THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

1986

• Omaha's InterNorth buys Houston Natural Gas in a friendly takeover, and merges to become Enron, with a new CEO, HNG's Kenneth Lay. Lay is one of the oil magnates who profited most from Bush's deregulatory efforts. After spending time among the Nixon and Ford administrations as a member of the Federal Power Commission and as deputy undersecretary for energy in the Department of the Interior, Lay moved into the private sector, first working for Florida Gas, then Transco Energy and finally Houston Natural Gas, where he became president. Lay's new company Enron immediately begins working closely with the Reagan/Bush administrations to further expedite deregulation and to more deeply involve the US government in pursuing Iraqi and Caspian oil interests. George Bush first met Lay in 1980, introduced by mutual friends in the oil business (Enron's business and political ties with the Bush family go back as least as far as the mid-1980s). Lay immediately began donating to the Bush presidential campaign. Lay met frequently with Bush during his two terms as vice president. In 1984, Lay served as the Harris County (Houston) chairman of a Reagan-Bush fundraiser, and Enron is quick to forge ties with Bush's own oil company, Spectrum 7.
• Much later, the younger Bush and his spokesmen would lie about Lay's connection with his family. Dan Bartlett, the White House director, will tell the Chicago Tribune in March 2002 that the younger Bush first met Lay in 1987 or 1988, when he was in Washington working on his father's presidential campaign, but that seems unlikely. Certainly the younger Bush's 2001 assertion that he and his family barely knew Kenneth Lay, and that he primarily knew Lay as "an Ann Richards supporter," is a lie. In 1995, Bush's own oil firm, Harken, will apparently sell several oil wells to Enron. Lay has always worked closely with the Bush family and with Reagan/Bush officials to establish Enron as the world's largest international utility, pipeline, and energy-trading corporation. He will receive critical government help in negotiating and constructing a huge electricity plant in England under the reign of Margaret Thatcher, who was herself moving to deregulate Great Britain's energy industry. The US helps Enron negotiate chemical and pipeline contracts in Argentina, as well as helps Enron secure loans from the World Bank, the US Export-Import Bank, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). In most of these ventures, the assistance of the Bush family is critical. In 1988, George W. Bush will contact Argentina's minister of public works, Rodolfo Terragno, and pressure him to facilitate Argentina's deal with Enron, telling Terragno that such a deal "would be very favorable for Argentina and its relations with the United States." A change in Argentina's government delayed the Enron deal until 1992, but in 1989 the Bush administration will help Enron receive a critical loan from OPIC to build a chemical plant in that country. The deal sends the message around the private energy sector that Enron was much favored by the US government. Loans from the Ex-Im and the Inter-American Development Bank soon follow, along with a 1990 letter from the US ambassador to Argentina, Terrence Todman, threatening that eight large American corporations would leave Argentina if the country didn't stop giving preference to its own companies for government contracts and instead give preference to a list of American companies; Enron is at the top of the list Enron gets a sweetheart deal from Argentina shortly thereafter (even being allowed to take advantage of a lucrative tax waiver only available to Argentinian companies working on projects in the national interest); the next day, Neil Bush arrives in Buenos Aires to play tennis with Argentinian president Carlos Menem. (Kevin Phillips, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)

The Clintons extricate themselves from Whitewater

• Bill and Hillary Clinton begin to sign over their shares in Whitewater to Jim McDougal. Hillary Clinton discovers tremendous irregularities in McDougal's bookkeeping. It takes years before the Clintons can extricate themselves from Whitewater. In 1990 the Clintons will file tax returns that McDougal had failed to file for years, and pay the outstanding fees and fines. McDougal feels that the Clintons have betrayed him and vows to get revenge. (H.R. Clinton)
• Reagan sends a secret message to Saddam Hussein telling him to step up his air war and bombing against Iran, according to testimony from NSC staff member Howard Teicher. The message is delivered by Vice President Bush to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who passes it along to Hussein. (Consortium News)
• Jeb Bush, currently the chairman of the Dade County Republican Party, enters into a business deal with Cuban-American businessman Camilo Padreda to be the leasing agent for a vacant office building in Miami. Padreda has a shady past; in 1982, Padreda and another Cuban exile, Hernandez Cartaya, were indicted for looting a savings and loan in Jefferson, Texas. Both were charged with embezzlement of over half a million dollars; Cartaya was charged with drug smuggling, money laundering, and gun running. Shortly after the indictment, the FBI received a call from the CIA warning that Cartaya was one of their assets; all charges against Padreda were dropped, and Carteya's list of charges were reduced to a single count of tax evasion. In 1985, just months before Bush went into business with Padreda, Padreda was charged with improper influence of the Dade County manager, in an incident that involved phony land rezoning, profiteering, and laundering of drug money. The manager resigned and Padreda was never charged. Bush accepted the position with Padreda, but continues to refuse to answer questions about the deal. (In 1989, Padreda will plead guilty to charges that he defrauded HUD of millions of dollars during the 1980s.)
• Among other tenants, he lands Cuban-American businessman Miguel Recarey's International Medical Center (IMC), which leased almost all of the vacant office space. Recarey is a long-time associate of Miami mafia don Santo Trafficante, and participated in the CIA's efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s. Associates of Recarey state that Trafficante financed Recarey's business dealings, including IMC. Miguel's brother Jorge is also a former CIA asset, and IMC is largely staffed by CIA veterans and shady members of the Cuban-American community. While Jeb Bush never signed a single real estate deal, he does help Recarey pull off the single biggest HMO Medicare fraud in US history.
• Bush successfully lobbies Health & Human Services head Margaret Heckler to obtain a special Medicare waiver for IMC, and is paid $75,000 for his troubles by Recarey. A low-level HHS agent, Leon Weinstein, had been investigating IMC for years; after Jeb Bush became involved with the company, Weinstein was warned by his Washington superiors to stay out of IMC's affairs or he would lose his job. Eventually Weinstein will get the assistance of Democratic Congressmen Barney Frank and Pete Stark, who launch congressional hearings into the IMC scandal. Though HHS still refused to cooperate with the investigation, the US Miami Organized Crime Strike Force has also mounted an investigation of Recarey over his bribery of union officials. Recarey is eventually charged with bribery and illegal wiretapping. Recarey is convicted, resigns from the IMC, and is replaced by John Ward, the law partner to Reagan-Bush campaign manager John Sears, who himself had been a lobbyist for IMC. Recarey flees the country before his trial on the wiretapping charges can begin; the day he leaves the country for safe haven in Madrid, he receives an "expedited" $2.2 million income tax refund from the IRS. A former Miami IRS agent later says, "Yeah, that was his getaway money. ...Though there is a special IRS procedure to expedite tax refunds for companies in financial distress, I don't think you can overlook the possibility that there was influence from the administration." As he is leaving the country, Recarey attempts to wire $30,000 to Washington consultant and lobbyist Nick Panuzio, whose partner is then managing George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign. The wire transfer fails because Recarey keys the numbers incorrectly.
• Recarey, currently living in luxury in Caracas, Venezuela, still faces charges of defrauding Medicare of at least $12 million and probably much more. Later on, it is discovered that IMC may have been involved in Oliver North's secret Nicaraguan contra-supply network. In 1987, contra leaders Adolfo Calero and Felix Rodriguez held meetings at the Miami IMC offices; IMC also treated sick and wounded contras transported from Nicaragua. Leon Weinstein says, "My investigation led me to conclude that there may have been a deliberate attempt to obstruct justice...because Recarey, his hospital, and his clinics were treating wounded contras from Nicaragua...and part of the $30 million a month he was given by the government to treat Medicare patients was used to set up field hospitals for the contras." (Mother Jones, Joe Conason)
• Lynne Cheney becomes the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, replacing William Bennett, who becomes the Secretary of Education. Cheney was the compromise selection after Reagan's first choice, Edward Curran, the former head of the National Institute for Education, was rejected by the Senate after unsuccessfully defending himself from charges that he had attempted to politicize the NIE by bringing aboard unqualified Reagan loyalists. The undoubtedly brilliant and politically ambitious Cheney is an undistinguished author with limited teaching experience, whose biggest qualification for office seems to be that she is married to one of the House's leading conservatives, Dick Cheney. Lynne Cheney proves to be as ideologically rigid and unforgiving as her husband. She will head the NEH until Bill Clinton's ascension to the White House.
• Like her husband, Cheney is soft-spoken and adept at avoiding public controversy, but as head of the NEH, the largest funder of humanities projects in America, she runs the organization with an eye to making it ever more acceptably conservative. Authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein write, "Lynne managed the NEH with an eye toward the future, both for herself and for the GOP. She worked hard to insulate herself from controversy to avoid being tagged by it later. Proposals that failed to meet her ideological criteria died before they arrived at her desk. If a proposal could remotely offend the right wing of the Republican Party, it received no NEH funding."
• She was particularly rigid in her standards for literature; "she seemed to have the view that the canon was frozen around 1957," recalls John Hammer, director of the National Humanities Alliance. Any literature that smacked of multiculturalism or deviated from a romantic, right-wing view of American history is considered unwelcome. She has the same viewpoint on art: Chicano art, for example, is unworthy of support. She overrules her staff and refuses to fund a proposal for a documentary on the Pilgrim myth in American history as part of a larger exploration of myth in American society, fearing that, according to her staffer Don Gibson, "the American public would misunderstand the term 'myth' -- they might think it meant something that is simply false."
• Cheney, like her husband, becomes a virtuoso at manipulating the bureaucracy to achieve her ideological goals. She quickly learns how to discreetly exert her influence without leaving potentially embarrassing fingerprints. A "chairman's list" gives the names of acceptable candidates for review panels; undesirable proposals are scotched by Cheney loyalists before ever reaching the final review stage. After a while, many scholars simply stop applying for NEH support.
• Cheney nearly doubles the size of the NEH's public relations department, and surrounds herself with a small, tightly-knit cadre of loyalists who become known as the "fifth-floor mafia." Most of her advisors have no education experience whatsoever, but are there simply because their ideology and loyalties match Cheney's. Day-to-day operations are run by deputy director Celeste Colgan, who has a doctorate in English literature but spent most of her career as chief operating officer for a Wyoming lumber company. (Colgan will join Halliburton, under Dick Cheney, after Lynne Cheney leaves the NEH in 1992.)
• Republican John Frohnmayer recalls being hounded out of his position as the head of NEH's sister organization, the National Endowment for the Arts, in 1992. Frohnmayer took over at the NEA after that agency had helped fund the work of controversial artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano. Cheney, meanwhile, was winning plaudits for the NEH's funding of Ken Burns' popular documentary series on the Civil War. "I once proposed to her that we work together," he recalls in 2004. "The look of horror on her face was so absolute. They weren't going to touch us with a 10-foot pool. We were the bad children." Frohnmayer was no fan of either Mapplethorpe or Serrano, but he says he felt an obligation to the First Amendment not to interfere with the judgment of peer review panels and the National Council for the Humanities in supporting the art. "I used to wonder whether the First Amendment applied to what the hell we were doing there. The First Amendment always protects the speaker. But Lynne Cheney was much more interested in the conservative audience out there. And that does great damage to the First Amendment," Frohnmayer recalls. Already in trouble, Frohnmayer seals his fate by declining to block other controversial grants selected by peer reviewers and the National Council. "I felt that the process was important to protect. That's maybe the main difference between Lynne Cheney and me. She didn't care what the process was; she was willing to circumvent it. I felt if the panel and National Council recommended it, that I as chair was not going to veto it unless I had a very good reason." Frohnmayer will be fired by George H.W. Bush.
• Program director Angela Iovino recalls another proposal that set off Cheney's conservative alarms, this time over a study of the Aztecs that also illuminated her startling ignorance. She recoiled when she learned that the Aztecs had practiced human sacrifice. "She went nuts on that," Iovino recalls in 2004. "She threw her hands in the air and said, 'How can we look into the cultures of these savages?' We just looked at each other. What do you say to something like that? We just stared, mutely. She didn't really foster conversation." Iovino says that for all of Cheney's intelligence, she was, and apparently remains, fundamentally ignorant of the world outside of the United States. "Lynne Cheney is a hardworking woman, but it was hard to talk to her about anything outside the Republican conservative agenda," Iovino recalls. "She rarely knew what language was spoken in what country. She thought Hebrew was spoken in Jordan."
• Cheney's tenure at the NEH is not completely one-sided. She succeeds in streamlining the tortuous grant process, belatedly embraces the organization's program for the preservation of historical documents, and increases the size and number of grants for women's studies programs.
• But her tenure is most strongly marked by her increasing crusade against what she terms "political correctness" in academia -- which apparently means any academic viewpoints that clash with her own extreme right-wing viewpoints. After she abruptly leaves the NEH after Clinton's election (though sixteen months remain on her contract), she joins the far-right American Enterprise Institute think tank. There, she will play a key role in fighting the "culture wars" used to such great effect by Newt Gingrich and other Republican firebrands. Her successor at the NEH, Sheldon Hackney, later describes the "culture wars" as "a theater in which the players plot scenes and follow scripts designed to convince an audience that their side is a hero and the other side is a villain" -- or, in Cheney's words, members of the "cultural elite." (Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein, Department of Education, Salon)
• Unverified stories have George W. Bush being sent by his family to participate in "Worthy Creations," an El Paso church group that specializes in converting homosexual males to functioning heterosexuals. According to a group of Yale classmates of Bush's, he was known to be at the least "sexually experimental" during his time at Yale. One of Bush's alleged former boyfriends, Anthony Berusca, told the Dallas Morning News that Bush was "deeply conflicted about being gay, even somewhat self-hating." Berusca is convinced that this conflict led to Bush's drinking problems, but describes Bush as a "gentle, caring lover." In Kitty Kelley's tell-all biography of the Bush family, she says that George W. Bush earned the nickname "Lips" in college for his facility in giving oral sex to other men. In at least two instances, he has referred to himself as a female: in May 2004, he referred to Senator Bill Frist's wife Karyn as "a West Texas girl, just like me;" during his tenure as governor of Texas, he called himself "First Lady." (The openly gay compiler of these quotes, Roedy Green, says that it is common for gay men to refer to themselves in the feminine; Green notes that he does not believe Bush is homosexual, but bisexual.) Karl Rove, Bush's political guru whose sexual identity has also been the source of speculation, has publicly proclaimed his admiration for Bush in almost erotic terms: "Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma -- you know, wow!" Other instances of homosexual interest have been found in Bush's closest political and social comrades: the lesbian novel Sisters written by Dick Cheney's wife Lynne; the fact that the chairman of the Republican Party, Ken Mehlman, is gay, along with the CFO of the Republican Party, Jay Banning, and GOP National Field Director Daniel Gurley (who solicited gay sex over the Internet); and others, including the Guckert-White House journalist scandal of 2005 and the 1989 assertions by the Washington Times that the first Bush administration hosted a male gay escort ring. An Indiana woman, Margie Shoedinger, had a court case pending that claims both she and her husband were raped by George W. Bush while she was dating Bush in the 1970s. Shoedinger's lawsuit was halted when she was found dead, apparently of a self-inflicted bullet wound. Again, the truth of Bush's sexual identity has not been verified, and much of Green's evidence is speculative at best. (Roedy Green)

January 1986

• January 7: Reagan announces strict economic sanctions against Libya: all travel and commercial transactions between the two countries are banned. He also orders naval demonstrations for the Gulf of Sidra and contingency strike planning. (History of the Middle East Libya Timeline)

February 1986

• February 16: The US ships 1000 anti-tank missiles to Iran. (MidEast Web, PBS)
• February 25: The Reagan administration asks Congress for $100 million in aid for the Nicaraguan Contras, which is turned down. After this, the administration turns to illicit methods for secretly funding the Contras. (PBS, Bushwatch)

March 1986

• March: The US, with Great Britain, block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons. On March 21, the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. (Iran Chamber Society)
• March 24-25: Operation Prairie Fire: After Libya fires six surface-to-air missiles at US naval ships, the US fires back, destroying a missile battery, sinking two Libyan ships, and badly damaging a third. (History of the Middle East Libya Timeline)

April 1986

• April: A clearly inebriated George W. Bush accosts columnist Al Hunt in a Washington restaurant. Hunt, a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, is eating with his wife and four-year old son when Bush lurches to his table and, in Paul Waldman's words, "unleases a torrent of obscenities on him. 'You no-good f*cking son of a b*tch, I will never forget what you wrote!' Bush said. Hunt was puzzled, but eventually figured out that what had infuriated Bush so much was a recent issue of Washingtonian magazine, in which a round-up of pundits predicted the 1988 nominees for president; Hunt had predicted someone other than Bush's father." Though offended (more for his family than himself), Hunt never made an issue of the incident. Thirteen years later, in 1999, Bush biographer Bill Minutaglio will ask Hunt about the incident; two weeks later, Bush will call Hunt and apologize. Waldman observes, "The incident might give the picture of an arrogant, angry man ready to lash out at those who get in his way, a picture most at odds with the laid-back portrait his campaign was offering. Bush did not call Hunt to apologize immediately after the incident or after he stopped drinking. Instead, Bush apologized only after Minutaglio told him he had spoken to Hunt about it and the possibility arose that the incident would become a matter of public record; no doubt so that if anyone brought it up he could say he apologized." When asked by a reporter why he had waited 13 years to apologize, presidential candidate Bush will mischaracterize it by saying, "I heard he was angry about it, and it began to weigh heavy on my mind. I would have done it earlier had I realized I had offended him." Asks Waldman, "After all, who would think calling someone a 'no-good f*cking son of a b*tch' in front of his four-year old son would offend him?" The story goes virtually unnoticed by the mainstream media. (Paul Waldman)

Reagan illegally funds Nicaraguan Contras

• April 4: Oliver North proposes to National Security Director John Poindexter that $12 million in profits from the illegal sale of arms to Iran be diverted for use by the Nicaraguan contras. North later testifies that his memo was written for President Reagan. Former security director Robert McFarlane will later fly secretly to Tehran with North and others, carrying spare parts for missiles and plans for future arms sales. Later in the month, a Senate subcommittee chaired by Democrat John Kerry will investigate the actions of North, Poindexter, and others, ultimately leading to the national Iran-Contra investigations. (Iran-Contra Timeline)
• April 5: One of the worst terrorist bombings to date is the bombing of the LaBelle Discotheque in West Berlin. Two US soldiers are among the casualties. Suspicion immediately falls on Libya. (History of the Middle East Libya Timeline, Answers.com, Laura Flanders)
• April 14: In apparent retaliation for the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub where two US soldiers are killed, the US conducts air strikes against targets in Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya. US Air Force and Navy aircraft conduct bombing raids. One bomb strikes a residence belonging to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, killing his young daughter; in explanation, Reagan announces that conclusive evidence has been found linking Libya to the bombings. No such evidence existed at the time. In 2001, a Libyan diplomat and two Palestinians will be convicted of participating in the bombing; the judge says that no conclusive evidence exists to prove either Qaddafi's or Libyan intelligence's involvement in the bombing. In 2003 Libya informs Germany that it is willing to pay reparations for the bombing. Years later, former Israeli intelligence operative Victor Ostrovsky, a defector now living in Canada, has said that the entire operation was never about the nightclub bombing, but was orchestrated by Israel's Mossad, who planted radio transmitters in Tripoli; those transmitters broadcast fake messages that misled the US into believing that Libya was planning a huge terrorist strike on Western targets. (PBS, History of the Middle East Libya Timeline, What Really Happened, Laura Flanders)

Chernobyl disaster

• April 26: The Chernobyl nuclear plant in Kiev explodes, killing dozens and causing the worst nuclear accident in history. (PBS)

Spring 1986

• Spring - Fall: Madison Guaranty fails, due to Jim McDougal's manic-depressive mental illness and the bank's poor organization and too-rapid growth. No proof has ever been shown that Madison or the McDougals were guilty of criminal actions. As Jim's ex-wife Susan writes, "Madison has been investigated by almost every government agency imaginable, including the Resolution Trust Corporation, Federal Home Loan Bank, the Department of Justice, and of course [Kenneth Starr's] Independent Counsel (OIC). They all reached the same conclusion -- we were idiots." By July 1986, bank examiners and Madison's board of directors agree that the McDougals should disassociate themselves from the bank. (Susan McDougal)

Summer 1986

• Summer: CBS reporter Lesley Stahl meets with President Reagan for a final interview. The interview is unsettling for Stahl, who, like many of the White House press corps, knew that Reagan was suffering from some sort of senile dementia (later diagnosed as advanced Alzheimer's disease). White House press secretary Larry Speakes makes Stahl promise not to ask Reagan anything. In her 1999 book Reporting Live, Stahl describes Reagan as glassy-eyed and foggy, and says although Stahl had covered Reagan for years, doesn't seem to know who Stahl is. She attempts to speak to Reagan for several moments in the Oval Office, though Reagan doesn't recognize Stahl and seems unaware that anyone else is in the room. Meanwhile, Speakes repeatedly shouts at Reagan, reminding him to give Stahl some White House souvenirs. Stahl says she panics at the thought of having to report that evening that "the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet," but fortunately for her, Reagan soon reemerges into a semblance of alertness, recognizing her and chatted coherently with Stahl's husband, a screenwriter. "I had come that close to reporting that Reagan was senile," Stahl will write. The restraint practiced by Stahl is endemic to White House press coverage, whose members routinely cover up Reagan's mental failings with euphemisms such as "a lax management style" or "inattentiveness." He routinely falls asleep at Cabinet meetings, fails to recognize his closest administration members, and during press conferences, if left without a Teleprompter, lapses into ramblings of what can best be described as "gibberish."
• A June 1986 press conference is typical, with Reagan providing muddled and incoherent answers and press spokespersons instantly "clarifying" his remarks. The press gives Reagan a pass, refusing to report on his increasingly disjointed and disconnected mental state. Former Reagan Communications director David Gergen later says, "A lot of the Teflon came from the press. They didn't want to go after him that toughly." During Reagan's 1988 Moscow summit with Gorbachev, the New York Times will note deep in the article that Reagan fell asleep at a meeting with Soviet dignitaries. The Times subtitles the article: "Reagan Impresses Soviet Elite." Two days later, another summit-related article in the Times attributes this quote about Reagan to Britain's Margaret Thatcher: "Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears." The article's headline: "Thatcher Salute to Reagan Years." Around the same time Stahl had her meeting with Reagan, Time magazine paints a picture of a totally different president. Coinciding with the Fourth of July hoopla, Time's cover portrays a beaming Reagan haloed by multicolored fireworks. Titled "Yankee Doodle Magic," the story offers thousands of idolatrous words about "one of the strongest leaders of the 20th century" and about "Reagan's reassertion of presidential leadership" and how "he has restored the authority of the American presidency." "If Reagan is afflicted by senility," the magazine scoffs, "some of the world's leaders might try a case of it." (FAIR)
• Summer: As part of an informal divorce settlement, Arkansas realtor and bank owner Jim McDougal proposes that he arrange a lucrative real estate deal that his former wife Susan will manage and profit from. He has already arranged financing through local businessman David Hale, a former municipal judge who operates a Small Business Investment Corporation (SBIC) authorized to loan federal funds to small businesses. To complete the deal for the real estate, Susan picks up a $300,000 loan check from Hale and gave it to McDougal. This would later be the basis for Hale's and McDougal's fraudulent claims that then-Governor Bill Clinton pressured Hale to loan McDougal the $300,000, and the basis for charging Susan with criminal actions in relation to the loan. (Susan McDougal)

June 1986

Jonathan Pollard convicted of spying for Israel

• June 4: Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to charges related to his spying for Israel. Pollard, a former Naval intelligence officer and a Jew with sympathies towards Israel, is found with reams of unauthorized documents in his possession; he flees to the Israeli Embassy and asks, unsuccessfully, for asylum. Much of the material Pollard provided to Israel is still unconfirmed. Pollard's attempt at a court defense is hampered when the US government refuses to provide his defense lawyers with a 46-page memorandum from Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger detailing Pollard's spying, even though the memo is leaked to the press. Pollard's subsequent attempts to have his case reopened have been unsuccessful, largely because of the government's failure to make the memo available. District Court Judge George N. Leighton will write in 2002: "At the time Mr. Pollard was sentenced in March of 1987, the court placed under seal approximately forty pages of material filed in the court's docket. These included portions of a declaration by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and portions of pre-sentencing memoranda submitted to the court by the government as well as by the defense. The materials were sealed because the government said they contained classified information, some of which could affect national security if disclosed inappropriately.... Mr. Pollard and his attorney at the time were permitted to read the sealed pages before sentencing. However, despite the provision in the protective order for future access, no attorney representing Mr. Pollard has been permitted to see these pages since 1987. While this denial of access has severely hampered the efforts of Mr. Pollard's new attorneys to secure justice for their client, it has proved convenient for his adversaries. For years, adversaries have exploited the sealed pages to generate political opposition to relief for Mr. Pollard by spreading, in the press, rumors and outright falsehoods. Since the accusations floated in the media are nowhere to be found in the open court file, they would either be substantiated in the sealed pages, or not at all. As no one representing Mr. Pollard has been allowed access to the sealed pages, Mr. Pollard's adversaries have had unbridled license to spread falsehoods with virtually no risk of contradiction. ...The government's conduct in this case is highly disturbing."
• In addition, Weinberger gives the presiding judge a 4-page memo that is only presented to Pollard's attorneys hours before sentencing; in the memo, Weinberger accuses Pollard of treason and recommends a life sentence. As part of a plea-bargain agreement, Pollard pleads guilty to one count of passing classified information to an ally without intent to harm the United States, expecting in return no trial and a relatively light sentence of 2-4 years. Instead, Pollard is summarily sentenced to life in prison on one count of espionage for an ally (a sentence unprecedented for such an indictment) in violation of his plea-bargain agreement, not having had the benefit of a trial. His lawyers fail to file an appeal within the mandated ten days after sentencing, and Pollard is jailed. Years later, Pollard, with a new team of lawyers, files a habeas corpus request for a new trial. The appeals court denies his request 2-1; the dissenting judge writes that the entire case is "a fundamental miscarriage of justice." Pollard's wife Anne is also sentenced to five years in prison for related charges. In 1989, Pollard becomes an Israeli citizen; Israel begins repeated requests for Pollard's release to that country, requests which are all denied. In 1998, Prime Minister Netanyahu will admit that Pollard was indeed a spy for Israel. (Wikipedia)
• June 25: Congress finally passes an aid package for the Nicaraguan Contras. (PBS, Bushwatch)

July 1986

• July: The ruling al-Sabah family of Kuwait engineers the dissolution of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, focusing all political power in the hands of the Emir and the ruling family members. Kuwait's oligarchy will brutally repress all attempts at installing democratic reforms; in addition, the national press is muzzled, and foreign workers are brought in from around the Middle East to perform the labor that most Kuwaitis refuse to do. (Milestones in Kuwaiti History, What We Knew, What We Were Told)

August 1986

• August 6: Oliver North denies any connection to the Nicaraguan contras in testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, testimony he later admits was a lie. (Iran-Contra Timeline)
• August 27: Reagan signs an anti-terrorism law that bans arms sales to nations that support terrorism, and strengthens U.S. anti-terrorist measures. (PBS)

September 1986

• September: Former National Security Advisor William McFarlane takes 23 tons of weapons to Iran. (PBS, Bushwatch)

Antonin Scalia joins Supreme Court; Rehnquist becomes Chief Justice

• September 26: Antonin Scalia is sworn in as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. A former lawyer in the Nixon and Ford administrations who is considered an eminent Constitutional scholar, Scalia is deeply, radically conservative, and the Court's pre-eminent proponent of the philosophy of "originalism," which espouses the belief that the Constitution does not change, but is a fixed and immutable document. He proclaims himself a strict constructionist, but in reality is one of the most activist justices in Supreme Court history. He, along with later appointee Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, will form another "conservative troika" on the Court, one far more right-wing than the previous "troika" of Rehnquist, Warren Burger, and Sandra Day O'Connor. The current "troika" is often joined in conservative-leaning decisions by Justices O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy; this group makes up the five who decided to award George W. Bush the presidency in December 2000. With Rehnquist's upcoming retirement in 2005, many Court observers predict Scalia will become the next Chief Justice, which, along with the undoubtely more conservative replacement for the retiring O'Connor, will herald a move by the Court farther right than any time in modern history. (Wikipedia, Vincent Bugliosi)

Harken Oil

• September 30: Spectrum 7 Oil, the company headed up by G.W. Bush, is floundering and nearing bankruptcy; it merges with Harken Oil, which is almost exclusively owned by Bush family friends. (Harken Oil was founded in 1973 by two oilmen who were beneficiaries of a successful attempt to destabilize Australia's Labour Party, which while in office had attempted to block foreign oil investment. In 1983, it was sold to an investment group with ties to the regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the Phillippines as well as the Australian bank Nugan Hand, a CIA front company. Board member and GOP fundraiser Alan Quasha joins the board of the new Harken-Spectrum 7 firm. Bush himself gets $500,000 in Harken stock, and joins the company as a $120,000-a-year consultant. Harken Oil is later described by the Texas Observer as having "direct links to institutions involved in drug smuggling, foreign currency manipulation, and the CIA's well-documented role in the destabilization of the Australian government.") Sheik Abdullah Bahksh, who joins the board as a part of the deal, is connected to BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which would later be proven to be hugely corrupt and a front for terrorist money laundering.
• Harken saves Spectrum from bankruptcy by swapping one Harken share for every five of Spectrum's; Bush reaps over half a million dollars in Harken stock and a position on Harken's board of directors. The company is also given a tremendous financial boost by Harvard University, who inexplicably sinks millions of endowment dollars into the small, almost unknown oil company, and Saudi Arabian investors, who contribute $25 million, funneled through BCCI and London's Union Bank, which was involved in Panamanian money-laundering schemes as well as facilitating Marcos's flight from the Phillippines with $325 million in gold. Sheikh Bahksh is also later shown to have ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Another investor is Sheik Khalifah bin-Salman al-Khalifah, the prime minister of Bahrain and a brother of the country's ruling emir; two other major investors are Saudi billionaire Salem bin Laden, a major investor in Bush's previous oil companies, and Khaled bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker with deep ties to the Richard Mellon Scaife financial empire, and who also owns large stakes in BCCI. Bin Mahfouz is married to Osama bin Laden's sister.
• Later, Bush and his partners will receive over $2 million in Harken stock in return for the failing Arbusto, which had lost almost a half-million dollars in the preceding six months alone. After Bush joins Harken, the largest stock position and a seat on its board were acquired by Harvard Management Company. The Harken board gives Bush $600,000 worth of the company's publicly traded stock, a seat on the board, and a consultancy that pays him up to $120,000 a year. When Harken runs short of cash, it hooks up with investment banker Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas, who arranges a $25 million stock purchase by Union Bank of Switzerland. (Stephens helped arrange the sale of the National Bank of Georgia to BCCI front man Ghaith Pharoan in 1978, and was a member of the elder Bush's "Team 100," a group of wealthy donors.) After his father becomes Vice President, influence buyers descend on Harken; the company would later be found to have ties to Saudi oil sheikhs, CIA-connected Filipino business interests, the Harvard Endowment, the emir of Bahrain, and, most damning, to BCCI. Bush later denies that he knew of any ties between Harken Oil and BCCI, but the Wall Street Journal find that the ties between Harken and BCCI are so deep and complex that it concludes, "The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken -- all since George W. Bush came on board -- raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."
• With help from their auditing firm, Arthur Andersen, Harken Energy pioneers the practice of hiding massive debts through shell companies, seller-financed loans, insider loans and other securities fraud that became common practice at companies like ImClone, Enron, WorldCom and Adelphia, which later result in bankruptcy and mass hemorrhaging of the stock market. One Wall Street analyst calls Harken's web of insider stock deals and mounting debt "a lot of jiggery-pokery." As for George W. Bush's involvement, Harken's founder Phil Kendrick will later say, "His name was George Bush. That was worth the money they paid him." Former Harken investor George Soros, who will later fund a number of liberal causes, says of Bush, "He was supposed to bring in the [Persian] Gulf connection. But it didn't come to anything. We were buying political influence. That was it. He was not much of a businessman." (Village Voice, In These Times, Bushwatch, Greg Palast, Project Censored, Greg Palast/Buzzflash, Wall Street Journal/Campaign Watch, Buzzflash/Greg Palast, Mother Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Bush-Kerry Timeline, Kevin Phillips, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, David Corn)

October 1986

• October 5: Nicaraguan soldiers shoot down a Contra resupply plane; Eugene Hasenfus, an American, survives but is captured by the Nicaraguan army. It becomes evident that Hasenfus is a CIA operative carrying out illegal arming of the Contras after Hasenfus states that he receives his orders from the office of Vice President Bush. Hasenfus himself is a low-level "cargo knocker" doing temporary work for the CIA. He parachutes from the stricken plane and is captured by the Sandinistas. His survival blows the lid off of the CIA's illegal activities in Central America.
• The shootdown essentially ends Reagan's covert war on the Sandinistas. Two weeks later, at a secret meeting of the House Intelligence Committee, assistant secretary of state Elliot Abrams -- the Reagan administration's point man for the Contras in State and an avowed, militaristic neoconservative -- desperately tries to cover the administration's tracks. He joins with CIA officials in reassuring committee members that the US government has no involvement in supplying the Contras -- a flat lie. The government knew nothing about Hasenfus or the supply drop. Committee Democrats are incensed at the bald-faced lies, but at least one Republican member, Dick Cheney, feels differently. "Mr. Cheney said he found our ignorance credible," reads the summary of one administration staffer taking notes during the meeting. (Months later, Cheney will "chide" Abrams and the other officials for lying to him. He tells them, "[I]f the relationship is going to work long-term, there has to be a handful of members of Congress who have enough knowledge about policy to be able to do whatever needs to be done on the Hill to support and sustain the president's efforts downtown.")
• As Hasenfus's plane plummets into the jungle, National Security Council staffer Oliver North, who runs the Contra operation from the NSC's office in the White House, is on his way to Frankfurt, Germany, to meet with a delegation from Iran, a country officially designated by the US as a sponsor of international terrorism. North wants to negotiate an exchange of American hostages held by Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon for US missiles. Authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein note, North "was selling missiles to a regime that had all but declared war on America." Hasenfus's capture short-circuits North's trip. Instead, the administration goes into full denial mode. In the House, Cheney leads the efforts -- largely successful -- to cover up the Reagan administration's crimes. (Federation of American Scientists, Consortium News, Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
• October 5: GOP political consultant Karl Rove, running the campaign of Bill Clements for governor of Texas, makes the dramatic claim that he has discovered an electronic "bug" in his office. Evidence later shows that Rove, with the likely cooperation of security expert Gary Morphew and FBI agent Greg Rampton, planted the bug himself in order to smear the campaign of Texas governor and political opponent Mark White. The discovery takes place just hours before the only debate of the campaign between White and Clements, and a rattled White is forced to spend much of the debate fending off questions about the bugging. In an obvious attempt to fasten the blame for the bugging on White's campaign, Clements's campaign tells the press, "Whoever thought Watergate-style politics would come to the Lone Star State? It's happened. It's Texasgate." Clements, who until this moment was trailing decisively in the polls, goes on to win the election, though the bugging incident somewhat backfires on Rove, who is widely suspected from the outset of staging the entire incident. Morphew refuses to take a lie detector test about the bugging, and an FBI investigation shows that the bug is a crude device that requires battery replacement every few hours, making it difficult to envision how a Democratic operative could get inside Rove's office twice a day to replace the batteries. No evidence that anyone ever broke into Rove's office is ever found. An investigation into the incident by the US attorney's office in West Texas is inexplicably closed before any determinations can be made; a source in the attorney's office says he believes the investigation was shut down because the evidence pointed to Rove, and through him would implicate the Clements campaign. Years later, at a private dinner party, Rove brags about the bugging, and all but admits he planted it himself. "...Karl all but came out and said, 'I did it,'" recalls dinner guest Mark Lyon, who at the time had worked as White's speechwriter. "He was proud of it. It was sort of like, 'We really messed you over, didn't we?'" Another dinner guest, Patricia Tierney Alofsin, recalls, "I don't remember the exact words, but I remember being shocked. It was like those cases where people murder people, and then they leave clues because they do this fabulous murder, and they want the police to know they did it. It was that sort of thing. He was so proud of it. ...He left the impression, 'wasn't I clever, and didn't it work, and let me rub your nose in it.' It was so amazing. I couldn't believe it." (James Moore and Wayne Slater)
• Another tactic used by Rove in the Clements campaign, and repeated for George W. Bush, is to focus on African-Americans, ensuring that he has plenty of black cabinet appointees, photo ops with black children and the like. The aim is not to attract black voters, who are very unlikely to vote for Clements or Bush, but to appeal to moderate white voters. Rove uses the same strategy with women, and later with Hispanic voters. In a memo to Clements, Rove writes, "[E]mphasizing your appointments of women and minorities will not win you the support of feminists and the leaders of the minority community; but it will bolster your support among Republican primary voters and urban independents." Journalist Paul Waldman concludes, "Like all of Bush's efforts at moderation, his courting of minorities is about creating images that will lead to false conclusions about his policies." (Paul Waldman)
• October 11: The Reykjavik Summit opens. The USSR's Mikhail Gorbachev proposes drastic cuts in all classes of nuclear weapons, and to the astonishment of many in his administration, Reagan agrees. Gorbachev tells Reagan this is provided the US confines SDI (Star Wars) to the laboratory, and Reagan walks away from the summit. (PBS)
• October 30: 500 US anti-tank missiles are shipped to Iran. (PBS)

November 1986

• November: Stephen Bryen, the administration's Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Economic Trade and Security Policy, discovers that the final destination for an advanced computer similar to one being used at White Sands missile base in New Mexico is a research facility in Mosul, Iraq. The complex, known as Saad 16, is working on a ballistic missile, and Bryen warned against approval "because of the high likelihood of military end-use and the association for the involved companies in sensitive military applications." But the State and Commerce Departments had no problems in approving the sale without conditions. By 1991 the US-led coalition was bombing the very same Saad 16 complex, which was dubbed a key target. As Bryen later tells Time magazine: "We created this monster. If you want to know who's to blame for all this, we are, because we let all this stuff go to Iraq." Note that in the summer of 1992, President Bush was repeatedly asserting that the US never helped Hussein's chemical, nuclear, or missile capabilities. (New American)

Iran-Contra scandal breaks; Dick Cheney protects Vice President Bush

• November 3: The Lebanese newmagazine Al Shiraa breaks the "arms for hostages story," documenting the US's secret arms sales to Iran and revealing that Reagan's national security advisor, Robert McFarlane, flew to Tehran in 1985 to secretly negotiate with Iranian government officials. Authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein call it an example of the administration's "Keystone Kops diplomacy," where NSC staffer Oliver North gave the Iranians a Bible and a chocolate cake, and in return, the Iranians hedged their bets. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas indeed released the American hostages, and promptly kidnapped others.
• On the advice of CIA director William Casey and John Poindexter, who succeeded McFarlane at the NSC, Reagan agrees to stonewall. He publicly downplays his administration's involvement with negotiating with Iran, even as his officials plan to continue those negotiations. "Must say something because I'm being held out to dry," Reagan notes to himself on November 10.
• Administration officials decide to have Reagan lie to the public on national television, and tell the American people that the negotiations were merely about restoring normal relations with Iran, and had nothing to do with any American hostages. (The media had a public feeding frenzy over the American hostages held in Tehran during the Carter presidency, but has largely ignored the hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, giving Reagan the kind of latitude he needed for his officials to conduct negotiations and other activities that Carter never had -- or wanted.)
• The day before the speech, Reagan and other White House officials meet with the four leaders of Congress at the White House to brief them. House Minority Leader Bob Michel sends Dick Cheney in his place. Reagan trots out the same lies he will tell the citizenry the next evening, and claims that the weapons and spare parts shipped to Iran "could easily fit into a single cargo plane." In reality, the Reagan administration has shipped over a thousand missiles to Iran in several shipments. After Reagan's speech, Cheney tells the New York Times that he takes "issue with describing the efforts as arms for hostages," and warns against "Monday-morning quarterbacking."
• Vice-President George Bush, the former director of the CIA, denies any involvement, saying that he was "not in the loop," but Bush, who is very deeply involved, gets protection from Republican congressmen Cheney and Henry Hyde. "[D]isclosures quickly overtook demand," write Dubose and Bernstein, and Attorney General Edwin Meese agrees to open an investigation -- one carefully orchestrated from the White House to reveal as little as possible, and is in fact nothing more than an extension of the White House coverup. Meese refuses to allow the FBI to take part in the investigation, and Meese takes no notes during his interviews. Meese finds a potentially explosive memo drafted by North in April 1986 that detailed how $12 million from the arms sales to Iran would be forwarded to the Contras. The memo, which somehow survived the frenzied shredding party conducted by North and Poindexter in October 1986, proved the Iran-Contra connection that the White House and its Republican allies deny. One document that was shredded was a retroactive Presidential Finding from December 1985 that gave official authorization for the transfer of Hawk missile parts to Iran in November 1985. That finding was not shared by Congress at the time, as required by law.
• As the investigation mounts. Cheney in particular is very effective at restraining committee chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat who has a strong interest in appearing to be bipartisan and as a result often soft-pedals the investigation. One committee members says that one of Cheney's top priorities was to block Democrats from deposing Vice President Bush about his Iran-Contra knowledge. Cheney "kept trying to intimidate Hamilton," the source says. "He kept saying if we go down that road, we won't have bipartisanship." Hamilton agrees to leave Bush out of the investigation, and refuses to consider potentially damning evidence of Contra drug trafficking done through the CIA. Even after Hamilton's efforts to water down the investigation, not a single House Republican will sign off on the committee's report; Cheney and his Republicans issue a minority report claiming that nothing happened.
• Speaker Jim Wright and other Congressional Democrats realize that North, Poindexter, and Cheney have constructed what Dubose and Bernstein call "a parallel foreign policy operation with third-country funding and paid mercenaries -- all beyond the reach of the Congressional authority enshrined in the Constitution. In the process they had violated at least four federal statutes." Wright and his fellow Democrats press for a thorough investigation into what appears to be the largest Constitutional crisis since Watergate. But Cheney and the Reagan White House have other ideas. (PBS, Federation of American Scientists, MidEast Web, Consortium News, Consortium News, Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
• It is noteworthy that Vice President Bush asked famous boxer Muhammad Ali to journey to the Middle East and plea for the release of the hostages. Ali, a hero among most Muslims, agreed, and made more than one visit to Beirut and other Middle Eastern locales to meet with a number of business and government officials to win the release of the hostages. It is also notable that not only Americans were being held hostage in Beirut, but British, Kuwaiti, and Saudi hostages were being held; the Saudi hostages in particular were being kept secret from not only the news media, but from other Middle Eastern governments, in order to save the Saudi government from embarrassment. Ali tries numerous times to talk to Iran's religious and political leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but never quite makes it past Khomeini's handlers. Of the five American hostages -- the Reverend Benjamin Weir, librarian Peter Kilburn, Reverend Lawrence Jenco, Embassy chief of staff and covert CIA station chief William Buckley, and CNN bureau chief Jeremy Levin -- Buckley is tortured to death by his kidnappers, and the others are eventually released. Levin is released apparently as a direct result of Ali's efforts, though Levin soon tells the press that he has escaped on his own. The Western media reports Levin's "escape" as fact. The Arab press reports that Levin was released due to pressure from Syria's Hafez al-Assad, but the real story seems to be that Levin's release was orchestrated by Iran in a sign of respect for Muhammad Ali. The Iranians want to disassociate themselves from any hint that they may be responsible for the hostage takings, and as a result Ali spends several fruitless days talking to Lebanese government and resistance leaders in Beirut. One widely reported incident shows Ali waving and shouting to a crowd of admirers, some of whom are plants; during the film, some of the crowd members suddenly raise signs with anti-American slogans. The film, which is edited to imply that Ali is supporting an anti-American rally, makes a great splash in Arabian news outlets, but is never shown in America. Ali's message to everyone was the same: "Go tell whoever you've got to tell: Release these men in the name of God." (Larry Kolb)
• November 6: Reagan denies that arms sales to Iran ever took place for any reason. (Federation of American Scientists)
• November 11: Republican Bill Clements wins a second, nonconsecutive term as governor of Texas, due in large part to the machinations of political strategist Karl Rove. Rove has a much grander strategy, no less than the virtual elimination of all Democrats from all key state offices; within the decade, Rove will achieve his goal, replacing almost every Democrat in state offices with his own Republican candidates. "It was a cartel," says one colleague. Rove even targets the Texas Supreme Court, rarely thought of as an electoral plum, and gradually, through appointments and elections, Republicans pack the court. By this point, every Republican lawmaker in Texas was clearing all of their political appointments, and many of their policy decisions, through Rove. Rove even goes on the payrolls of corporations such as Philip Morris to give them advice on politics; Rove's advice is usually to support his Republican candidates. The present Republican push to limit jury awards for corporate liability gets its start with Rove and his corporate employers, who dearly wish for legislation to protect them from hefty liability penalties. Two years later, Rove will choose George W. Bush, then a part-owner of the Texas Rangers, to groom as his candidate for state and national office. (James Moore and Wayne Slater)

Reagan administration successfully blunts Iran-Contra investigation

• November 13: In a nationally televised press conference (see above), Reagan admits shipping arms and spare parts to Iran, but denies the shipments are part of an "arms for hostages" deal: "The charge has been made that the United States has shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, that the United States undercut its allies and secretly violated American policy against trafficking with terrorists. These charges are utterly false. The United States has not made concessions to those who hold our people captive in Lebanon. And we will not. The United States has not swapped boatloads or planeloads of American weapons for the return of American hostages. And we will not." Reagan is lying; everything he denies in his statement turns out to be the truth. (Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger noted at the time that he informed Reagan that the sale of arms to Iran was illegal, but Reagan told him to go ahead with the arms-for-hostage deal regardless of the law. It is also worth noting that Reagan, because of his advanced Alzheimer's, may actually believe what he is saying. Regardless, he is telling lies, whether from his own belief or from the teleprompter.) Eight days later, Attorney General Edwin Meese will be asked to conduct an investigation into the brewing "Iran-Contra" scandal (see above). Meese's investigation is actually a coverup conducted from the highest levels of the administration, but enough information from the investigation leaks out to become a major headache for the administration. (PBS, Federation of American Scientists, US/Iraq Relations Timeline, Paul Waldman)
• November 22: Meese's office "discovers" the Iran-Contra connection. While searching North's office, they find a memo dated 4/4/86 from North to Poindexter, which includes an amount that to be sent to the Contras from the profits of the Iran sales. North, who spends the night shredding evidence, will later call the diversion of funds "a neat idea." The memo is mentioned in the November 3 item above. (PBS, Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
• November 24: Meese tells Reagan that some proceeds from the sale of arms to Iran went to the Contras. Reagan is surprised. He is aware that the diversion of funds could mean impeachment for violation of the Boland Amendment. (PBS)
• November 25: National Security Advisor John Poindexter resigns and White House NSC staffer Oliver North is fired. In a press conference, Meese announces Iran-Contra: $10 to $30 million of profits from the sale of US arms to Iran had been diverted to Swiss bank accounts for use by contra rebels in Nicaragua. (PBS, Federation of American Scientists)

December 1986

Tower Commission

• December 1: Reagan appoints the Tower Commission to review Iran-Contra.
• The Tower Commission is headed by former Republican senator John Tower. Tower, a Texan with a notoriously licentious lifestyle, is also known for his fearsome grasp of foreign policy details and economics. After leaving the Senate in 1985, he briefly tried to become Reagan's defense secretary, and was named to head the American team negotiating nuclear arms reduction agreements with the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for Tower, the charms of Geneva, Switzerland, where the arms talks were taking place proved too much for him, and by 1986, the CIA was investigating stories that KGB "swallows" -- pretty young female spies -- were gathering around Tower, who, when he wasn't working the negotiating table, was working the bars and clubs of Geneva. CIA investigators weren't sure what to make of the double-ended dildo they found, presumably obtained by either Tower or a member of the US delegation.
• The commission is the first presidential commission to review and evaluate the National Security Council. The objectives of the Tower Commission are to inquire into "the circumstances surrounding the Iran-Contra matter, other case studies that might reveal strengths and weaknesses in the operation of the National Security Council system under stress, and the manner in which that system has served eight different Presidents since its inception in 1947."
• The commission publishes its report on February 26, 1987. It criticizes the actions of NSC official Oliver North, NSC head John Poindexter, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and others. It does not directly assert that Reagan himself knew of the extent of the Iran-Contra operations, although it argues that Reagan should have had better control of the National Security Council staff. The wording of the report surprises some since it is expected to be weak in its criticism of Reagan himself. Instead, it heavily criticizes Reagan for not properly supervising his subordinates or being aware of their actions. The US Congress will conduct its own investigation and report back in November 1987 (detailed in the 1987 page of this site), and find that "If the president did not know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have." The congressional report will state that Reagan bears "ultimate responsibility" for wrongdoing by his aides, and his administration exhibits "secrecy, deception and disdain for the law." A major result of the Tower Commission is the consensus that Reagan should have listened to his National Security Advisor more, thereby placing more power in the hands of that chair.
• Many believe that the Tower Commission was intended all along as political cover for the Reagan administration, particularly in the case of vice president George H.W. Bush, who was far more intimately involved in the Iran-Contra dealings than was Reagan; the report's criticisms of Bush are quite muted.
• Tower will be nominated to head the Defense Department under Bush, but because of his licentious lifestyle and suspiciously corrupt contacts with a host of defense contractors, will be rejected by the Senate in favor of former House Republican Dick Cheney. Bush family advisor Brent Scowcroft will become Bush's national security advisor, which position heads the NSC. (PBS, Federation of American Scientists, Wikipedia, Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
• December 2: Frank Carlucci replaces John Poindexter as National Security Advisor because of Poindexter's connections to the Iran-Contra scandal. (PBS)
• December 18: CIA Director William Casey undergoes surgery for a malignant brain tumor. (PBS)

Walsh investigation of Iran-Contra

• December 19: Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh is appointed to investigate Iran-Contra. Walsh, a Republican judge with a strong reputation for integrity, is stonewalled and blocked at every turn, and will eventually write a book condemning the Reagan administration for its illegal activities. Most adminstration officials, including Poindexter and North, lie under oath to Congress and to Walsh. (PBS, Federation of American Scientists)

Late 1986

• Late 1986: Vice-President Bush encourages Saddam Hussein to be "more aggressive" in the war against Iran, passing the advice to Hussein through Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. This advice precedes a ferocious Iraqi bombing campaign against Iranian cities. According to an article in The New Yorker, the idea was not only to have Iraq step up its attacks on Iran, but to force Iran to deplete its arsenal of US-made Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and missile parts, thus giving the US more leverage with that country. (Consortium News)
• Late 1986: The CIA and ISI assist Osama bin Laden in building the tunnel complex of Khost in Afghanistan. The Khost tunnels will be a major target of US military strikes in 2001. (CCR)
• Late 1986: Iranian arms runner Manucher Ghorbanifar proposes the "diversion" of profits from Iran arms sales to the contras. (CCR)

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