client, Roy Furmark, a New York businessman and lawyer for Khashoggi. Furmark had told him that the investors who had assisted Khashoggi in putting up the “bridge” loan of some $10 million were very, very unhappy; they were feeling cheated, threatening lawsuits and publicity. The United States would be brought into the transaction.
Allen agreed to put all his concerns down in a memo.
On October 9, North drove to Langley to lunch with Casey and Gates. In the subdued and controlled setting on the seventh floor, he summarized recent meetings he had had with new Iranian contacts. He was optimistic, as usual. They could get at least one hostage. Not, sadly, the body of Beirut station chief William Buckley, who was now presumed dead. The Iranian contacts said there was a 400-page interrogation report of what Buckley had given up under torture. Maybe they could get a copy.
Casey expressed concern about operational security; their old channel, Ghorbanifar, was obviously very unhappy and was about to blow.
Gates said that maybe he had been reading too many novels, but the fact that there was only one piece of paper—the January 17 finding on Iran—on the arms-sales/hostage operations, and the fact that it was sitting in John Poindexter’s safe made him very nervous. Should that piece of presidential authorization disappear, a lot of people, including the three of them, could be in a lot of trouble.
Casey agreed. He would insist that Poindexter supply him with a copy of the finding, and North said he would facilitate that.
The discussion turned to Central America. Four days earlier, a contra-supply plane had been shot down in Nicaragua and Eugene Hasenfus, a cargo handler, had been captured by the Sandinistas. He had appeared that morning at a press conference and said that he believed he worked for the CIA.
Gates asked whether any CIA people, assets, proprietaries or anything, direct or indirect, were involved in the private funding and supply operation for the contras.
“Completely clean,” North said. He had worked hard to keep Iran and the contras separate.
At the end of the lunch, North mentioned something about Swiss bank accounts and the contras.
He was not specific, and neither Casey nor Gates pursued the matter, but after lunch Gates went back in to see Casey. “Could you make heads or tails what the hell he was talking about?”
Casey said he couldn’t.
Should we be concerned about it? Gates asked.
Casey waved him off.
Two hours later, Casey and Gates went to the Capitol to assure the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence oversight committees that the CIA was not involved in the Hasenfus plane or in any weapons-supply operation.
Back at his White House computer, North sent a note to McFarlane: “We urgently need to find a high-powered lawyer and benefactor who can raise a legal defense for Hasenfus…. There will be a fair bit of history made in the next few weeks…. By Tuesday, a Swiss lawyer retained by Corporate Air Services, should be in Managua. We should not rely on this person to represent the whole case since he is supported by covert means.” North said he had located $100,000 from a donor for another attorney for Hasenfus. “Believe this to be a matter of great urgency to hold things together. Unfortunately RR was briefed that this plan was being contemplated.”
North spoke with Casey. “Get rid of things, clean things up,” the DCI said. North then began a massive housecleaning, attempting to shred all the memos that referred to the contra diversion. Casey said someone had to be ready to take the fall, but North probably was not senior enough to be a credible sacrifice. Maybe it would have to be Poindexter.
On October 14, Charlie Allen provided Gates with a seven-page memorandum that contained three recommendations. First, he urged that they set up a planning cell in the NSC immediately, bring in someone like Kissinger or Richard Helms to make a hard, outside program review, and subject the secret initiative to real questions: What are the true objectives, the options, the motives of the players?
Second, Allen said, the White House and the CIA had to get ready for public exposure. Ghorbanifar was about to go to the media or to court; he was a very unhappy former agent alleging that the United States government had failed to keep several promises. Third, they had to decide how best to shut down the Ghorbanifar channel in an orderly and systematic way. On page six Allen said, “The government of the United States along with the government of Israel acquired substantial profit from these transactions, some of which profit was redistributed to other projects of the U.S. and of Israel.”
After he had read it, Gates bounded through the connecting door to Casey’s office. Look, he said, and Casey read. This was dynamite, Casey agreed. He called Poindexter to set up a meeting at once. It could not be arranged until the next day, October 15, when Casey and Gates went to Casey’s office in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. The national-security adviser had squeezed in a half hour for the Director of Central Intelligence and his deputy. Casey presented the Allen memo to him.
“Get the White House counsel involved right away,” Casey advised him. It was unraveling, allegations of impropriety and shabby conduct were about to fly unsparingly. Poindexter should consider having the President lay the project bare before the American public before it leaked in dribs and drabs.
Poindexter put them off.
Back at Langley, Casey and Gates summoned Allen. Casey wanted Allen to talk to Roy Furmark at once, assemble all the details and write up a full memo. Furmark again that day had contacted Casey to stress the urgency of resolving his clients’ financial claims.
After Allen saw Furmark the next day, he reported by memo that Furmark had recommended another arms shipment to Iran “to maintain some credibility with the Iranians…and to provide Ghorbanifar with some capital so the investors can be repaid partially and so that Ghorbanifar can borrow money to finance additional shipments.”
Furmark wanted to keep the process rolling; he thought it could result in the release of additional hostages. And Ghorbanifar had told him that North had indicated that the $10 million could be paid back from the $100 million in contra aid that was now available from U.S. funds.
They were about to have an incredible mess on their hands, Allen said.
On October 22, Allen went to New York and met again with Furmark, who told him that Ghorbanifar would allege that the bulk of the $15 million from the earlier May arms shipment “had been diverted to the contras.”
At 9 A.M. the next day, October 23, Allen laid it out for Casey. The DCI ordered a memo to Poindexter prepared for his signature reflecting this allegation. The memo was drafted and placed in Casey’s in-box.
North continued to sell arms. Using the new channel with Rafsanjani’s nephew, Iran had paid $7 million into the Swiss account, and $2 million was drawn to pay for five hundred TOW missiles which were delivered to Iran at the end of October. That left $5 million. North reported to Poindexter that the United States was assured of getting two hostages back “in the next few days.”
On November 2, David Jacobsen was released. The next day, the Lebanese magazine Al-Shiraa reported that the United States had been secretly supplying arms to Iran, and that McFarlane had secretly visited Tehran earlier that year. Shultz was on his way to Vienna for arms control talks with the Soviets as the story broke. He sent a cable to Poindexter recommending that they now go public and attempt to explain. Poindexter replied by cable that Bush, Weinberger and Casey agreed on the necessity for remaining “absolutely close-mouthed.”
When the President met with Jacobsen at the White House that Friday, November 7, he told reporters that the story out of Beirut had “no foundation.”
Jacobsen, freed after seventeen months, bristled at questions about how his release had been achieved. Raising his arm to caution reporters, he said, “In the name of God, will you please just be responsible and back off.”
Even though the whole thing was unraveling, Furmark again told Allen that day that his clients would soon up the ante. They would disclose the siphoning of Iran arms money to the contras.
Casey and Gates went again to see Poindexter. Casey recommended that White House counsel Peter J. Wallison look over the whole matter.
“I don’t trust Wallison to keep his mouth shut,” Poindexter replied.
Casey now despaired that there was a way to keep the lid on, and the situation was aggravated by disunity at the top. Personal feuds that had simmered for years within the Administration were at the breaking point. Shultz, who had long opposed the Iran initiative and was resentful that the NSC had run it, began to signal his disagreement in public. The Pentagon leaked Weinberger’s opinion that selling arms to Iran was “absurd.” Don Regan and Poindexter got into a tense dispute in front of the President about whether to offer some public explanation; the President sided with Poindexter, who felt that they still could get some more hostages out if secrecy could be preserved.
On Monday, November 10, Casey went to the White House to join the President, Bush, Shultz, Weinberger, Meese and Poindexter. The President told them that rumors and press reports were endangering what they were doing. He felt he was not dealing with terrorists in Iran, but with moderate factions, and that the arms shipments were not ransom payments. A basic statement needed to be made, the President said, a statement that would avoid details and specifics of the operation. Shultz learned, for the first time, that the President had signed the January 17 finding for the Iran arms shipments. Despite the unease, a statement was released saying that all the top advisers were “unanimous” in supporting the President; it condemned “speculative stories” and said that the United States government’s “policy of not making concessions to terrorists remains intact.”
Word was spreading within the U.S. intelligence agencies that there was big trouble with the money on the Iran arms sales. On November 12, Senate Intelligence Committee investigators went to the CIA and attempted to obtain the NSA intercepts on the Iran project. Casey blocked this, claiming that the project was still close-hold.
The White House realized that the President was going to have to go public to put the best face on the Iran project, so a televised speech was scheduled for the evening of November 13. Beforehand, the leaders of Congress and the intelligence committees were invited to the White House for a briefing by Poindexter and Casey. The national-security adviser began by reading the January 17 finding that ordered Casey not to disclose the operation to the committees. The leaders from the Hill were beside themselves with rage and disbelief.
Afterward, Casey asked Pat Leahy whether he needed a ride. Leahy said he was going to Georgetown to meet his family for dinner and accepted. The two had been at each other’s throat for more than a year. Back in October 1985, just after the Achille Lauro hijacking, Leahy had gone on television to say that U.S. intelligence knew that Egyptian President Mubarak had been lying. Leahy had said, “When Mubarak went on the news yesterday and said the hijackers had left Egypt, we knew that wasn’t so. Our intelligence was very, very good.” The clear implication was that Mubarak’s phone calls had been intercepted. Casey had sent the Senator a stern letter, charging him with a gross breach of security and virtual treason. In fact Leahy had said no more than Administration spokesmen had already said, but Casey held that the statement from the Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chairman carried more weight.
Leahy had won reelection by thirty percentage points the previous week, but no thanks to Casey. Days before the election, Reader’s Digest had published an article, “Congress Is Crippling the CIA,” that cited the alleged Leahy security breach in such a way that Leahy concluded it had come from Casey.
“I know you’re pissed off,” Casey told Leahy as they settled in the back of his car.
Leahy said it was improper for the DCI to meddle in the political process and attempt to defeat unfriendly senators. But real hell is now going to have to be paid on this Iran project, he said. The Senate committee was going to conduct a genuine investigation with subpoenas and sworn testimony, no more informal, friendly chats. The failure to inform and consult with the committee violated every promise, pledge and understanding.
The Democrats had won control of the Senate in the previous week’s election, and Leahy said he might stay on the committee, moving into the chairmanship.
We’ve got to work together, Casey said as the car pulled into Georgetown. Leahy hopped out, and Casey followed, grabbing the Senator’s arm. It was the height of the evening rush hour, and the car had stopped in the middle of the street, backing up traffic.
We believe in the same things, Casey said, patting Leahy’s arm, and he hinted that the CIA wanted to give Leahy a medal for his work on the committee.
An hour later, the President delivered his television speech. He said he had not paid “ransom” for the hostages, but was seeking “access and influence” in Iran. The weapons were “defensive”; he likened the secret Iran initiative to Nixon and Kissinger’s 1971 opening to China.
“We did not—repeat, did not—trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Nor will we.”
He added that it was all legal, “and the relevant committees of Congress are being and will be fully informed.”
Poindexter took the January 17 finding on Iran from his safe, had a copy made, and sent the copy to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Now there it was in black and white. Senators Durenberger and Leahy still thought it inconceivable that the President had ordered Casey “to refrain from reporting this finding to the Congress.” It was ten months old. But Casey was comparatively clean: he was following orders, though they were sure he was party to the policy and the orders. Durenberger and Leahy were struck by the enormity of the transgression: the whole notion of congressional oversight had been undermined, the clock had been turned back a decade or more. The President had said simply that he could deal them out at will. Most glaring was the line in the finding that notification was being withheld because of the “extreme sensitivity and security risks.”
The bellboys at the Tehran Hilton, where McFarlane and North had stayed six months earlier, knew something was up. So did key Israelis, Saudi arms dealer Khashoggi, and the Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar. These people could be trusted, but not the United States senators who shared all the other intelligence secrets? What else didn’t they know?
As part of the White House effort, Poindexter visited The Washington Post for lunch on Friday, November 14. Puffing calmly on his pipe, he said the operation was a reasonable risk. The President was not going to be bound by conventional notions of what could and could not be done in foreign affairs.
Two days later, Poindexter made a rare appearance on NBC Television’s Meet the Press. While he waited for the show to begin, I asked him about his twenty-eight years as a naval officer, particularly his time commanding a destroyer in the mid-1970s.
“Naval officers,” he said, gently extracting his pipe from his jacket’s side pocket, “are better equipped because of command at sea. You have to make decisions; you learn there is nobody else out there in a pinch. You learn to be cool, whether on the bridge of a destroyer or here. They’re the same.”
On the air, Poindexter said that the Administration was going public with the Iran initiative “because of all the speculation and the leaks.” He said the initiative “was basically an intelligence operation,” and accordingly Casey, not he, would present the facts to Congress.
That day Casey left for Central America. It never hurt to be out of the country when explanations were due. But he wanted to keep his eye on the ball, which was still the contra war. He had his hunting license back. The $100 million in congressionally approved contra aid had been available for a month, and he was supervising the renewed effort; $70 million of the $100 million was for the CIA, almost triple what had been provided in any previous single year by Congress.
On Monday, November 17, Casey received a call from Gates urging him to return to testify before the intelligence committees at the end of the week. The next day Poindexter called Casey on a secure phone. The CIA taped the call as an operational message.
“I got to thinking about the hearing on Friday and the coordination that the two of us need to do,” Poindexter said. “If you can get back on Thursday so we could meet…I think it would be very useful, so we make the best possible presentations on Friday, and try to lay as many of these questions to rest as we can.”
“Are you going to have a lot of people at the meeting—uh State and uh Defense?” Casey asked.
“I’d like to spend some time just the two of us,” Poindexter said. He added that Meese wanted to be helpful and would like to be in at least one of the meetings.
“Ah,” Casey replied, “you, you set whatever time you’d like for us to get together and have a little talk ourselves, then I’ll have, I’ll handle a meeting any time you set it.”
Relations between Casey and Shultz finally snapped. That same Sunday, the Secretary of State had gone on television and had made no effort to disguise his disagreement with the Iran arms policy. He said that Poindexter was the “designated hitter” on the operation. Asked whether he had authority to speak for the Administration on the issue, Shultz replied firmly, “No.”
Shultz had come to loathe Casey. It was clear that the DCI had set up an alternative foreign policy, not just in Iran. His influence had been too great. First he had used his analysts and other CIA officials for intelligence-gathering to find out what was going on around town. Then the CIA apparatus had been used as a policy-planning service for the DCI, and finally it had become an implementing agency through its own operations officers or now through the White House. There was no better illustration than when Casey had shamelessly peddled the first Graham Fuller paper on Iran all around town the previous year. Rejected by State and Defense, he had sold it at the White House.
Shultz was also aware that Casey had effectively sabotaged arms control agreements over the years. The DCI had a back-channel alliance with the hard-line Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. In retrospect it was clear to Shultz that the intelligence agencies had produced a never-ending stream of reports that cleverly undermined arms control. Playing to the President’s predisposition, Casey had argued that arms control talks were simply another tool of the Soviets, who designed their positions around two calculations: first, they made up their minds on what new weapons they wanted to build; second, they determined what the United States wanted to build that would be most dangerous to them. This was often calibrated by the Soviets down to the kind of fins they wanted to put on their missiles six years in the future. Of course, this was logical for the Soviets. All nations involved in negotiations, including the United States, made similar evaluations. But Casey’s “evidence” had been presented to demonstrate that the Soviets were not serious and were manipulating the negotiations.
Casey had added immeasurably to the hesitation in the White House on arms control, Shultz felt. Perhaps the job of DCI had become too big. Intelligence had too much money. The DCI had his hand in the multi-billion-dollar satellite hardware decisions ten years off, setting the priorities. He controlled the analytical process and the estimates. He controlled covert action and counterintelligence. With an activist like Casey, the DCI had a policy role. Somehow these responsibilities were too great and perhaps needed to be divided up, Shultz felt.
Casey was old. It was probably his last job. He was wealthy. He had little or nothing to lose. In pursuing his goals, he had created a general feeling of distrust in the agency’s objectivity, not just in the Congress but even within the Administration, Shultz felt. In some sense Casey had lost his integrity. He had been a shadow Secretary of State.
The evening of November 18, at about six, I went to the White House to meet with Poindexter’s deputy, Al Keel. He wanted to argue that we should not publish a story about the covert efforts to support the anti-Khomeini exiles that had been proceeding alongside the initiative to sell arms to the Khomeini government. Keel was tired and overwrought. “There is an absolute frenzy out there in the press on this story,” he said, sitting at the desk in his cubbyhole office. “We got behind the power curve; we’ve been ten days behind it.”
A youthful, bearded man who spoke with conviction, Keel rolled a pencil on his desk and said that they had had no choice but to trade in arms, the chief “currency” in the Middle East. “We had to establish our bona fides. And we frankly didn’t trust them, didn’t trust Iran, didn’t trust the channels we were dealing with. They didn’t trust us. There was no mutual trust. We’re the Great Satan. So how do you establish your bona fides? Do you try powdered milk? Do you try bandages? That’s something they can get at the local drugstore. You have to try arms.”
He said that it would be “devastating” if a story were published that said, or even implied, that the United States was dealing not only with its channels to the Iranian moderates, but with the exiles, those associated with the Shah’s regime. He paused and looked up. “There’s no way that Tehran can ignore it.”
I replied that the Iranian government regularly accused the CIA of supporting the exiles and pro-Shah forces. They said it in their newspapers and on their radio. And the exiles knew they were getting money from the CIA; they acknowledged this to reporters in their offices in Paris.
He agreed, but said that the stories about these things had been in the back of the paper, not on the front page, and that the references had been oblique. “There will be a real threat to lives, lives will be at risk if this story runs…. It will sever our channels. Give me a minimum of twenty-four hours, hopefully seventy-two hours, so we can contact our channels in Tehran, our moderates, to tell them a bad story is coming. Frankly, to tell them, ‘Cover your ass.’”
Back at the Post we decided that this claim was not very credible; White House assessments didn’t have much weight anymore. The President was scheduled to appear for a press conference the next day, and we suspected the White House did not want a story about embracing Khomeini with arms all the while the CIA was supporting Iranian exiles, and the backers of the baby Shah, who wanted to overthrow Khomeini. We decided to run the story.
That night North, McFarlane and several other NSC aides attempted feverishly to put together a chronology of events that would distance the President and blur his role, particularly on his initial approval of the first Israeli shipments in 1985. North summoned his assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Earl, to the office by computer message: “Let’s get our little-nipper in here and find out wtf is going on.” In Marine jargon, “wtf” means “what the fuck.”
At his press conference, the President defended the Iran project. “I don’t think a mistake was made…. I don’t see that it has been a fiasco or a great failure of any kind.” He denied four times that he had “condoned” the Israeli shipments, or that any other country was even involved. Twenty-five minutes after the press conference; however, Reagan issued an unusual correction, saying that he had in fact condoned such a shipment by another country.
Casey and Gates went to the White House the next day to attempt to resolve a dispute with North, who was claiming that it was not he who had requested CIA assistance back in November 1985 for the Israeli shipment. Poindexter and North finally agreed that it had been North. That night, Casey was back at the White House, attempting to put together his testimony for the intelligence committees the next day. He met with Poindexter, Shultz and Meese. He was planning to say, in his testimony, that the CIA thought the 1985 Israeli shipment was “oil-drilling equipment,” not arms.
Later that night, Shultz went to see the President in the White House living quarters. In a tense meeting, the Secretary of State told the President that the Director of Central Intelligence was about to lie to the intelligence committees, and that something had to be done. Statements were being made that would not stand up even to the most superficial scrutiny. Shultz was boiling. He’d never thought he’d have such a conversation, almost scolding the President of the United States. But he told Reagan he had to face facts, that anyone looking at the record would see arms-for-hostages.
Meanwhile, Casey chaired a meeting at Langley with a large group of CIA officers who might know something about what had happened. He had met with North and they deleted the description of the 1985 Israeli shipment as oil-drilling equipment, fixing the problem with an omission.
The next morning he rose early and continued to revise his testimony, scaling it back, molding the information to fit what was already out and what could not reasonably be expected to stay secret. At 9:30 Casey appeared in a top-secret closed-door session before all fifteen members of the House Intelligence Committee. There was much unhappiness. After Casey read his ten-minute summary, Chairman Lee Hamilton unequivocally challenged Casey’s view that notification of covert action could legally be delayed some ten months. Casey responded coolly, “We are talking about a constitutional prerogative which presidents have claimed.” Care and caution required nothing less, he said, and time got “chewed up” as the Iranians attempted to exert their limited influence on those holding the American hostages in Lebanon. “I think it was a bona-fide attempt in which the things we committed were rather small and certainly proportionate to the magnitude of the things we were trying to achieve.” The weapons passed out were insignificant.
“You got to take those risks, or sit and let the world go by. I personally was in favor of taking the risks in a cautious and prudent way.
“I wouldn’t now be willing to say I wouldn’t take the risk if I could do it over again.”
Some Republicans jumped in, defending the President’s decision, and arguing that the committee leaked. Dave McCurdy, the Oklahoma Democrat, asked, “Who managed the operation, Mr. Casey?”
“I think we were all in it. It was a team.”
“Who headed the team? Who called the shots? Was it Poindexter or Casey?”
Casey replied, “I think it was the President.”
At 11 A.M. Casey was due at the Senate committee and left, saying he would return to the House committee at 1:30 P.M.
He went to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s secure hearing room and sat at the long witness table where a special microphone stood like a praying mantis poking in his face. It was to aid the senators in deciphering the Director’s legendary mumbling. Clair George sat beside him. After six years of dodging and ducking, this was a moment of reckoning. All the members of the committee sat around a white horseshoe-shaped table. Senate Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat and an ex officio member of the committee, was also present.
“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,” Byrd inquired, “but is the witness under oath?”
It was an awkward moment. Durenberger responded that with the exception of confirmation hearings, the committee did not swear witnesses. This promoted an atmosphere of “free exchange,” he said. Its proceedings were not adversarial, but if any senator wanted the witness under oath, it could, of course, be done. No one, including Byrd, spoke up.
Casey sat silently, and then began reading from his prepared statement. He attempted to present the operation as routine covert action. He did not mention the absence of a finding before the CIA assistance for the 1985 Israeli shipment; nor the existence of the finding drawn up by Sporkin that had the President retroactively approve the CIA role in the Israeli shipment. He referred to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar as a “representative of Iran” and not by name.
Several senators pressed for the “representative’s” identity and his relationship with the CIA. Casey evaded the question, but it was then directed to Clair George, who referred to Ghorbanifar as a highly sensitive source whose name should not be used.
“Wasn’t it Ghorbanifar?” a senator asked.
“Well, yes, Senator,” George said, “but we would be very concerned for his life if that ever got out.”
Ghorbanifar’s failure to pass a series of lie detector tests was not disclosed.
When asked whether General Secord had played any role in the Iran arms shipments, Casey said he had heard the press reports and tried to leave it at that. He was questioned further.
“We are aware of Mr. Secord’s activities and we do not approve of them,” the DCI said.
In references to the meetings with the Iranians, Casey referred to an “NSC official.” When asked who that was, the DCI said, “I’m not sure,” and passed the question to George. The DDO said he too was not certain. He turned back and passed the question to his executive assistant, who was sitting behind them. The assistant said he did not know for sure.
Lieutenant Colonel North’s name was not mentioned.
Casey tailored his briefing to extend an olive branch but no new facts. He did not bring up the troubling money problems, the missing $10 million, or the possibility that some money from the arms sales had been diverted to the contras.
At 1:50 Casey was back at the House committee saying that he did not think it was a good idea to have the NSC conduct operations. He said that it first happened with “this Central America business.” Given the congressional restrictions placed on the CIA in the Nicaragua operation, the NSC became operational, he said, acknowledging what the Administration had previously denied. “The NSC has been guiding and active in the private provision of weapons to the contras down there,” Casey volunteered. “I don’t know all the details. I have kept away from the details because I was barred from doing anything. I knew that others were doing it.”
Asked about the “nameless ex-patriot” (Ghorbanifar), Casey said he was untrustworthy, “a kind of dubious guy.” Pressed, Casey said, “In this kind of thing you don’t get the purest souls to do what you want them to. You usually take those people that have a checkered career or checkered record.”
“It is just a matter of degree as to how much of a rascal he is?” one Democrat asked.
“Yes,” Casey said, “I think that is fair.”
To a difficult question, Casey said, “It is hard to be precise on that,” or “I don’t have it at my fingertips,” or “That is above my pay grade.” This was all true, but no member really pushed him or followed up as the DCI slid off the questions. Much of the time was spent as the congressmen debated each other. Pages of the transcript show Casey uttering not a word. Casey did remind them that the project obtained the release of three hostages.
Hamilton said, “I just think you are going to have a lot of trouble explaining your policy on terrorism now.”
“You don’t have to be a great prophet to figure that at this point,” Casey replied. By 3:05 P.M. he was released.
Attorney General Meese went to the President that morning and suggested to him that no one had the story straight. There were too many contradictions, too much they didn’t know, too many gaps, too many inconsistent recollections. They’re all going to look silly when Congress looks into the matter, he said. The President authorized the Attorney General to begin his inquiry.
Meese contacted Poindexter and asked that he assemble all the relevant documents. In the West Wing, Poindexter asked his military assistant, Navy Commander Paul Thompson, who was also a lawyer, to bring in the covert action findings from the safe. The first Iran finding, dated December 5, 1985, portrayed the Iran initiative as a straight arms-for-hostage deal. This was precisely what Reagan was denying.
“They’ll have a field day with this,” Thompson said, handing the finding to the Admiral.
Poindexter saw that it would be a significant political embarrassment. Like the skipper on the bridge of his destroyer, he decided to act. He tore up the finding and, turning in his chair, he placed it in the burn bag behind his desk. The bags were burned as part of the routine destruction of excess classified material. The Admiral also found other computer notes and unfinished documents—private, frank communications that were no longer needed. He ripped them up and placed them in the burn bag also.
That afternoon, Meese called McFarlane at home. “Bud,” he said, “I have been tasked by the President to put together an accurate record of events in this matter and I would like to talk to you.”
McFarlane arrived at the Justice Department in midafternoon and laid out his recollections for an hour.
Meese had questions about the President’s involvement and the role of other Cabinet officers. That took another half hour. Meese’s assistant left the room, and Meese started to follow him.
“Ed, wait a minute,” McFarlane said. “I want to talk to you about this. You know, as you may have seen in this morning’s papers, I gave a speech last night, and I have taken on responsibility for every bit of this that I can and I shall continue to do that.”
“Yes, that’s been noted.”
“But I want you to know that from the very beginning of this, Ed, the President was foursquare behind it, that he never had any reservations about approving anything that the Israelis wanted to do here.”
“I know that,” Meese said, “and I can understand why. And, as a practical matter, I’m glad you told me this, because his legal position is far better the earlier he made the decision.” He said that if the President had made an “oral finding” or even a “mental finding” instead of the normally written one, that put them all the more in the clear because the President had the authority to order covert action. He added, “Bud, whatever you do, don’t try to shave the truth or make what you think is best for yourself or the President. Just tell the truth and don’t try to figure out what’s going to be helpful or hurtful to the President.”
Meese then spoke with FBI Director William Webster, who offered the services of the FBI in Meese’s inquiry. Meese said he didn’t see any criminality, and he felt that to bring the FBI in would open them to the criticism that the Bureau was being used for political purposes.
About 6:30 that evening, North went to his office. He had more or less made up his mind to be annihilated. Instructing his secretary of four years, Fawn Hall, to assist him, he began removing documents, memos and messages from his safe and files. Cool, weary but intent, he piled them in a large stack. Everything was to be shredded. It took an hour. He also asked Hall’s assistance in altering four memos, removing troubling references.
Saturday, November 22, was warm. A busy weekend was ahead. Meese took two assistant attorney generals to the White House with him. He met first with Shultz and then with Sporkin. His assistants went to work in the files. At North’s office they found an undated memo on Iran, unaddressed: “$12 million will be used to purchase critically needed supplies for the Nicaraguan democratic resistance forces.”
Meese later took his assistants to lunch at the Old Ebbitt Grill two blocks from the White House. They described the diversion memo they had discovered in North’s office. Meese uttered an expletive, but felt it could be legitimate, or perhaps the memo only reflected one of North’s pipe dreams.
Casey was in his Old Executive Office Building office and called down to Poindexter, “Why don’t I come over and we’ll have a sandwich together.” For nearly two hours, the two men who knew the most ate and talked alone. North joined them near the end. Among other issues, they discussed the second channel with the Iranians. The big play was still an option, a hope. Casey always believed that one of the best tactics was to cover an emerging problem with a visible success. Instead of the dubious services of Ghorbanifar, they now had a direct channel through Ali Hashemi Bahramani, a nephew to the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Rafsanjani, and the Revolutionary Guard intelligence director in the Prime Minister’s Office named Samaii. For some time Bahramani and Samaii had been sending messages to North with an Israeli-manufactured secure communications device. But for the last week Bahramani had said he felt threatened and possibly under surveillance, so his messages had come through his bodyguard.
The lunch ended at 3:20 P.M. At 3:40, North called Meese to set an interview for the next day. Then at 3:46, Casey called Meese to say he had something to tell the Attorney General. “Why don’t I drop by on my way home this evening,” Meese said.
Casey offered the Attorney General scotch or beer, it was all he had. Meese, not a scotch drinker, took a beer. Casey said that his old friend Roy Furmark had been passing messages from those who had put up the money for the Iran arms sales. They were saying, “Either pay us the money we’re owed or else we’re going to try to make it look bad.”
Both lawyers recognized blackmail. But, by Meese’s account, neither shared the most troubling information they had. Casey did not mention Furmark’s charge that money had gone to the contras, and the Attorney General did not mention the undated North memo they had found several hours earlier suggesting the diversion.
Meese had made an early appointment with North for the next day, Sunday, but North asked that it be postponed until 2 P.M. so that he could go to church with his family. North called McFarlane and asked to meet him at 12:30 P.M. at an office McFarlane had at the Old Executive Office Building. They talked for fifteen minutes. North said he was going to have to lay the facts out for Meese about the diversion of Iran arms sale money to the contras. As McFarlane knew, North would not do anything that was not approved. In this case, it was a matter of record: there was a memo that North had done for Poindexter.
At 2 P.M., Meese arrived with his two assistants.
North said yes, money had been diverted; three accounts had been opened in Switzerland and the numbers given to the Israelis. The money had been deposited in those accounts, and the contras were appreciative. About $3-$4 million from one arms sale had gone in that direction. The $12 million mentioned in the memo, North said, was not U.S. money and it was not Israeli money. It had sounded fine to him.
“Did you find a cover memo?” North asked.
“Should we have?” inquired Meese.
“No, I just wondered.”
Casey, meanwhile, wrote a classified letter to the President suggesting that Shultz be fired. Using the baseball terminology Shultz had used the previous week for Poindexter as “designated hitter,” Casey said that at State the President needed a new “pitcher.”
On Monday at 11 A.M., Meese explained to the President and Don Regan that he had uncovered a diversion of money to the contras. Meese went to see Poindexter in the national-security adviser’s office. “I assume you’re aware of the memo we found in Ollie’s files.” Poindexter said he knew and realized that he would probably have to resign.
Before lunch, Poindexter found a computer note from North. “There is that old line about you can’t fire me, I quit…I am prepared to depart at the time you and the President decide…. We nearly succeeded. Semper fidelis. Oliver North.”
“Thanks, Ollie,” Poindexter typed. “I have talked to Ed twice today on this and he is still trying to figure out what to do. I have told him I am prepared to resign. I told him I would take the cue from him. He is one of the few besides the President that I can trust. If we don’t leave, what would you think about going out to CIA and being a special assistant to Bill? This would put you in the operational world officially. Don’t say anything to Bill yet. I just want to get your reaction.”
During a photo session at the White House, the President was asked whether he should have acknowledged mistakes in the Iran arms shipments. “I’m not going to lie about that. I didn’t make a mistake,” he replied. Pressed about others, he said, “I’m not going to fire anybody.”
Casey had Furmark out to Langley and attempted to learn about the money used in the Iran operation. He called North.
“There’s a man here who says you owe him $10 million,” the DCI said.
North said there was only $30,000 left in the Swiss account. “Tell him the Iranians or Israelis owe him the money,” North said.
Casey tried to reach Meese and failed. He tried Don Regan and left a message saying he urgently needed to talk to the Chief of Staff. It could not wait. Regan agreed to stop by Langley on his way home for dinner. Up on the seventh floor, Casey betrayed little, and with hardly a facial reaction asked what was going on, what was on the President’s mind.
Regan blurted out that a diversion of funds to the contras had been discovered.
“What are you going to do about it?” Casey asked. He was stolid, unreadable.
All along, Regan continued, he had thought the arms transactions with Iran were, as they used to say on Wall Street, NPH, “No Profit Here.” Given the information about the diversion, the plan was to make it all public the next day.
“Well, do you realize the consequences?” Casey asked sharply, and then ticked off the impact of such a disclosure. “You’re going to blow the whole Iranian thing, and possibly blow the lives of these hostages.” Iran would be enraged at being overcharged for the arms. Congress would be beside itself, uncontrollable, and would likely cut off the contra funding, the DCI said.
“Be that as it may,” Regan replied. “How the hell can we sit on this stuff any longer? I mean this thing is an absolute disgrace…. We have this possible criminal act.”
“I hope you realize that, you know, this is going to cause quite a few upsets and it’s going to be a major story,” Casey replied.
Regan indicated that irrevocable decisions had been made; there was no turning back, no choice.
Casey was late for dinner at the Metropolitan Club, where he was to meet Bernadette, his daughter, and Edward Hymoff, an OSS veteran and writer who wanted to write Casey’s biography. They had a handshake agreement that Casey would provide access to the CIA and to senior Administration figures, including the President.
When Casey arrived at the club, Hymoff, Bernadette and her husband were waiting. Aware of the current flap, Hymoff said, “You know the shit is going to hit the fan.”
“We can handle it,” Casey said confidently, and turned to the proposed book. He was staying until the end of the President’s term, but he would work something out so that Hymoff could spend the last six months of 1988 at the agency gathering information. Until then, they should focus on the rest of his life—OSS, investor, author and the SEC. He was anxious to get going. He was going to spend the Christmas holidays at his Palm Beach house, and they agreed that Hymoff could come and tape some interviews.
“Bill, what are you going to do after the Administration?”
“I’m not going back to lawyering,” Casey said, “but venture capital.” Government had again convinced him that a small private enterprise could move faster, better. He also said that he was thinking of doing his autobiography.
“Daddy,” Bernadette said, “you must do a book.”
At 6:30 A.M. the next day, Tuesday, November 25, Casey called Meese and asked him to stop by on his way to work. The Attorney General’s car pulled up at Foxhall Crescents at 7 A.M. Casey wanted to know what was going on.
Meese explained: Poindexter is going, it’s all going to be announced.
Casey said he would pull all the memos together and send them to Meese.
Next Meese reached Poindexter’s car by phone and asked that the Admiral meet him at the Justice Department. Once Poindexter arrived, the Attorney General had one message: “You should resign today.” Meese volunteered that he didn’t think North had done anything illegal.
Poindexter went back to his West Wing office and ordered breakfast brought to him on a tray. He sat at the end of his conference table and calmly told his military aide, Commander Thompson, that he would be requesting reassignment in the Navy that day. There were no jitters, no flash of emotion, no doubt. Thompson later said, “Of all the people in the world who might have to take a fall, the Admiral was probably the most qualified in history.”
Don Reagan soon arrived in Poindexter’s office. He was on fire. “What the hell happened here?”
Poindexter adjusted his trifocals, dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, and put it aside. “Well,” he said, “I guess I should have looked into it more, but I didn’t. I knew that Ollie was up to something. I just didn’t look into it.”
“Why not?” Regan demanded. “What the hell. You’re a Vice Admiral. What’s going on?”
“That damn Tip O’Neill,” Poindexter said, “the way he’s jerking the contras around. I was just so disgusted.”
“Well, John, I think when you go see the President at 9:30, you better make sure you have your resignation with you.”
“I will.”*
At Langley, Casey called for Charlie Allen. Where was the goddamn month-old memo he had sent to Poindexter about the possible diversion of money? They found it, in Casey’s in-box. Nearly hysterical, Casey drafted an immediate top-secret, “Dear Ed” letter to Meese explaining what had happened: he and Gates had told Poindexter several times about these allegations, had given him a memo in mid-October, but the memo that laid out the possible diversion most starkly had somehow, inexplicably, never gone forward to the White House.
That morning the President gave the congressional leaders an early warning about the diversion. They were called to the White House and the President told them that Poindexter was “not a participant,” but had volunteered his resignation in accordance with Navy tradition which held that the skipper is responsible for everything that happens in his command. Reagan defended his National Security Council system and said it had “served this country well.”
“Without condoning” the diversion scheme, the President said, “it wasn’t contrary to policy.”
At a noon press conference, the President read a brief statement and introduced Meese, who announced that between $10 million and $30 million had been diverted to the contras. Shaken and grim, the President said he had not known earlier. He announced that Poindexter had resigned, and that North had been fired.
Later that day, Fawn Hall smuggled a half-inch-thick stack of documents from North’s office by concealing them in her clothes and boots. She took them to North and said their defense would be “We shred every day.” In the evening a security officer sealed the office.
The next day, I reached Casey on the telephone to ask how the Administration had got into the arms sales to Iran.
“The Israelis, in ’81, were telling us to work with the Iranians, for the purpose of getting close to the military,” Casey said. “It seemed credible to us, based on the future, post-Khomeini era.”
Why were there profits that could be diverted to the contras?
“Iran was willing to pay more,” he said, and suggested that any “illegality” found would be on the part of others.
Who?
He paused. “Poindexter just got caught.”
Did you know about the diversion to the contras?
“The law said I had to stay away,” he said, reiterating what Meese had said at his press conference, that no one at the CIA knew, including the Director.
The contras are your boys, you must have had a clue that they were getting $10 million to $30 million?
“Gossip,” he snapped. “I learned yesterday of it for sure from Meese.”
You didn’t know what North was doing?
“Goddammit—no one will go to jail…inside the Beltway.” He hung up.
A few days later, Stansfield Turner’s former deputy, Frank Carlucci, was appointed the national-security adviser; an independent counsel was sought to conduct the criminal investigation of the Iran-contra affair; the President appointed a three-member commission headed by former Senator John Tower to investigate the NSC; and the Senate Intelligence Committee began a full-scale investigation. Poindexter’s only other conversation with Casey was to ask the DCI’s advice on selecting an attorney.
About 1 P.M. on December 3, I called Casey again. A number of Administration and congressional leaders were saying that he was finished at the CIA. He was eating his lunch as we chatted.
“The chairman and vice-chairman say we’ll come out smelling like a rose,” he said between bites, referring to Senators Durenberger and Leahy. “We were barred by law from supporting the contras, and we didn’t.”
The CIA had made two trivial mistakes on the Iran arms sales, he said. The first was the assistance rendered to the White House on the November 1985 Israeli shipment of arms to Iran before Reagan had signed a finding. The assistance was to put North in touch so that a “routine commercial flight” could be found. “It’s not a Supreme Court case.”
Second, he said, some “dumb” low-level employee at the agency had used the same Swiss bank account for the Iran arms sales as was used for the joint U.S.-Saudi covert support operation to the Afghan rebels. So some of this Iran money and the $500 million for the Afghan operation had been commingled, he said. “But all the money is accounted for.”
Was this whole thing a big sting operation by the Iranians to get U.S. weapons?
“Bullshit—the President said woo them and we did.”
I asked another question.
“Goddammit, don’t needle me. I don’t know why I take your calls.”
I said that there were a number of unanswered questions.
“I expect you to exercise the normal restraint of an adult.”
Well, others, many others, are saying that you knew more, had to be involved, et cetera.
“That’s why I wouldn’t have your job for all the money in the world,” the DCI said, a crispness and clarity rising in his voice. “You’re destined to be right only a part of the time.”
The legal department at the CIA, still trying desperately to keep all agency activity within the boundaries of law, attempted to determine precisely what contact was permissible between CIA officers and the private airlift and donors to the contra cause. An associate counsel issued an opinion on December 5 to Clair George that “contacts with the benefactors, although contrary to policy, were not contrary to law.”
With Poindexter and North gone, Casey singlehandedly had the task of pulling something out of the foundering Iran initiative. For an upcoming meeting with the second Iranian channel in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday, December 13, Shultz had won White House agreement that there would be no more arms sales to Iran and that the CIA representative at the meeting would not talk policy. Casey called Don Regan to persuade the President to reverse himself, and a top-secret message was dispatched to Frankfurt, authorizing the State and CIA representatives to have “policy and intelligence discussions.”
After the Frankfurt meeting at the Park Hotel, Shultz received a secure telephone call from the State Department representative. The Secretary was stunned after he heard his report and he called the President to say they needed to talk at once. The President invited Shultz to the White House the next morning.
At the White House on Sunday morning, Shultz said that the Frankfurt meeting illustrated how much out of control everything was. Poindexter, North, Casey and the CIA had been negotiating on matters about which there could be no flexibility. Iran’s representative in Frankfurt had referred to a nine-point agenda, previously agreed on by North and the CIA. Among other things, it said the United States would work to win the release of 17 prisoners who had been convicted of the 1983 truck-bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Kuwait. In the long battle against terrorism, the United States had regularly and vociferously backed Kuwait’s refusal to release the 17 prisoners. The 17 were members of Al Dawa or “The Call,” a radical fanatical Muslim fundamentalist group tied to those who had killed the 241 U.S. servicemen in 1983 in Beirut and other terrorist attacks. These were the suicidal fringe; some were related to the Lebanese faction Hizbollah and its leader, Fadlallah. Kuwait’s steadfastness had become a symbol of a united front of antiterrorist toughness. But the CIA was off in Germany saying this issue was negotiable. Accustomed to operations founded in expediency and subterfuge—not consistency—the agency was making a mockery of the President’s principles and doctrine, undercutting the President’s personal pledge that terrorists could run but not hide. This NSC-CIA attitude was at the root of the whole current mess. Shultz said he found it sickening.
The President’s eyes flashed and his jaw set. In that single meeting, the Iran argument that Shultz had been waging and losing since mid-1985 was finally over.
The next morning, Monday, December 15, Casey was in his seventh-floor office at Langley preparing for another appearance before the Senate intelligence committee when he suffered a seizure. An ambulance was summoned and he was rushed to Georgetown Hospital. He had another seizure, but was speaking and moving normally. On Thursday at 7:40 A.M. he was taken into surgery, and a three-member team operated until 1 P.M., removing a cancerous soft tumor called a lymphoma. It was scooped out from the inner side of the left brain, the area controlling movement of the right side of the body. In a statement, his doctors said they expected that the seventy-three-year-old Casey would be able to resume his normal activities.
Gates took over as acting DCI, and spent much of January resisting White House pressure to suggest a replacement for Casey, who was seriously ill and virtually unable to speak. Forced to come up with some names, Gates proposed former Senators John Tower, Paul Laxalt or Howard Baker. None of them would come in and tear the place to shreds, he hoped.
After six weeks, Casey improved dramatically. On Wednesday, January 28, Gates was allowed to visit him in the hospital.
He was sitting by the window. He never had much hair, so the hair loss from radiation and drug treatment was not that noticeable. Gates had a list of subjects to cover and he began. Casey was lucid, making short comments or grunting as Gates moved down the list.
“Time for me to get out of the way,” Casey finally said, waving his left arm in the air, “make room.”
The next day Gates arranged for Don Regan and Meese to visit the hospital. Casey couldn’t write, so Sophia signed his resignation letter. He had served six years and one day.
I took a list of persisting questions, added some from the previous years, and drove over to Georgetown Hospital. Two unusually heavy snowfalls had blanketed Washington during the latter part of the month, and the traffic was thin. I didn’t have to wait long in the lobby to see one of the telltale CIA security men with his walkie-talkie earpiece stroll through. He went down a long corridor, turned left into a new wing, and took the elevator. It stopped at the sixth floor. I went up. In a small room, four CIA security men were watching afternoon television.
Casey was in Room C6316, registered under the alias “Lacey.” The door was closed, and after I identified myself, the lone security man declined to let me in.
Each time I had interviewed Casey over the previous three years, I had written out my questions on sheets of yellow legal paper. I had saved all these sheets and now had a thick packet of many folded and old pages. Some questions—asked, answered by Casey and verified elsewhere—now only prompted more curiosity. As I spent several hours reviewing what I might want to ask, I attempted to condense it to one page: “Key unanswered questions for Casey.” More than ever it was evident how preeminent this man had been to the Reagan Administration’s aspirations and predicaments. As much as anybody’s, even the President’s, Casey’s convictions, fierce loyalties and obsessions were behind the contra operation, the Iran initiative and the range of other secret undertakings and clandestine relations. His view of the law—minimum compliance and minimum disclosure—had permeated the Reagan foreign-policy enterprises. His ambition had been to prove that his country could do “these things,” as he once had told me. He meant covert actions conducted in true, permanent secrecy. It was part nostalgia. It was also part a demonstration of willfulness.
“We could win,” he had once said longingly to one of his top assistants. He felt his big accomplishment had been to prevent Central America from going Communist, much like America’s post-World War II achievement in saving Western Europe from the Communists. Sophia said to me in a phone conversation, “From the head and the heart, Bill was a born patriot.”
Was he? Was that what it was about? His country at any cost? What price had been paid? Now that the game was about over, I realized that I could not escape making a judgment. I had scrupulously avoided that for the three and one-half years I had known him. It was easier and safer for me that way. For some reason we had formed a partnership over secrets. In entirely different ways, we were both obsessed with secrets. During this game, secrets were the exchange medium. What were the secrets? What was their value? What was their use?
The previous year Casey had told me that he had read a review I had written of John le Carré’s A Perfect Spy. Casey said he agreed with my interpretation of the le Carré view of espionage, that the better the spying, the better the deception. I had quoted him one of my favorite lines from the book: “In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.” Casey just took it in, an intense, almost gloomy, look on his face. He could be so distant. What did he think? I had asked. No response. Did he agree? Nothing.
Casey had been an attractive figure to me because he was useful and because he never avoided the confrontation. He might shout and challenge, even threaten, but he never broke off the dialogue or the relationship. Back in 1985 when we had exposed the covert preemptive teams to strike against terrorists he had said to me, “You’ll probably have blood on your hands before it’s over.” That was, I later learned, after Casey had worked secretly with the Saudi intelligence service and its ambassador in Washington to arrange the assassination of the archterrorist Fadlallah. Instead of Fadlallah, the car bomb had killed at least eighty people, many innocent.
How did he square that? I imagined, and hoped, he felt the moral dilemma. How could he not? He was too smart not to see that he and the White House had broken the rules, probably the law. It was Casey who had blood on his hands.
The institutional questions about the White House, the CIA, Congress, the political temptation of covert action, the war-making authority, the awful fakery of “plausible deniability” would be addressed by the investigations. I kept coming back to the question of personal responsibility, Casey’s responsibility. Events, disclosures would not take him off the hook but would more likely put him on it more firmly.
For a moment, I hoped he would take himself off the hook. The only way was an admission of some kind or an apology to his colleagues or an expression of new understanding.
Under the last question on “Key unanswered questions for Casey,” I wrote: “Do you now see that it was wrong?”
Several days later I returned to Casey’s hospital room. The door was open. Scars from the craniotomy were still healing. I asked Casey how he was getting along.
Hope and then realism flashed in his eyes. “Okay…better…no.”
I took his hand to shake it in a greeting. He grabbed my hand and squeezed, peace and sunlight in the room for a moment.
“You finished yet?” he asked, referring to the book.
I said I’d never finish, never get it all, there were so many questions. I’d never find out everything he had done.
The left side of his mouth hooked up in a smile, and he grunted.
Look at all the trouble you’ve caused, I said, the whole Administration under investigation.
He didn’t seem to hear. So I repeated it and for a moment he looked proud, raising his head.
“It hurts,” he said, and I thought he was in physical pain.
What hurts, sir?
“Oh,” he said, stopping. He seemed to be saying that it was being out of it, out of the action, I thought. But he suddenly spoke up, apparently on the same track about the hurt. “What you don’t know,” he said.
In the end, I realized, what was hidden was greater. The unknown had the power, he seemed to be saying, or at least that’s what I thought. He was so frail, at life’s edge, and he knew, making a comment about death. “I’m gone,” he said. I said no.
You knew, didn’t you, I said. The contra diversion had to be the first question: you knew all along.
His head jerked up hard. He stared, and finally nodded yes.
Why? I asked.
“I believed.”
What?
“I believed.”
Then he was asleep, and I didn’t get to ask another question.
A few weeks later Sophia took him home, but he was soon back in the hospital. She finally took him to Mayknoll to die. He contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized on Long Island. There, the morning of May 6, the day after Congress began its public hearings on the Iran-contra affair, Casey died.