Bonus Episode 9: The Surgery That Sparked the Iran-Contra Scandal

Did President Ronald Reagan authorize selling arms to Iran while still recovering from major surgery in 1985?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Iran Contra scandal transfects Washington for most of nineteen
seven and renewed a struggle as old as the Republic
between the President and Congress. The Iran Contra affair was
the biggest scandal of Ronald Reagan's presidency. It was not
the easiest one to understand. The Reagan Administration's determination to

(00:21):
sell arms secretly to Iran and to help guerrilla's fighting
the Marxist government of Nicaragua, despite Congressional objections, was the
engine that drove the arand Contra policy. But it had
some wonderful characters. I don't think it was wrong. I
think it was a neat idea. There was Oliver North,
the lieutenant colonel who devised the scheme and then covered

(00:43):
it up. I will tell you right now, Counsel, and
all the members here gat that I misled the Congress.
There was a seemingly endless stream of prosecutions and Congressional hearings,
and there was one question every American wanted to know.
What did President Ronald Reagan know about the arms for

(01:04):
hostages deal? And when did he know it. Once I
realized I hadn't been fully informed, I sought to find
the answers, some of the answers I don't like. The
President insisted that he did not know about the scheme,
and none of the investigations found that he did. The
committee's final report went further. It said, the ultimate responsibility

(01:26):
for the events in the Iran Countra affair must rest
with the president. If the President did not know what
his national security advisors were doing, he should have. Most
Americans found the president's denials implausible, especially in light of
the fact that the two year secret campaign had been
organized by his closest White House advisors. Was Reagan really

(01:51):
that forgetful? Was he lying to the American people? Or
was there more to the story? Welcome back to Flashback.
I'm Sean Braswell. In this special bonus episode, we returned
to the Iran Contra scandal and one very fateful presidential surgery.
It turns out there may have been a good reason
why President Reagan's memory was so hazy about the decision

(02:13):
to sell arms to Iran, or at least a more
benign reason, and it's one that starts with something potentially malignant.
That something was a large polyp that the President's doctors

(02:33):
discovered on his lower right colon during a routine colonoscopy
on July twelfth, nineteen eighty five. Reagan was rushed into
surgery the very next morning at Bethesda Naval Medical Center
in Maryland to remove the growth. Before he was put
to sleep, Reagan invoked the twenty fifth Amendment, transferring the
powers of the presidency temporarily to Vice President George Bush.

(02:56):
Reagan was wheeled into the operating room with his wife
Nancy holding his hand, around eleven fifteen that morning. In
typical Reagan fashion, he joked with his doctors referring to
the previous day's colonoscopy. He mused, after what you did yesterday,
this ought to be a breeze. The three hour surgery
was successful. Doctors removed two feet of Reagan's lower intestine

(03:19):
in addition to the two inch growth, which a biopsy
showed to be cancerous. George Bush remained acting president until
after seven p m. That evening, while Reagan remained under
the effects of the anesthesia. My fellow Americans, I'm talking
to you today from a little makeshift studio just outside
my room in Bethesda Naval Hospital. The president spent a

(03:39):
week recovering at the hospital. First off I'm feeling great,
but I'm getting a little restless. A lot of you
know how it is when you have to endure some
enforced bed rest. You get this feeling that life's out
there and it's a big shiny apple, and you just
can't wait to get out and take a bite of it.
The President had a jovial spirit, but at age seventy four,
he was not a young man. He was in pain.

(04:02):
He had trouble eating, and he suffered through several sleepless nights,
and unfortunately, events outside the hospital did not wait for
his recovery. Prior to the president's surgery, several Americans had
been taken hostage by the terrorist group Hezbollah. That would
be clearly understood that the seven Americans still held captive
in Lebanon must be released, along with other innocent hostages

(04:26):
from other countries. The United States gives terrorists no rewards
and no guarantees. We make no concessions, we make no deals.
A few days after the president's cancer surgery, however, Reagan's
national security adviser, Bud McFarlane approached him with a deal.
In his hospital bed, McFarland was told that Iran would

(04:46):
help secure the release of seven US hostages held by
Hezbollah in return for the sale of arms. McFarland later
claimed that President Reagan approved the arms for hostages exchange
in the hospital, responding, Gee, that sounds pretty good. Once
the media learned of the deal, Reagan was soon on
the hot seat. Mr. President, you have stated flatly, and

(05:09):
you stated flatly again tonight, that you did not trade
weapons for hostages. And yet the record shows that every
time an American hospit was released, there had been a
major shipment of arms just before that. Are we all
to believe that was just a coincidence? Chris? The only
thing I know about major shipments of arms, as I've said,
everything that we sold them could be put in one

(05:32):
cargo plane and there would be plenty of room left over.
The President's muddled denials strain credulity and hurt his credibility. Sorry,
if I may, The polls show that a lot of
American people just simply don't believe you that the one
thing that you've had going for you more than anything
else in your presidency, your credibility has been severely damaged.
Can you repair it? What does it mean for the

(05:54):
rest of your presidency? Well, I imagine I'm the only
one around who wants to repair it, and I didn't
do heavenning to do with distent if damaging it. Did
the president really have nothing to do with it? Reagan
undoubtedly knew what his advisers had done by the time
he started to stonewall the press about it, but there's
a good chance he truly had no recollection of authorizing

(06:15):
the arms for hostages deal. A political scientist at Northeastern
University named Robert Gilbert investigated this issue, conducting interviews of
key medical personnel surrounding the president. Gilbert told me that
Reagan had trouble remembering the meeting with McFarland in the
hospital had ever occurred, much less the substance of it,

(06:35):
and that such a memory lapse is common after a
surgery involving high doses of painkillers, particularly in older patients
like Reagan. These past nine months have been confusing and
pain for ones for the country. I know you have
doubts in your own minds about what happened in this
whole episode. Reagan addressed the nation on television after the
Iran contrahearings in Congress finished. In he remained evasive about

(07:00):
what had really happened. Our original initiative rapidly got all
tangled up in the sale of arms, and the sale
of arms got tangled up with hostages. Who knows what
a clear headed Ronald Reagan would have done had he
made the arms for hostages decision in the Oval Office
rather than Bethesda Hospital. Perhaps his biggest mistake was not

(07:23):
invoking the twenty five Amendment for longer while he recovered
from major surgery. As Professor Gilbert argues, Reagan's decision to
resume his presidential duties so quickly after his surgery contributed
substantially to the most damaging episode of his presidency. The
Iran contra affair not only hurt his popularity at the time,

(07:43):
but also his standing in history, and there was very
little even a great communicator like Reagan could do about it.
Flashback is written and hosted by me Sean brads Well,
senior writer and executive producer at Azzi. It was edited

(08:03):
by Mabe mcgarren and produced by Tracy Moran and Yorio Digizia.
Chris Hoff engineered our show. Make sure to subscribe to
Flashback on the I Heart Radio app or listen wherever
you get your podcasts