In My Time - Dick Cheney [76]
I called Henry Hyde, the Intel Committee’s ranking Republican, and invited him to sit in on the meeting. A few days later, before our scheduled meeting, Jim Angleton died. I never learned what it was he wanted to tell me.
I WAS REELECTED IN 1986 with 69 percent of the vote. I hadn’t had tough opposition, but I had worked hard in the campaign and was looking forward to a postelection elk hunt with my friend Al Simpson and his sons, Colin and Bill. Our lottery applications for elk tags had been successful, and I had packed my bags for the flight home when I got a call from Bob Michel. Apparently I was the only member of the House Republican leadership still in Washington during that postelection period, and Bob wanted me to attend a hastily called meeting at the White House. On November 12, when I arrived at the West Wing, I was ushered into the Situation Room in the basement. The majority and minority leaders of the Senate, Bob Dole and Robert Byrd, were there, along with Speaker Jim Wright and key members of the administration’s national security team. The whole thing had the air of a crisis about to unfold, and I suspected I wouldn’t be going elk hunting.
National Security Advisor John Poindexter briefed us, revealing the story of a secret administration initiative that would soon result in a firestorm. In hopes of improving our relationship with supposedly moderate elements in Iran, the United States had begun to sell arms—at first indirectly, then later directly—to these factions. The United States also wanted help from the Iranians in securing the release of American hostages whom Hezbollah was holding in Lebanon, and after the arms sales commenced three Americans were freed. Less than a week before our Situation Room briefing, President Reagan had appeared in the Rose Garden with David Jacobsen, who had been released after seventeen months in captivity in Beirut.
The freeing of hostages was undeniably a good thing, but it was clear to me that the initiative was ill-conceived. It violated the arms embargo that we had imposed on Iran and that we were insisting other nations observe, and it undermined our strict policy against negotiating with terrorists. Congress had not been told about the operation, as we should have been.
The situation grew exponentially worse in late November when Attorney General Ed Meese disclosed in a press conference that profits from Iranian arm sales had been diverted to insurgents known as the Contras, who were fighting against the pro-communist government in Nicaragua. The Congress had passed the Boland Amendments, measures aimed at constraining the president from pursuing his policy of aiding the Contras. After President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua made a much-publicized trip to Moscow, the fierce resistance on the part of the Democrats to aiding the Contras had abated somewhat, but the Boland Amendments were still on the books, so the stage was set for a confrontation.
On December 2 I made my way through a downpour to an 11:00 a.m. meeting the president had called with the Republican leadership in the Cabinet Room. He assured us he’d had no knowledge of the diversion of funds to the Contras, and after we departed he made the same point in a four-minute televised speech. He also said he would welcome the appointment of a special prosecutor and endorsed congressional inquiries into the matter.
The next day the president called another meeting with the Republican leadership, this time in the Oval Office. The president sat in a chair on one side of the fireplace and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole