January 12, 2025 • 28 mins
We often talk about government conspiracy THEORIES, but under Ronald Reagan, there was a bona-fide CONSPIRACY involving illegally selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages, and then using that money to fund guerillas in South America. So… pretty complicated. If you don’t remember, the hearings captivated the country and almost got Reagan impeached. There’s also the theory that Reagan made a deal with Iran before his election to withold releasing the hostages to hurt Carter. Real Mission Implausible kind of stuff.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
See, here's the thing, guys. Conspiracy is really far. However,
stupidity is really easy. And nine times out of ten,
in the course of human events, you should never chalk
up to conspiracy what you can reliably attribute to stupidity.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Tim Winer. Tim's
an author and reporter with a special focus on intelligence
and national security. He's worked at The New York Times
in Philadelphia Choir, where he won a Pulitzer Price for
his reporting. He's also written a number of best selling books,
and in recent years he has written on political warfare
(01:02):
between Russia and the West and has a new book
coming out soon on the CIA.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So welcome, temp, Thank you, gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, let me start with that issue of political warfare,
because one of the weapons a state can use can
be both conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Can you give us
a sense of what you mean by political warfare and
how you see it in the war environment.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well, George Hendon, who was the great American diplomat and
the intellectual father of the Clandestine Service of the CIA,
define political warfare in nineteen forty eight as all the
means at a nation's disposal short of military weapons, to
achieve its national foreign policy goals. And this would include espionage,
(01:44):
covert action, sabotage, psychological warfare, and all of that is
political warfare. Diplomacy is political warfare, Propaganda is political warfare.
It's anything that doesn't involve sending in the marine. So
let's jump in a time machine and go back a
little bit into Iran Contra and also the October Surprise.
(02:06):
So maybe we could you could take us through a
little bit on what that is for some of the
audience who don't remember that, and then we can discuss
the relevance of that set of real conspiracies and conspiracy
theories around it and how it impicts on us today. Well,
the October Surprise is an alleged conspiracy. Iran Contra is
(02:26):
an actual conspiracy, and at the center of both is
the wily and duplicitous William J. Casey, Director of Central
Intelligence from nineteeny one until his death in nineteen eighty seven.
HEYTHI was the last great buccaneer from the OSS, the
Office of Strategic Services, America's wartime intelligence agency care World
(02:50):
War Two. He was Ronald Reagan's campaign manager in the
nineteen eighty election when Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter.
At the time, those in your audience with long memories
will recall Iran was holding American hostages and had been
for more than a year, and the October surprise, as alleged,
(03:11):
is that Casey threw inter myriad intermediaries got a deal
with the Iranian saying don't release the hostages until Ronald
Reagan is president. There is one living witness to this
who says that's what happened. I can't prove it with documents,
but I know it from my own experience, and if
(03:32):
Casey did that, it would not be out of character.
He was a schemer. He did not have a great
deal of respect for the laws of the United States.
His mission upon taking office at CIA was to basically
turn it back into the oss set europe a blaze,
(03:53):
although in this case it was Central America. This is
just before you guys came on board in the mid eighties,
So in the early eighties they were stacking up new
officers in the Corridor. Like Cordwood, he was on the
path to double the size of the clandestine Service, and
he was really just initiating COVID action all over the
(04:15):
globe in the name of anti communists. If there was
a dictator in Ethiopia who had a Marxist bent, by God,
we were going to run guns to the rebels in
Ethiopia to overthrow him, and in Chad and throughout Africa,
throughout Central America where there was a shooting war going
on against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The goal here
(04:38):
was to knock down leftist governments around the world through
COVID action, and in doing so achieved the dream of
every Sea High director since the agency was founded in
nineteen forty seven, was to roll back the Russians, free
the captive states of Central and Eastern Europe, sabotage, over
(05:00):
throw Marxist leaders throughout the Third World, and Ronald Reagan
was all for it. So we had a pretty good
little war Berlin there in Central America. And there are
a lot of officers who came to prominence at the
Agency after the turn of the twenty first century during
the War on Terror got their teeth down there in
(05:20):
the steam and jungles of Central America. It wasn't fun,
but it was a real war, and there were Vietnam
veterans at CIA were fighting it. There were kids whose
parents fled Cuba after the Bay of Pigs and were
now in their twenties, and we're all about killing some commis.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
There was another part of it, too, right, so that
it had to do with the Oregan administration sending arms
to Iran, maybe you'd get hostages out, and then using
the money to fund the contrast.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
The Iran contrast scandal transfected Washington for most of nineteen
eighty seven and renewed a struggle as old as the
Republic between the President and conguens. The Reagan administration's determination
to sell arms secretly to Iran and to help guerrillas
fighting the Marxist government of Nicaragua, despite Congressional objections was
the engine that drove the Iran Contra policy. Secretly, Lieutenant
(06:14):
Colonel Oliver North devised a scheme to finance the Countras
by overcharging Iran for the weapons, and to use the
profits to help the rebels in Nicaragua.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
What is involved is that in the course of the
arms transfers, certain monies were taken and made available to
the forces in Central America which are opposing the Sandinista government.
Speaker 6 (06:41):
There by giving Iran what it wanted military arms. The
US was hoping to get what it wanted the return
of American hostages in Beirut. Arms priced by the government
at twelve and a half million dollars were sold to
Iran at a marked up price. These funds were then
diverted to the contras in Senate for America.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
I thought it was a good idea. I was convinced
that the President would in the end think it was
a good idea.
Speaker 8 (07:09):
I asked Admiral Poindexter directly, does the President know? He
told me he did not.
Speaker 7 (07:18):
I made a very deliberate decision not to ask the
President so that I could insulate him from the decision
and provide some future deniability for the president if it
ever leaked out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
How much do you think Reagan himself was involved in
either planning or carrying this out?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right, let's get to the Irong part of the Iran contrast.
So the contras are the counter revolutionaries that the CIA
in the United States is back in Central America. The
situation with Iran is that in Lebanon and in bear Root,
the Israelis have invaded Lebanon to try and crush the PLO.
(07:58):
They have slaughtered hundreds of civilians in the process. The
United States is backing them to the hill. The Iranians
set up shop in the Beka Valley of Lebanon in
nineteen eighty three and they start creating this force that
became known as hesbo La. And the young second in
command of hesbo La was a twenty five year old
dude named Imad Mugnier who would go on to kill
(08:20):
more Americans than anybody up to and I think up
to Osama bin Laden. It was after bin Laden had
the most American blood on his hands of anybody in
our lifetimes. So the Americans are back in the Israelis.
In April eighty three, hes Bolah blows up the American
embassy in Beirut Hills, sixty three Americans, including eight CIA
(08:43):
officers and support staff. The station chief, the CIA's top
Middle East dandalist, Bob Ames, wipes out the station. The
Reagan sends significant military peacekeeping Force marines at the Beirut airport.
Hes Bolap blows them up, kills two hundred and forty
one Americans. In October of that year, I believe the
(09:04):
sixth Fleet is out in the Mediterranean. Their lobbin shells
all over the Bekhav Valley. The response of Iran and
Hezbolah is this. In March of eighty four, the CNN
bureau chief is kidnapped and taken hostage. In Later in March,
the new CI station chief, Bill Buckley, is kidnapped and
taken hostage. A couple weeks later, the Reverend Benjamin Weir,
(09:28):
who was a Presbyterian missionary, vanishes from Beirut. In all,
fourteen American hostages are taken over the years. So we
got two things going on. Now. It's nineteen eighty four.
A mysterious group that nobody knows anything about has got
the CIA station chief and a bunch of other Americans
chained to radiators in basement somewhere, and meanwhile Congress has
(09:52):
cut off funds for the sea Is Warrants Central America.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
The Boland Demandment Affair Bowland Demendment.
Speaker 5 (09:59):
We did not to have the view that we were
circumventing the Bowl and Amendment.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
We simply read the ball In Amendment and believed that
it did not apply because we were private.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So what is Bill Casey to do about the very
long story short, there's a guy lurking around. You probably
run across people like this in your decades of service
at CIA. He's a paper hanger, he's a fabricator. His
name is Monitor goor Boni. He's a former member of Savak,
(10:32):
the Iranian intelligence service under the Shah. This guy is
such a ething lie that the CIA issues a very
rare burn notice, a worldwide burn notice, saying the truth
is not in this guy. Nothing he says or rights
should ever be believed. Keep back five hundred feet.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
There's a number of famous people that burn notices have
gone out, and then the US policymakers nonetheless have run
with over the years.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, yeah, Well, things do not end well when you
trust the word of someone who has a burn notice
on him. Bill Casey says, this is my guy, because
Gourbana Bar comes to him with a proposal that if
the US sells weapons to Iran, which is fighting a
very bloody war against Iraq at the time. Okay, we're
(11:21):
helping Saddam Lusain fight the Iranians because we hate the Iranians.
What's also, they'll both the Iranians if we do this.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Hold on just a second, well we take a quick break.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
There's a conspiracy theory inside of this, real conspiracy, and
I'm waiting for you to get to it. But it's
one that's still we still deal with today, and that
is the conspiracy theory about the moderate faction inside of Iran.
These mythical Iranian moderates and Bill Casey Mumbles, who he
(12:01):
was known as affectionately back in the day, believe this,
or at least Gerbonifore got into believe.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Okay, the guy who really believes this is a gung
Home Marine lieutenant colonel on the National Security Council staff
named Oliver el North.
Speaker 8 (12:17):
I came here to tell you the truth, the good,
the bad, and the ugly. I'm here to tell it
all pleasant and unpleasant, and I am here to accept
responsibility for that which I did. I will not accept
responsibility for that which I did not do.
Speaker 9 (12:34):
And these operations were carried out in secret, we hope.
So they were covert operations, Yes, there were. And covert
operations are designed to be secrets from our enemies, that
is correct. But these operations were designed to be secrets
(12:55):
from the American people.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Nobody at the SEE I wants to touch this with
a ten foot pole. The chief of the Clandestine Service,
Claire George, says, I ain't doing this. The head of
the Hostage Task Force at CI, Charlie Allen, legendary officer, says,
I would sooner cut my grandmother's throat and get in
(13:18):
bed with monitor coor Bonaparte. So Katy can't get a
senior officers to do it, he calls up this young
punk at the National Security Council who's like his golden boy,
Oli North, and makes him the action officer.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I think it's a good move because Ali North spent
a year at the State University of New York at Brockport,
which is what Jerry.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
He went to school, A safety school, you too, A
by of the only people famous people out of that
Jerry with all due respect, you would be in the
minority of people, Okay, Bonifarre and north sell Casey on
this concept.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
A lot of people get involved with this. A Secretary
of Defense, Casper Weinberger, his senior staff men Colin Powell
later our Secretary of State, are all involved in this
basically money laundering and weapons smuggling scheme to take anti
tank and anti aircraft missile toes and hawks out of
(14:15):
the inventories of the Pentagon and the Israelis, ship them
through a middleman, deliver them to the Iranians, mark up
the price six hundred percent. Everybody gets paid, the middlemen
get paid, or Bonifire pockets millions, but there's still going
to be twelve million dollars left over for the conscience.
And the way the money is reimbursed through the Pentagon
(14:36):
is CIA takes the money and delivers it in tranches
of nine hundred ninety nine nine ninety nine point ninety
nine cents a million dollar transfer. Triggers are reporting requirement
to Congress, so they're smurfing it back into the coffers
of the concerence. Everybody's happy, except the Uranians are not
(14:57):
happy because the weapons are some of them came out
of Israeli stocks and have Hebrew lettering on it, which
upsets the Iranians. And in the fall of eighty six,
one of the CIA's resupply planes gets shot down by
a teenage Sandinista. The only survivor is a contractor named
(15:20):
Eugene Hassenfuss and Hassin Fuss. He's a little banged up,
but he's alive. This is a big deal, Sandonisa's shoot
down American plane. What kind of plane is it? The
reporters on the scene would like to know. Oh, says Hastenfuss,
I worked for this DiiA. A hallmark of Casey's covert operations,
where that they were so big they could not be covert. Okay,
(15:41):
you could call them a covert operation, but it's like
trying to hide an elephant with a handkerchief. Reporters all
over Washington were on the scent of this illegally funded
war in Central America, the secret war in Central America.
It wasn't a secret to the Sandinistas, and pretty soon
it wasn't secret to the American press on the scene
in Central America.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Mind the harbor.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
As part of that process that was Dewey's I did.
That was Dewey Clerg's I did. He said, I was
having a glass of gin one night, and then it
struck me, the mines will mind the harbor of Corinto
and Nicaragua, which is an act of war.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Dely, you know, when you're having a drink, what's another war.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So as soon as as the shootdown in Central America happens,
the Iranians stroke their beards and they said, ah, now
we'll really screw and Ralph soon. Johnny, the head of
the Maudeleisei Israian Iranian Parliament, said the Americans had been
playing pussyfoot with us and shipping arms to the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard to ransom the hostages and bear root. This
(16:39):
was Reagan's scheme. Bob Gates, later the Director of Central
Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense. This is how we
recounted it. I'm going to quote Bob Gates. Now. Reagan
was preoccupied with the fate of the hostages and could
not understand why CI could not locate and rescue them.
He put more and more pressure on Casey to find them.
Reagan's band of pressure was hard to resist. No loud
(17:02):
words are harsh indictment, not like Linda Johnson or Richard Nixon,
just a whizical look, a suggestion of pain, and then
the request, we just have to get those people out,
repeated daily, week after week, month after month. And implicit
was the accusation, what the hell kind of intelligence agency
you're running if you can't find and rescue those Americans.
(17:25):
And the whole thing blew up. And what it came
down to was the President of the United States. First,
the whole thing goes sky high and he gets on
TV and says, I didn't do that.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Mister President.
Speaker 10 (17:37):
You have stated flatley, and you stated flatley again tonight,
that you did not trade weapons for hostages. And yet
the record shows that every time an American hostage was
released last September, this July, and again just this very month,
there had been a major shipment of arms just before that.
Are we all to believe that was just a coincidence, Chris?
Speaker 11 (17:58):
The only thing I know about major shipments of arms,
as I've said, everything that we sold them could be
put in one cargo plane and there would be plenty
of room left over. Now, if there were major shipments,
and we know this has been going on, there have
been other countries that have been dealing in arms with Iran.
There have been also private merchants of such things that
(18:19):
have been doing the same thing. Now I've seen the
stories about a Danish tramp steamer and Danish sailors Union
officials are talking about their ships taking various supplies to Iran.
I didn't know anything about that until I saw the president,
because we certainly never had any contact with anything of
the kind.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
He tells the American people, I never sold arms for
hostages or anything like that. He's lying. And when presidents
lie through their teeth to the American people, something break.
This happened.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Usually usually it breaks.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, now we're used to it, right, I'm showing my age.
When Dwighteyes Howard got on TV after the CI's YouTube
spyplane was shot down over Russia, he believed CI believed
the pilot had died, right, he had a poisoned needle
it kill himself with. And he says, oh, it was
(19:14):
a weather balloon. It wasn't like a CI spyplane. Well,
then Christoff produces the pilot, Francis Gary powers the CI pilot,
and Eisenhower said, literally he felt a sense of shame
that he had lied to the American people. He said
he wanted to resign as president. Our sense of shame
is now missing from the American's body pods. We've become
(19:36):
inord to presidents lying to us. It was a big
deal at the time, let me tell you. And you
guys ran new with the CIA.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
At the time when it was just coming out, I
was like, okay, I want to get the hostages out.
I'm sorry. Real politic Iron and Iraq fighting each other
at screwm both right pots on both their houses and
they both lose. It was I get the reality politic
of it, but where where as things progressed, I separated
from it as a citizen. Was two or three things.
(20:06):
One was operations Staunch, which is where the US and
CIA was asked to stop any arms flowing into Iran
right at the same time we were doing it right,
so we were talking out of both sides of our mouth,
which is I understand if it's needed, but this was
like self defeating. The other thing was and how we
moved the arms. We actually collaborated, both with the South
(20:30):
African aparthep state to do that, and even worse with
the East German Stazi. I get sometimes things are rough
and sometimes are difficult, and facing off against the access
of evil. I was all about there as a young
officer and still am, but on a big picture. But
there's got to be some limits in the conspiracy, or
(20:51):
at least maybe I don't understand the conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
The originally ethos of the CIA back at its foundation
was that we had to buy fire with fire against
Joe Stalin. Okay. This did not work out well because
the early CIA thought it could operate as the OSS
had done during World War Two and parachute recruited agents
behind the Iron Curtain, behind enemy lines. They all died
(21:16):
with the Iround contract, with selling weapons to the Irragians
to the Revolutionary Guard. It's not just that it was
a really stupid idea. It also violated the law and
the foreign policy of the United States, which Reagan had
proclaimed over and over we do not negotiate with terrorists,
but we will sell them a shitload of missiles to
(21:39):
rip them off in the process.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Hold on for a sec while we take a quick break, and.
Speaker 12 (21:50):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So there was some loose talk at the time that
Reagan would be impeached. Nobody had the heart to impeach
him for violating the Law on the Poor Policy United States.
What did happen, however, was that the Secretary of Defense,
the chief of the seai's Clandestance Service, Dewey Claridge, who
was then the head of the first Head of the
(22:12):
counter Terrorism Center, and a couple of other SEA officers
were indicted for lying to Congress. At the end of
his presidency, in December nineteen ninety two, President George H. W.
Bush pardoned the mall nobody did a day in the
slam for Iran contract.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well, I remember Reagan too.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
He did that.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
He had two public thanks on this. The first time
he came out and said we didn't share arms or hostages.
And then later he came back, almost like with his
tail between his legs and says, as much as I
want to believe that we never did this, text me
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Do it, but my head tells me maybe I did.
Speaker 11 (22:48):
I Fellow Americans, I've spoken to you from this historic
office on many occasions and about many things. For the
past three months, I've been silent on the revelations about Iran,
and you must have been thinking, why doesn't he tell
us what's happening? First? Let me say I take full
responsibility from my own actions and for those of my administration.
(23:09):
As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without
my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As
disappointed as I may be, and some who serve me,
I am still the one who must answer to the
American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as
I find secret bank accounts and diverted funds, one of
(23:31):
the Navy would say, this happened on my watch. Let's
start with the part that is the most controversial. A
few months ago, I told the American people I did
not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best
intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and
the evidence tell me.
Speaker 8 (23:49):
It is not.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Exactly so, when a president comes from the American people,
it looks so shameful and weak. I think he ended
up protecting himself, but the rest of the people ended
up Obviously.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I'll just say it was self defeating because as the
some hostages were released, Hezbollah and its Iranian bankers were
just taking more right. So they were getting weapons as
time went on towards eighty five eighty six, but they
were just going out and snag and more Americans. So
it was becoming like an industry as opposed to a
one time discreete.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
We created an incentive structure that seems to be working.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Let's take more hostages.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And for folks out there who love conspiracy theories, I
got to say, even with CIA involved in Oliver North,
I see there were like some amazing fuck ups that
people forgotten about. At one point that Oliver North or
Fawn Hall, his secretary famous at the time, transposed a
couple of numbers in a Swiss bank account and they
mistakenly sent ten million dollars to the wrong guy. And
(24:45):
so like the Swiss businessman is like I just made
ten million dollars. And then they were hiding the secret
documents in like her boots. She was wearing go go
boots right right of smuddled them out and that didn't
work either. So even at the core of the American government,
there was still some like incredible fuck ups because they're people.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
See here's the thing, guys, Conspiracy is really hard. It
comes from the lat on spieda to breathe together. However,
stupidity is really easy, and nine times out of ten,
in the course of human events, you should never chalk
up to conspiracy what you can reliably attribute to stupidity.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And Casey actually went outside the CIA, two people who
aren't trained in any of this kind of stuff and
keeping secrets. Not that it would have necessarily gone better
if the CIA did it, but having Oliver North and
Vaughn Hall and people do this.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And running with stupidity, Tim, I wonder if you could
take us into the key shaped hate. And to add
to that, I remember meeting George Cave, who's gonna be
part of this story.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Oh, George Cave was like one of the top Iranian operators.
He was a good guy. I'm going back to the
fifties when the SEI overthrew the duly elected government of
Iran and put the Shawn the peacocks thrown back in
fifty four the cake, all right, So this just takes
the cake. Yeah, this is another part of what Oli North.
(26:13):
He actually testified to Congress that the whole Iran contra
thing was and I quote, a really neat idea.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
I don't think it was wrong. I think it was
a neat idea.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So part of the really neat idea was that Oli
North and the National Security Advisor of the United States,
Bob McFarlane. We're going to go to Tehran in a
concert with the first ship and the weapons, and they
bring a chocolate cake and the ice.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
We're going to meet the mysterious moderate Iranian faction. Yeah right,
we still talk about today, right, Like they're good Iranians
in the Iranian government.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
They were apparently unaware or unwilling to believe that the
modern Iranians were dead or in prison. So they bring
this cake and the icing on this chocolate cake has
a old tea in the middle of it, symbolizing the
opening of a new, covert but heartfelt relationship the United
States government and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is
(27:12):
what's gonna happen if people like Telsey Gabbard and Cash
Bateel and God help him, John Radcliffe, get up my question.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Olie North sounds exactly like Cash Bateel and Pete Haigseith
and he's got.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oliver North looks like Napoleon compared to these.
Speaker 12 (27:32):
We're gonna stop here for today, but we'll be back
with Tim Weiner talking more about the potential for actual
conspiracies in the US government. Mission Implausible is produced by
Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher, and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 12 (27:54):
Mission implausible. It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
For iheartpock ask
See, here's the thing, guys. Conspiracy is really far. However,
stupidity is really easy. And nine times out of ten,
in the course of human events, you should never chalk
up to conspiracy what you can reliably attribute to stupidity.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Tim Winer. Tim's
an author and reporter with a special focus on intelligence
and national security. He's worked at The New York Times
in Philadelphia Choir, where he won a Pulitzer Price for
his reporting. He's also written a number of best selling books,
and in recent years he has written on political warfare
(01:02):
between Russia and the West and has a new book
coming out soon on the CIA.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So welcome, temp, Thank you, gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, let me start with that issue of political warfare,
because one of the weapons a state can use can
be both conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Can you give us
a sense of what you mean by political warfare and
how you see it in the war environment.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well, George Hendon, who was the great American diplomat and
the intellectual father of the Clandestine Service of the CIA,
define political warfare in nineteen forty eight as all the
means at a nation's disposal short of military weapons, to
achieve its national foreign policy goals. And this would include espionage,
(01:44):
covert action, sabotage, psychological warfare, and all of that is
political warfare. Diplomacy is political warfare, Propaganda is political warfare.
It's anything that doesn't involve sending in the marine. So
let's jump in a time machine and go back a
little bit into Iran Contra and also the October Surprise.
(02:06):
So maybe we could you could take us through a
little bit on what that is for some of the
audience who don't remember that, and then we can discuss
the relevance of that set of real conspiracies and conspiracy
theories around it and how it impicts on us today. Well,
the October Surprise is an alleged conspiracy. Iran Contra is
(02:26):
an actual conspiracy, and at the center of both is
the wily and duplicitous William J. Casey, Director of Central
Intelligence from nineteeny one until his death in nineteen eighty seven.
HEYTHI was the last great buccaneer from the OSS, the
Office of Strategic Services, America's wartime intelligence agency care World
(02:50):
War Two. He was Ronald Reagan's campaign manager in the
nineteen eighty election when Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter.
At the time, those in your audience with long memories
will recall Iran was holding American hostages and had been
for more than a year, and the October surprise, as alleged,
(03:11):
is that Casey threw inter myriad intermediaries got a deal
with the Iranian saying don't release the hostages until Ronald
Reagan is president. There is one living witness to this
who says that's what happened. I can't prove it with documents,
but I know it from my own experience, and if
(03:32):
Casey did that, it would not be out of character.
He was a schemer. He did not have a great
deal of respect for the laws of the United States.
His mission upon taking office at CIA was to basically
turn it back into the oss set europe a blaze,
(03:53):
although in this case it was Central America. This is
just before you guys came on board in the mid eighties,
So in the early eighties they were stacking up new
officers in the Corridor. Like Cordwood, he was on the
path to double the size of the clandestine Service, and
he was really just initiating COVID action all over the
(04:15):
globe in the name of anti communists. If there was
a dictator in Ethiopia who had a Marxist bent, by God,
we were going to run guns to the rebels in
Ethiopia to overthrow him, and in Chad and throughout Africa,
throughout Central America where there was a shooting war going
on against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The goal here
(04:38):
was to knock down leftist governments around the world through
COVID action, and in doing so achieved the dream of
every Sea High director since the agency was founded in
nineteen forty seven, was to roll back the Russians, free
the captive states of Central and Eastern Europe, sabotage, over
(05:00):
throw Marxist leaders throughout the Third World, and Ronald Reagan
was all for it. So we had a pretty good
little war Berlin there in Central America. And there are
a lot of officers who came to prominence at the
Agency after the turn of the twenty first century during
the War on Terror got their teeth down there in
(05:20):
the steam and jungles of Central America. It wasn't fun,
but it was a real war, and there were Vietnam
veterans at CIA were fighting it. There were kids whose
parents fled Cuba after the Bay of Pigs and were
now in their twenties, and we're all about killing some commis.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
There was another part of it, too, right, so that
it had to do with the Oregan administration sending arms
to Iran, maybe you'd get hostages out, and then using
the money to fund the contrast.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
The Iran contrast scandal transfected Washington for most of nineteen
eighty seven and renewed a struggle as old as the
Republic between the President and conguens. The Reagan administration's determination
to sell arms secretly to Iran and to help guerrillas
fighting the Marxist government of Nicaragua, despite Congressional objections was
the engine that drove the Iran Contra policy. Secretly, Lieutenant
(06:14):
Colonel Oliver North devised a scheme to finance the Countras
by overcharging Iran for the weapons, and to use the
profits to help the rebels in Nicaragua.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
What is involved is that in the course of the
arms transfers, certain monies were taken and made available to
the forces in Central America which are opposing the Sandinista government.
Speaker 6 (06:41):
There by giving Iran what it wanted military arms. The
US was hoping to get what it wanted the return
of American hostages in Beirut. Arms priced by the government
at twelve and a half million dollars were sold to
Iran at a marked up price. These funds were then
diverted to the contras in Senate for America.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
I thought it was a good idea. I was convinced
that the President would in the end think it was
a good idea.
Speaker 8 (07:09):
I asked Admiral Poindexter directly, does the President know? He
told me he did not.
Speaker 7 (07:18):
I made a very deliberate decision not to ask the
President so that I could insulate him from the decision
and provide some future deniability for the president if it
ever leaked out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
How much do you think Reagan himself was involved in
either planning or carrying this out?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right, let's get to the Irong part of the Iran contrast.
So the contras are the counter revolutionaries that the CIA
in the United States is back in Central America. The
situation with Iran is that in Lebanon and in bear Root,
the Israelis have invaded Lebanon to try and crush the PLO.
(07:58):
They have slaughtered hundreds of civilians in the process. The
United States is backing them to the hill. The Iranians
set up shop in the Beka Valley of Lebanon in
nineteen eighty three and they start creating this force that
became known as hesbo La. And the young second in
command of hesbo La was a twenty five year old
dude named Imad Mugnier who would go on to kill
(08:20):
more Americans than anybody up to and I think up
to Osama bin Laden. It was after bin Laden had
the most American blood on his hands of anybody in
our lifetimes. So the Americans are back in the Israelis.
In April eighty three, hes Bolah blows up the American
embassy in Beirut Hills, sixty three Americans, including eight CIA
(08:43):
officers and support staff. The station chief, the CIA's top
Middle East dandalist, Bob Ames, wipes out the station. The
Reagan sends significant military peacekeeping Force marines at the Beirut airport.
Hes Bolap blows them up, kills two hundred and forty
one Americans. In October of that year, I believe the
(09:04):
sixth Fleet is out in the Mediterranean. Their lobbin shells
all over the Bekhav Valley. The response of Iran and
Hezbolah is this. In March of eighty four, the CNN
bureau chief is kidnapped and taken hostage. In Later in March,
the new CI station chief, Bill Buckley, is kidnapped and
taken hostage. A couple weeks later, the Reverend Benjamin Weir,
(09:28):
who was a Presbyterian missionary, vanishes from Beirut. In all,
fourteen American hostages are taken over the years. So we
got two things going on. Now. It's nineteen eighty four.
A mysterious group that nobody knows anything about has got
the CIA station chief and a bunch of other Americans
chained to radiators in basement somewhere, and meanwhile Congress has
(09:52):
cut off funds for the sea Is Warrants Central America.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
The Boland Demandment Affair Bowland Demendment.
Speaker 5 (09:59):
We did not to have the view that we were
circumventing the Bowl and Amendment.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
We simply read the ball In Amendment and believed that
it did not apply because we were private.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So what is Bill Casey to do about the very
long story short, there's a guy lurking around. You probably
run across people like this in your decades of service
at CIA. He's a paper hanger, he's a fabricator. His
name is Monitor goor Boni. He's a former member of Savak,
(10:32):
the Iranian intelligence service under the Shah. This guy is
such a ething lie that the CIA issues a very
rare burn notice, a worldwide burn notice, saying the truth
is not in this guy. Nothing he says or rights
should ever be believed. Keep back five hundred feet.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
There's a number of famous people that burn notices have
gone out, and then the US policymakers nonetheless have run
with over the years.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, yeah, Well, things do not end well when you
trust the word of someone who has a burn notice
on him. Bill Casey says, this is my guy, because
Gourbana Bar comes to him with a proposal that if
the US sells weapons to Iran, which is fighting a
very bloody war against Iraq at the time. Okay, we're
(11:21):
helping Saddam Lusain fight the Iranians because we hate the Iranians.
What's also, they'll both the Iranians if we do this.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Hold on just a second, well we take a quick break.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
There's a conspiracy theory inside of this, real conspiracy, and
I'm waiting for you to get to it. But it's
one that's still we still deal with today, and that
is the conspiracy theory about the moderate faction inside of Iran.
These mythical Iranian moderates and Bill Casey Mumbles, who he
(12:01):
was known as affectionately back in the day, believe this,
or at least Gerbonifore got into believe.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Okay, the guy who really believes this is a gung
Home Marine lieutenant colonel on the National Security Council staff
named Oliver el North.
Speaker 8 (12:17):
I came here to tell you the truth, the good,
the bad, and the ugly. I'm here to tell it
all pleasant and unpleasant, and I am here to accept
responsibility for that which I did. I will not accept
responsibility for that which I did not do.
Speaker 9 (12:34):
And these operations were carried out in secret, we hope.
So they were covert operations, Yes, there were. And covert
operations are designed to be secrets from our enemies, that
is correct. But these operations were designed to be secrets
(12:55):
from the American people.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Nobody at the SEE I wants to touch this with
a ten foot pole. The chief of the Clandestine Service,
Claire George, says, I ain't doing this. The head of
the Hostage Task Force at CI, Charlie Allen, legendary officer, says,
I would sooner cut my grandmother's throat and get in
(13:18):
bed with monitor coor Bonaparte. So Katy can't get a
senior officers to do it, he calls up this young
punk at the National Security Council who's like his golden boy,
Oli North, and makes him the action officer.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I think it's a good move because Ali North spent
a year at the State University of New York at Brockport,
which is what Jerry.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
He went to school, A safety school, you too, A
by of the only people famous people out of that
Jerry with all due respect, you would be in the
minority of people, Okay, Bonifarre and north sell Casey on
this concept.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
A lot of people get involved with this. A Secretary
of Defense, Casper Weinberger, his senior staff men Colin Powell
later our Secretary of State, are all involved in this
basically money laundering and weapons smuggling scheme to take anti
tank and anti aircraft missile toes and hawks out of
(14:15):
the inventories of the Pentagon and the Israelis, ship them
through a middleman, deliver them to the Iranians, mark up
the price six hundred percent. Everybody gets paid, the middlemen
get paid, or Bonifire pockets millions, but there's still going
to be twelve million dollars left over for the conscience.
And the way the money is reimbursed through the Pentagon
(14:36):
is CIA takes the money and delivers it in tranches
of nine hundred ninety nine nine ninety nine point ninety
nine cents a million dollar transfer. Triggers are reporting requirement
to Congress, so they're smurfing it back into the coffers
of the concerence. Everybody's happy, except the Uranians are not
(14:57):
happy because the weapons are some of them came out
of Israeli stocks and have Hebrew lettering on it, which
upsets the Iranians. And in the fall of eighty six,
one of the CIA's resupply planes gets shot down by
a teenage Sandinista. The only survivor is a contractor named
(15:20):
Eugene Hassenfuss and Hassin Fuss. He's a little banged up,
but he's alive. This is a big deal, Sandonisa's shoot
down American plane. What kind of plane is it? The
reporters on the scene would like to know. Oh, says Hastenfuss,
I worked for this DiiA. A hallmark of Casey's covert operations,
where that they were so big they could not be covert. Okay,
(15:41):
you could call them a covert operation, but it's like
trying to hide an elephant with a handkerchief. Reporters all
over Washington were on the scent of this illegally funded
war in Central America, the secret war in Central America.
It wasn't a secret to the Sandinistas, and pretty soon
it wasn't secret to the American press on the scene
in Central America.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Mind the harbor.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
As part of that process that was Dewey's I did.
That was Dewey Clerg's I did. He said, I was
having a glass of gin one night, and then it
struck me, the mines will mind the harbor of Corinto
and Nicaragua, which is an act of war.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Dely, you know, when you're having a drink, what's another war.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So as soon as as the shootdown in Central America happens,
the Iranians stroke their beards and they said, ah, now
we'll really screw and Ralph soon. Johnny, the head of
the Maudeleisei Israian Iranian Parliament, said the Americans had been
playing pussyfoot with us and shipping arms to the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard to ransom the hostages and bear root. This
(16:39):
was Reagan's scheme. Bob Gates, later the Director of Central
Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense. This is how we
recounted it. I'm going to quote Bob Gates. Now. Reagan
was preoccupied with the fate of the hostages and could
not understand why CI could not locate and rescue them.
He put more and more pressure on Casey to find them.
Reagan's band of pressure was hard to resist. No loud
(17:02):
words are harsh indictment, not like Linda Johnson or Richard Nixon,
just a whizical look, a suggestion of pain, and then
the request, we just have to get those people out,
repeated daily, week after week, month after month. And implicit
was the accusation, what the hell kind of intelligence agency
you're running if you can't find and rescue those Americans.
(17:25):
And the whole thing blew up. And what it came
down to was the President of the United States. First,
the whole thing goes sky high and he gets on
TV and says, I didn't do that.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Mister President.
Speaker 10 (17:37):
You have stated flatley, and you stated flatley again tonight,
that you did not trade weapons for hostages. And yet
the record shows that every time an American hostage was
released last September, this July, and again just this very month,
there had been a major shipment of arms just before that.
Are we all to believe that was just a coincidence, Chris?
Speaker 11 (17:58):
The only thing I know about major shipments of arms,
as I've said, everything that we sold them could be
put in one cargo plane and there would be plenty
of room left over. Now, if there were major shipments,
and we know this has been going on, there have
been other countries that have been dealing in arms with Iran.
There have been also private merchants of such things that
(18:19):
have been doing the same thing. Now I've seen the
stories about a Danish tramp steamer and Danish sailors Union
officials are talking about their ships taking various supplies to Iran.
I didn't know anything about that until I saw the president,
because we certainly never had any contact with anything of
the kind.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
He tells the American people, I never sold arms for
hostages or anything like that. He's lying. And when presidents
lie through their teeth to the American people, something break.
This happened.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Usually usually it breaks.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, now we're used to it, right, I'm showing my age.
When Dwighteyes Howard got on TV after the CI's YouTube
spyplane was shot down over Russia, he believed CI believed
the pilot had died, right, he had a poisoned needle
it kill himself with. And he says, oh, it was
(19:14):
a weather balloon. It wasn't like a CI spyplane. Well,
then Christoff produces the pilot, Francis Gary powers the CI pilot,
and Eisenhower said, literally he felt a sense of shame
that he had lied to the American people. He said
he wanted to resign as president. Our sense of shame
is now missing from the American's body pods. We've become
(19:36):
inord to presidents lying to us. It was a big
deal at the time, let me tell you. And you
guys ran new with the CIA.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
At the time when it was just coming out, I
was like, okay, I want to get the hostages out.
I'm sorry. Real politic Iron and Iraq fighting each other
at screwm both right pots on both their houses and
they both lose. It was I get the reality politic
of it, but where where as things progressed, I separated
from it as a citizen. Was two or three things.
(20:06):
One was operations Staunch, which is where the US and
CIA was asked to stop any arms flowing into Iran
right at the same time we were doing it right,
so we were talking out of both sides of our mouth,
which is I understand if it's needed, but this was
like self defeating. The other thing was and how we
moved the arms. We actually collaborated, both with the South
(20:30):
African aparthep state to do that, and even worse with
the East German Stazi. I get sometimes things are rough
and sometimes are difficult, and facing off against the access
of evil. I was all about there as a young
officer and still am, but on a big picture. But
there's got to be some limits in the conspiracy, or
(20:51):
at least maybe I don't understand the conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
The originally ethos of the CIA back at its foundation
was that we had to buy fire with fire against
Joe Stalin. Okay. This did not work out well because
the early CIA thought it could operate as the OSS
had done during World War Two and parachute recruited agents
behind the Iron Curtain, behind enemy lines. They all died
(21:16):
with the Iround contract, with selling weapons to the Irragians
to the Revolutionary Guard. It's not just that it was
a really stupid idea. It also violated the law and
the foreign policy of the United States, which Reagan had
proclaimed over and over we do not negotiate with terrorists,
but we will sell them a shitload of missiles to
(21:39):
rip them off in the process.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Hold on for a sec while we take a quick break, and.
Speaker 12 (21:50):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So there was some loose talk at the time that
Reagan would be impeached. Nobody had the heart to impeach
him for violating the Law on the Poor Policy United States.
What did happen, however, was that the Secretary of Defense,
the chief of the seai's Clandestance Service, Dewey Claridge, who
was then the head of the first Head of the
(22:12):
counter Terrorism Center, and a couple of other SEA officers
were indicted for lying to Congress. At the end of
his presidency, in December nineteen ninety two, President George H. W.
Bush pardoned the mall nobody did a day in the
slam for Iran contract.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well, I remember Reagan too.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
He did that.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
He had two public thanks on this. The first time
he came out and said we didn't share arms or hostages.
And then later he came back, almost like with his
tail between his legs and says, as much as I
want to believe that we never did this, text me
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Do it, but my head tells me maybe I did.
Speaker 11 (22:48):
I Fellow Americans, I've spoken to you from this historic
office on many occasions and about many things. For the
past three months, I've been silent on the revelations about Iran,
and you must have been thinking, why doesn't he tell
us what's happening? First? Let me say I take full
responsibility from my own actions and for those of my administration.
(23:09):
As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without
my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As
disappointed as I may be, and some who serve me,
I am still the one who must answer to the
American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as
I find secret bank accounts and diverted funds, one of
(23:31):
the Navy would say, this happened on my watch. Let's
start with the part that is the most controversial. A
few months ago, I told the American people I did
not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best
intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and
the evidence tell me.
Speaker 8 (23:49):
It is not.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Exactly so, when a president comes from the American people,
it looks so shameful and weak. I think he ended
up protecting himself, but the rest of the people ended
up Obviously.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I'll just say it was self defeating because as the
some hostages were released, Hezbollah and its Iranian bankers were
just taking more right. So they were getting weapons as
time went on towards eighty five eighty six, but they
were just going out and snag and more Americans. So
it was becoming like an industry as opposed to a
one time discreete.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
We created an incentive structure that seems to be working.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Let's take more hostages.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And for folks out there who love conspiracy theories, I
got to say, even with CIA involved in Oliver North,
I see there were like some amazing fuck ups that
people forgotten about. At one point that Oliver North or
Fawn Hall, his secretary famous at the time, transposed a
couple of numbers in a Swiss bank account and they
mistakenly sent ten million dollars to the wrong guy. And
(24:45):
so like the Swiss businessman is like I just made
ten million dollars. And then they were hiding the secret
documents in like her boots. She was wearing go go
boots right right of smuddled them out and that didn't
work either. So even at the core of the American government,
there was still some like incredible fuck ups because they're people.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
See here's the thing, guys, Conspiracy is really hard. It
comes from the lat on spieda to breathe together. However,
stupidity is really easy, and nine times out of ten,
in the course of human events, you should never chalk
up to conspiracy what you can reliably attribute to stupidity.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And Casey actually went outside the CIA, two people who
aren't trained in any of this kind of stuff and
keeping secrets. Not that it would have necessarily gone better
if the CIA did it, but having Oliver North and
Vaughn Hall and people do this.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And running with stupidity, Tim, I wonder if you could
take us into the key shaped hate. And to add
to that, I remember meeting George Cave, who's gonna be
part of this story.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Oh, George Cave was like one of the top Iranian operators.
He was a good guy. I'm going back to the
fifties when the SEI overthrew the duly elected government of
Iran and put the Shawn the peacocks thrown back in
fifty four the cake, all right, So this just takes
the cake. Yeah, this is another part of what Oli North.
(26:13):
He actually testified to Congress that the whole Iran contra
thing was and I quote, a really neat idea.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
I don't think it was wrong. I think it was
a neat idea.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So part of the really neat idea was that Oli
North and the National Security Advisor of the United States,
Bob McFarlane. We're going to go to Tehran in a
concert with the first ship and the weapons, and they
bring a chocolate cake and the ice.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
We're going to meet the mysterious moderate Iranian faction. Yeah right,
we still talk about today, right, Like they're good Iranians
in the Iranian government.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
They were apparently unaware or unwilling to believe that the
modern Iranians were dead or in prison. So they bring
this cake and the icing on this chocolate cake has
a old tea in the middle of it, symbolizing the
opening of a new, covert but heartfelt relationship the United
States government and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is
(27:12):
what's gonna happen if people like Telsey Gabbard and Cash
Bateel and God help him, John Radcliffe, get up my question.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Olie North sounds exactly like Cash Bateel and Pete Haigseith
and he's got.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oliver North looks like Napoleon compared to these.
Speaker 12 (27:32):
We're gonna stop here for today, but we'll be back
with Tim Weiner talking more about the potential for actual
conspiracies in the US government. Mission Implausible is produced by
Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher, and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 12 (27:54):
Mission implausible. It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
For iheartpock ask
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