AN INTERVIEW WITH ADMIRAL POINDEXTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504470001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 16, 1986
• Content Type: REPORT

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q RADIO N REPORTS, IN
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 (301) 656-406
November 16, 1986 11:00 AM
WRC TV
NBC Network
Washington, DC
MARVIN KALB: It was in an obscure Lebanese magazine two
weeks ago that the story was first disclosed, that former
National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane made a secret trip to
Iran on a plane carrying military supplies, part of a highly
controversial plan, authorized by President Reagan in July, 1985,
shortly after his cancer surgery, to open a negotiating channel
to the Ayatollah Khomeini and his contending factions in hopes of
improving relations and getting American hostages out of Lebanon.
This new Iranian connection: that's our theme today, with our
quest Admiral John Poindexter, the President's current National
Security Adviser, who has masterminded this operation and been
sharply criticized as a result.
This is "Meet the Press," Sunday, November 16th, 1986.
Hello, and welcome once again. I'm Marvin Kalb.
I t is the broad consensus here in Washington that this
new Iranian connection has damaged America's credibility among
moderate Arab states and West European allies, and, in addition,
raised questions about the administration's competence in the
handling of recent foreign policy problems, including a disinfor-
mation campaign against Libya that backfired; a summit in Iceland
that produced confusion and damaged chances for an arms control
agreement, and now Iran.
Admiral Poindexter, let's begin. And I think the best
place is with the hostages.
ADMIRAL JOHN POINDEXTER: Good morning.
OFFICES IN WASHINGTON D C ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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KALE: You said on Friday that even with all of these
disclosures, you remained essentially optimistic that the
hostages may soon be released. But Donald Regan, the chief of
staff, said he was pessimistic. The President himself said on
Thursday night that the opportunity might now have been blown
with these disclosures.
So tell us in your view right now, where do we stand on
getting the hostages out?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Well, it's a judgment call.
Everybody has their own assessment as to the likelihood. As the
President said in his speech the other night, there is the
possibility that the chances for progress have been damaged.
It's a very iffy situation at the moment. But I'm basically an
optimist, as the President is. And we will keep working toward
getting the hostages freed. It's possible that this may progress
to the point where we could get some positive results.
KALR: Okay. But what is that optimism based on? What
is the evidence that you can share with us that would give you a
sense of optimism?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Well, I think one of the difficul-
ties in understanding a situation like. this is the fact that
you're missing the long, intense conversations that have been
held with our interlocutors, and based on those conversations,
which were done by experts in the area, it's their assessment
that we were making some progress. And if the situation in
Teheran can stabilize, then it is possible that we could still
make some progress in our relationship, which will be advanta-
geous in freeing the hostages.
KALR: Admiral, yesterday the Islamic Jihad, which
reportedly still holds two American hostages, said in a statement
that the U. S. should play a bigger role and take wider steps to
resolve this problem.
Do you think they are hinting that they would like to
have more American arms sent to Iran, which is the sponsor for
Islamic Jihad?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: I don't know what they meant. It
would he pure speculation, since we've not had any direct contact
with the captors. I think that's a very important point to keep
in mind throughout this discussion of this project. Iran did not
take the hostages. They are not holding the hostages. They do
not have total control over the Hezbollah faction that apparently
has the hostages.
So I don't really know for certain what the Hezbollah
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faction that made the announcement yesterday had in mind.
KALB: Admiral, there's no question in my mind that
we're going to have many more questions about Iran, and we will
be joined by our panel of Andrea Mitchell, White House correspon-
Sdent for NBC News, and Bob Woodward, the assistant managing
editor of The Washington Post, when "Meet the Press" returns
right after these messages.
KALB: We are back on "Meet the Press" with Admiral John
Poindexter, the President's National Security Adviser, the key
official in setting up this new Iranian connection. We'll begin
the questioning with Mr. Woodward.
BOB WOODWARD: I'd like to ask about trust for a moment.
Congress was cut out of the secret Iranian project for ten
months, though it was an intelligence operation. We now have
reports this morning that Admiral Crowe, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, was not involved, had to read about it in the
newspaoers; grumblings from the State Department. Is there a
breakdown of trust within the government?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: No, I don't think so, Bob. There
will always be special circumstances. They usually come about
when human lives are at stake, as it was in this case with
hostages. And in those situations, it's going to be the natural
tendency of any President, as we have observed in the past, to
keep these projects very tightly held. In this particular case,
the Constitution and the applicable laws clearly orovide for the
possibility of the President, under special situations like this,
to inform the Congress after the fact. This was not a military
operation, so it's not unusual that the Chairman of the JCS would
not be aware.
KALE: Admiral, with all due respect, I think that what
we've learned from the past is not that this is the natural
course, but that this is the unnatural course. When President
Carter kept to a very, very small group the whole effort in that
Iranian rescue mission, it fell apart; it was aborted. What the
lesson of Vietnam is you can't share these things with just a few
people to have a successful policy.
Could you please explain what you
were Just saying?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: I think that the special situations
are all very difficult issues. They're all risky. It's a
oroblem of risk management. It's not unusual that you don't have
a hundred percent success rate. For example, on Grenada, we
kept that very quiet. The appropriate people were involved, and
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it was very successful. Sometimes you win on these issues:
sometimes you lose.
WOODWARD: You believe you've lost on this one?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: No, I'm not prepared to say that
yet, Bob. I think, as I said earlier to Marvin, that there's
still a chance for some progress here. It will depend on how the
situation develops and materializes in Teheran, and we'll have to
wait and see how that works out.
WOODWARD: Were you ordered not to tell the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff what this was?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: No, not at all. It's just simply
-- as I said earlier, it wasn't a military issue, so it's not
unusual.
The main point here is that the President's senior
national security advisers, the Secretary of State and the
Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, my
predecessor and I were all involved in the initial discussions of
the policy. The President listened to all of the recommendations
that were made and made a decision. That's what Presidents get
paid for.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Admiral, expanding a little bit on the
issue of trust, you told us in a handwritten statement on
November 4th that the arms embargo against Iran would remain in
effect as long as Iran was supporting terrorism. And that was
expanded by the press spokesman to say also that Iran still was
supporting terrorism.
Now wasn't that, in the very best of characterizations,
misleading?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: No, I don't think so at all,
Andrea. The point is the arms embargo still continues. We do
not feel it is in our national interest that the floodgates be
thrown open to allow arms to be shipped.
MITCHELL: Let me just ask you this. You're saying
that, and the President has said, that because the amounts were,
you claim, miniscule and because the arms were, you claim, only
defensive, not offensive -- and we'll get into whether that is
really the case -- that, therefore, the arms embargo continues.
Isn't that like being just a little hit pregnant?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: No, I don't think so. You try to
paint things too black or white. There're always shades of gray
in issues. In managing these kinds of problems in an imperfect
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world, there will be exceptions made. They were made in this
case under very controlled circumstances.
The thing that you need to focus on is what the objec-
tives are, what was the objective of the arms embargo, what was
the objective of our project with Iran.
MITCHELL: Well, let me just focus for a moment on the
arms embargo and on your statement now that it continues. On
October 2nd, the Secretary of State told our Arab allies that the
Soviet Union was not being as forceful as we are in stopping
countries from sending arms to Iran. All our diplomacy, public
and private, as well as your statements to the press, were that
the arms embargo was continuing while, at the same time, we were
permitting shipments to Iran.
Why is that not only inconsistent, but dishonest?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: What the Secretary of State said is
precisely right. We have been much more active than the Soviet
Union in terms of trying to limit and stop the arms shipments to
Iran. We feel....
MITCHELL: While also shipping arms ourselves?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: The amount that was shipped, as the
President said the other night in his speech, was extremely
small, has no military significance in terms of the war along the
border with Iraq. It was more a matter of providing a measure of
good faith on our part. There's been a great deal of suspicion
on both sides after seven very traumatic years in the U. S.-
Iranian relationship. And it was a matter of providing some
support to those factions within Iran that we believe, after long
discussions with them, have objectives that are very similar to
ours.
KALB: But why did the support have to come in the form
of military supplies?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: The question is, in dealing with a
situation like this that's very complex and where there is a lot
of misunderstanding, you look for some mechanism that provides a
currency for the effort. And in this case, the items that we
felt would he the most significant in terms of demonstrating that
they were, indeed, dealing with the U. S. government and that we
had not only our interests in mind, but we also had Iranian
interests in terms of stopping the war. For example, we firmly
believe that it's not only in our interests and the rest of the
Persian Gulf area, but it's also in Iran's interest to stop the
war so that they can get their economy going again, so they can
quit killing people and so that they'll have a better prospect
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rOODWARD: Sir, in terms of this broad policy with Iran,
are we, the U. S. government, in any form giving support to
Iranian exile groups or dissidents who want to overthrow the
Khomeini regime?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Bob, I can't get into any other
possible operations that we might be involved with or not. We've
had to go public on this because of all of the speculation and
the leaks that have come out of the area. But I don't want to
confirm or deny any other operations....
WOODWARD: Are there other secret operations, intelli-
gence operations, that Congress has not been informed of?
ADMIRAL POINOEXTER: There are none. I have....
WOODWARD: There are none. This was the only one?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: In my discussions over the past
week with the leadership in the Congress, I've made it very clear
that this is the only finding that the President signed that was
signed under these conditions and which exercised the President's
right....
KALB: But at the same time, Donald Regan said on Friday
-- and I don't know if it was a slip of the tongue or not -- but
he did say that part of the effort was to form a new Iranian
leadership. Now if the English language means anything, the
question that Bob has just asked you is very relevant. Is the
United States now, either in support of Iranian exiles or
directly, working with people in Iran seeking the overthrow of
the Khomeini regime?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: We aren't seeking the overthrow of
the Khomeini regime. It's a matter of talking to moderate
elements there and trying to get them to see that their present
policies with regard to terrorism, with regard to the war should
he changed and that it's in their interests, as well as ours.
And so it's not a matter of changing the government; it's a
matter of changing the government's policies.
KALB: Okay. Now who are these moderates? I think
that's one of the most puzzling aspects of this whole story. Who
are the moderates in Iran?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Well, I don't really want to
identify names today. But there are basically .....
KALB: You mean officials who are in the government who
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are moderate and take a different line from the Ayatollah?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: There are basically three factions
within the government in Iran. There are conservatives; there
are moderates; and then there are the more radical. Now all of
these terms are relative. They're relative to the situation in
Iran. And one of the difficult things the government has had is
there is not total agreement on the policies. And it is our
objective to support and encourage those elements that are
moderate to conservative, because the policies of those groups
are more like ours.
KALB: Admiral, it's time for a break. "Meet the Press"
will be back right after these messages.
KALB: We are back on "Meet the Press" with Admiral John
Poindexter, the President's National Security Adviser. And we'll
resume the questioning with Miss Mitchell.
MITCHELL: Admiral, the President said that his policy
against negotiating with terrorists is intact, because he was
dealing with Iranians who might have influence over the captors,
but not the captors themselves.
How do we really know that the supplies that we sent to
these people in Iran do not in some way provide material support
to Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: With regard to the specific
question about what was transferred to Iran, we are very confi-
dent because it was the tye of material that the Hezbollah
faction in Lebanon would have no use for.
MITCHELL: But there could have been a chain where you
provide something to Iran and other things that are needed by the
caotors are provided.
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: We simply just don't believe that's
the case. In the long discussions, as I was saying earlier, that
we've had with these people, we simply don't believe that that's
the situation. The Hezbollah faction -- their demand has been
the release of Adama prisoners. And we are not willing to meet
that demand.
MITCHELL: And why do you believe, and why does the
President believe, that there has been a truce for some 18 months
from Iran in supporting terrorism? It seems to me that, in July
of '85, the President included Iran on a list of what he called a
new international form of Murder, Inc., state sponsored terror-
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ism. Three Americans were taken by what you yourself believe are
radical Iranian factions in recent months.
So why are you contending that Iran is no longer
supporting terrorism?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Because there are some elements
within Iran that are still advocating the use of terror to
accomplish their political ends, we still list Iran as a state
that sponsors terrorism. However, the facts remain that the
moderate elements that we were talking to, we think, did have
some impact on stopping the hostage taking in Lebanon for about a
year.
MITCHELL: But doesn't the fact that we were supplying
military equipment to Iran indicate that we were supplying
equipment to a state that you've just said still sponsors
terrorism?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: We were supplying this material
specifically to the moderate elements so that they would develop
and exercise more influence....
MITCHELL: To overthrow the Khomeini regime?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Not to overthrow the government,
but simply to gain more support for their more moderate views.
And that, we think, is important.
WOODWARD: Admiral, do you support now a full airing of
how this policy was constructed, how it was carried out before
Congress? Will you go testify before the appropriate committees?
Will Lt. Colonel North so testify?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Bob, we are very anxious to discuss
in great detail with the appropriate congressional committees
under the appropriate circumstances. There is still a large
portion of the details that we want to keep classified to protect
individuals who are involved and try to salvage as much of the
channel that we can. So all of this won't be public or in
unclassified ways.
WOODWARD: Will you testify under oath, or will you
invoke executive privilege?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Bob, as you very well know, the
President's National Security Adviser, as well as the rest of
this immediate staff, is not in the habit of testifying.
KALB: Meaning you won't?
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ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: I'm not saying that quite that
directly. I have talked....
[Laughter.]
question.
KALE: I understand that. That's why I was asking the
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: I have talked to some of the
appropriate leadership on the Hill, and I will make arrangements
to talk informally with them. There will be hearings in which I
probably will not participate. But I am anxious that they hear
from me to understand the thinking on our part behind this
project and to understand some of the subtleties that were
involved.
WOODWARD: This was basically an intelligence or a CIA
operation. Is that correct?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: That is correct. It was basically
an intelligence operation.
Olk WOODWARD: So Director Casey will be the one who will
now lay it out to the Congress.
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: That's correct.
WOODWARD: Will he he under any restrictions?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: No, nothing different from the
usual situation in that we still like to protect raw intelli-
gence. But in terms of all of the actions that were taken as a
result of the project, they'll all be laid out in detail.
MITCHELL: Admiral, now this, as you say, was a high
risk operation. Wasn't one of the risks the fact that the Iraqis
and the Saudis are now very distressed. Prince Bandar, the
Ambassador from Saudi Arabia, met with you and, we understand,
was outraged by what happened.
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: That simply is not an accurate
report, Andrea. We have felt all along that once we were able to
reveal all of the details to our moderate Arab friends and when
they understood that the objective that we had was exactly the
same as their objective, which is to bring the war to an end,
they would understand our actions.
MITCHELL: Well, some of them are now suggesting that
Israel was, in fact, the project manager for this, that this was
an Israeli initiative which served the interests, the foreign
policy interests of Israel, but didn't really serve our in-
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ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: This project was a United States
government project that served, in our view, our national
interests. It's as simple as that.
MITCHELL: But a senior official told us the other day,
who's very familiar with national security affairs, that the
United States government condoned the Israeli shipment in
September of 1985, which resulted in the release of Benjamin
Weir.
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: As I have told members of the press
and media before, we don't want to publicly get into the details
of the shipments, because that provides information to factions
within Iran to identify who was dealing with us, and so we're not
talking publicly about those details.
MITCHELL: About condoling Israel....
KALB: Admiral, I'd like to ask you about the way in
which the government is now functioning in the whole area of
foreign policy, the impression of disarray.
Donald Regan said -- direct quote: "Some of us are like
a shovel briqade that follow a parade down Main Street cleaning
up." Unquote.
Now is that really what the White House staff should be
involved in?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: Well, I guess I would have to take
exception to that definition as to what the White House staff is
involved with. We have an active President who likes and feels
that bold action is often required in order to change the status
quo. If you look at his approach to domestic issues, it's the
same kind of approach. He challenged the conventional wisdom.
People thought Reaganomics wouldn't work. Well, it did work.
People thought he couldn't get tax reform through. But he did do
that.
KALE: Okay. But on the area of foreign policy, there
is certainly the impression that you are involved primarily in
damage control, not in bold initiatives.
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: No, I don't think that's true at
all. It's just that, in the foreign policy area, the issues are
very complex. Sometimes you're able to make progress; sometimes
you aren't. But if we just sit back and don't think of new,
creative ways of addressing some of these difficult problems,
we'll never make any progress.
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MITCHELL: Admiral, can I just clear up one fact about
the kinds of weapons.
The Defense Ministry, the Israeli Defense Minister, Mr.
Rabin, has said that nothing was sent by Israel, no American
weapons that were not directly approved by the United States. Is
that true?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: I don't care to answer that
question in public. Our relations with all of the third coun-
tries that may or may not have been involved in this should be
private.
MITCHELL: Can you at least deny the reports that have
come to us from very authoritative sources in Israel that they
did ship offensive weapons, parts for jet fighters?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER: The point that the President has
made and that I've made before on this issue is that the only
shipments that the U. U.S. government authorized were those that
the President described the other night, which taken in toto
would fill a single cargo aircraft. That is the extent of the U.
S. involvement with Iran on this issue.
WOODWARD: I would like to ask you about your own
shovel....
KALB: You have thirty seconds.
WOODWARD: ... if I might for a moment.
KALB: Fifteen.
WOODWARD: Okay, in terms of damage control. Do you
think you've done an effective job in explaining what's going on
on this and disinformation, what happened in Iceland?
ADMIRAL POINDEXTER.: Yes, I think so. I think we try
very hard to get all the facts out.
KALB:
very much for being
really remarkable
secret overture and
History, I guess,
fellows.
our guest today and discussing I guess this
story of Ronald Reagan trying to set up a
policy with the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.
provides us with a series of strange bed-
But that's it for now.
and we'll see you next Sunday.
Admiral, I'm sorry, our time's up. Thank you
Thank you all for joining us,
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