Original subtitles

A revolution in Nicaragua

brings a new government into power,

and President Reagan believes the Cold War

now has a new front.

When the White House launches a secret campaign

to support an opposition movement known as the Contras,

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North is tapped to lead the effort.

The Masters golf tourney

in Augusta, Georgia each year

beckons to the greats of the golf world.

The royalty of golf holds sway over the crowded galleries

on their tours around the difficult course.

One of the perks of being president

is that if you feel like playing a few rounds of golf

at one of the most prestigious clubs in the world,

you can just make that happen.

In October of 1983, it was a golfing weekend

for President and Mrs. Reagan.

They were going to the Augusta National Golf Club.

The club was actually closed,

so it was a perfect time for the Reagans to go.

It was good weather,

and...it was supposed to be a very quiet weekend.

Reagan was playing golf on the 16th hole...

And someone drove their pickup truck through the gate.

They actually rammed the chain-link fence.

He took two White House staff as hostages at gunpoint,

held them, and said he wanted to meet with President Reagan.

The hostage taker was named Charles R. Harris,

and it was remarkable that he made it as far as he did.

Remember, there had been an assassination attempt

made on Reagan in 1981.

Heightened security had become the norm.

The Augusta National Golf Club was totally fenced in,

and it was pointed out that security is quite good,

in addition to our Secret Service and everything.

They knocked the gate down. Initially, the truck backed up,

rammed the gate again,

knocked it completely down, and rode over it.

It was suggested by Chief of Staff Don Regan

to just communicate with him,

try to do it by phone and go from there.

But we've got to get our two hostages,

our two staff, freed.

The president called the phone in the pro shop

to see if he could talk to Harris and broker a deal.

Harris didn't believe

that it was actually Reagan on the line.

So he hung up and pulled the phone out of the wall.

Augusta National was sealed off,

and Air Force One prepared for evacuation.

And then, almost as quickly as it started,

the crisis was over.

About 2 1/2 hours later,

after demands for whiskey and food,

the seventh hostage bolted from the room where he was held

and escaped unharmed.

The subject was captured.

Harris would later say

that a combination of his recent job loss,

Reagan's economic policies, and a bottle of tequila

drove him to go to the Augusta National Club that day.

As hostage incidents go,

this one resolved itself pretty easily.

But if it had happened on any other day,

it would have been a much bigger story.

Good afternoon.

The count of American dead in today's terrorist attack

on the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut stands at 135.

In the middle of the night, in Beirut, at the airport,

where we had marines stationed,

a truck drove through a checkpoint

loaded with dynamite, detonated... a suicide attack.

The explosion in Lebanon was the deadliest attack

against U.S. Marines since Iwo Jima.

It was terrible, terrible time for President Reagan.

There are no words

to properly express our outrage

and I think the outrage of all Americans.

In many ways, the ongoing conflict in Lebanon

would define Reagan's second term.

The blood feud in the Mideast continues.

Lebanon is the arena for nearly everybody's battle.

The country is bleeding for nine years.

We have not more... we want the world not to bleed anymore.

It is the key to understanding how Reagan

would become a captive of his own hostage crisis,

just like Jimmy Carter had before him.

Four Lebanese employees of the Associated Press

in Beirut have disappeared.

Once again,

Americans are held hostage in the Middle East.

They are beating the passengers.

They are threatening to kill them now.

The president had campaigned on the idea of American strength.

I don't understand

why 52 Americans have been held hostage

for almost a year now.

What would he do now that tough talk

was suddenly not enough?

To what lengths would he go

to bring his fellow Americans home?

We've never let up, and we never will

in trying to obtain the freedom of all the hostages.

I'm Leon Neyfakh.

the Story of Iran-Contra."

At Beirut, the jet-set arrive in the same way

they do at all the airports in the world.

Despite its small size,

Lebanon has always wielded great influence

in the Arab world.

The capital city of Beirut was its pearl.

I was born and raised in Beirut.

It was a lovely childhood,

growing up in a country that was, um, peaceful.

Lebanon was a very cosmopolitan place.

We spent a lot of time at the beach.

We spent summers in the mountains.

And family life was really what it should be.

And I think, looking back, it's what sustained me

during the many hard years of the war in Lebanon.

It was during the mid-1970s,

after nearly two decades of peace,

that Lebanon erupted in civil war.

Lebanon was struggling to maintain a political order

that had been established in the '50s,

something that was called the Compact,

where ethnic groups, as groups,

agree on a balance of power and assigned roles.

One group is the prime minister.

One group gets the presidency.

One group gets the speaker of the parliament.

And that was the structure that had endured.

But it was under severe attack because of the civil war.

Things had kind of started brewing

in '75 and '74.

And then I went for my master's,

and the country blew up in flames.

It's now a year since Lebanon's social tensions

finally and inevitably exploded into war.

There were days that were normal.

There were lulls in the fighting.

And there were days when it was extremely dangerous.

We always had the radio up to our ear

to listen to the news flashes

on the various Lebanese radio stations,

representing various factions.

What was really changing was the most impoverished,

the least powerful, the Shia, were now being emboldened

and strengthened by the resurgence of Iran

under Khomeini.

And so what we saw was

a further splintering of Lebanese democracy,

more violence, more terrorism,

more intimidation.

The Syrian military had intervened.

The Israelis had invaded.

Everyone who was anyone was involved in Lebanon.

Back in Washington,

Reagan's National Security Council

was keeping a close eye on events in the Middle East.

They relied in part on the global alert system

housed in Oliver North's office, room 392.

The flashboard was where we put up

the latest incidents...

who was working on them and what was happening,

and, you know, what were all the steps

that needed to be taken.

And, you know, was sort of a real-time picture

of global terrorism.

Here, again, it's important to go back

to the year 1979.

The year when revolution took hold in Nicaragua,

Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran,

52 American citizens were held hostage in Tehran

for 444 days.

The turbulence of that year

had a ripple effect even after it ended.

This was especially the case in the Muslim world.

Khomeini and Iran saw Lebanon

as a way to buffer itself

against American retribution or punishment.

It was a very convenient and strategic alliance with Iran

that continues to this day.

Before the civil war,

Lebanon had been an ally to the United States.

But the instability of the country

had put that in danger.

Now the Khomeini regime in Iran

was trying to stake out a position in Lebanon.

If Iran succeeded in gaining influence in the region,

it would be a disaster for the U.S.,

an upset in the global balance of power.

Sensing that things were spiraling out of control,

President Reagan sent an emissary to Lebanon

to negotiate a cease-fire.

Ambassador Habib has informed me

that a plan to resolve the West Beirut crisis

has been agreed upon by all the parties involved.

As part of this plan,

the government of Lebanon has requested,

and I have approved,

the deployment of United States forces to Beirut

as part of a multinational force.

Our purpose will be to assist the Lebanese armed forces

in carrying out their responsibility

for enduring... ensuring the departure

of PLO leaders,

officers, and combatants in Beirut

from Lebanese territory

under safe and orderly conditions.

But Reagan's attempt to contain the civil war

didn't work.

What was meant to be a peacekeeping mission

turned into something else.

When Marines took fire in Lebanon,

the U.S. retaliated.

And they were accused of taking sides.

And so the efforts by the United States

to bring about the removal of all foreign forces...

failed.

Terror and chaos reign in Beirut.

Fighting was as bad, or nearly as bad,

as anything since the civil war

began back in 1975.

Taking direct inspiration

from the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979...

Four Lebanese employees

of the Associated Press here in Beirut this morning

are still missing.

Shiite radicals in Lebanon

began to take hostages.

The Iranians weren't the first to do this.

There was a long tradition in Lebanon,

as part of a fight between clans

or between ethnic groups of taking people hostage.

Some argue the Islamic Fundamentalist movement

at the base of the hostage taking

has grown not just in numbers but also in fanaticism.

After 1979, the Iranians came to learn,

as did everybody else in the region,

that you can get a lot of leverage

out of a couple of hostages

when it came to dealing with the United States.

An American diplomat is being held

by kidnappers in Beirut this morning.

Several U.S. citizens have been kidnapped.

All presumably by a fundamentalist Muslim group

called the Party of God.

And it's threatening what they called a "black fate"

if Washington tries any retaliation.

Our approach... long, drawn out,

attracting constant media attention...

that just played to the Iranians

and to the hostage takers.

Any kind of hostage situation creates a huge dilemma...

whether you're going to be able

to recover those hostages safely and securely

or whether or not you are going to be

in a situation where,

because you can't pay ransom,

you're going to basically have to risk losing their lives.

It's a very difficult dilemma.

They hold all the cards

once they have these people in their power.

I can get mad enough now to think of a couple of things

we could do to retaliate.

But I would probably be sentencing

a number of Americans to death if I did it.

They knew they had created a business,

and they could extract all kinds of value from it.

And as long as we were not willing

to make anyone pay for this behavior,

it was going to continue, and it did.

In February of 1984,

Reagan withdrew American troops from Lebanon.

It was a controversial move.

Critics believed it signified a win for Islamic terrorism.

It was a low point in the Reagan presidency.

But things were about to get much worse.

Between 1984 and 1985,

seven Americans were taken hostage in Beirut.

Among them was Reverend Benjamin Weir,

a Presbyterian minister

who had lived and worked in Lebanon for 30 years.

An American clergyman has been kidnapped in Beirut.

The story is still unfolding.

My father was the representative

of the Presbyterian Church

to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

He knew a lot of people.

He was well-known. He was well-liked.

Early on the morning of May 8, 1984,

Reverend Weir and his wife, Carol,

were leaving their apartment.

Police here say he and his wife

were walking down a narrow lane in West Beirut

when three unarmed men overpowered him

and then forced him into a car, which sped away.

My mom tried to fight them off,

and they basically just muscled him into the car

and drove off.

I don't think he was kidnapped

for anything that he has said or done.

I think he was kidnapped to give visibility

to the disillusionment people have here

with the American policies in this area.

My father was very aware of his situation

and his surroundings.

He didn't go out that much, to be honest.

I was never really worried about that happening.

In addition to Weir,

the group of hostages included a Catholic priest,

a correspondent for the Associated Press,

and three employees of the American University in Beirut.

The White House was most concerned

with one hostage in particular:

a U.S. official named William Buckley.

There is no word at all from Beirut tonight

on the whereabouts of American diplomat William Buckley.

The political officer at the U.S. embassy

was kidnapped this morning as he left for work.

But William Buckley wasn't just a diplomat.

He was a CIA agent.

Before his capture, Buckley's mission had been to rebuild

the agency's Middle Eastern intelligence network.

It was a huge, important job.

CIA director Bill Casey had handpicked Buckley

for the position

after the U.S. embassy bombing in Beirut in 1983.

According to neighbors,

Buckley was just leaving

his apartment building in his car this morning

when three gunmen in a white sedan

suddenly drove up and blocked the street.

Buckley had been with the CIA for decades.

His capture was a major security liability

for the Reagan administration,

and his well-being became a top concern

for President Reagan.

The watchman at Buckley's apartment

said one of the gunmen walked up to the diplomat's car,

put a gun to his head,

and ordered him into their car.

But CIA director Casey was especially troubled.

Buckley was one of his men,

and he knew a lot of secrets

that his kidnappers would surely try

to torture out of him.

Bill Casey understood that

if you really want to keep morale up in your agency,

you better let people know you're gonna do everything

you can to not leave them behind.

We tried to use every diplomatic channel we could

to reach the captors.

We didn't know if he was dead or not.

Generally, there's a rule that we had

when I was secretary of defense:

you never leave anybody behind.

You owe that person who was taken

every effort to try to get that person back

securely and safely.

While the Reagan administration

looked for ways to save Buckley,

the family of Benjamin Weir remained in the dark.

Have you had any indication from the state department

or anyone else that your dad is alive?

Well, we hear from time to time

through other sources that he is alive and well.

And everyone assumes that he is alive.

But from day to day, we really don't know if he is alive.

We are wanting to try to have an appointment

with the secretary of state and to the president

to see if we can't speed up the release of these men.

I remember talking to my sisters

and my sisters being upset and my mom being very upset.

You know, just the complete lack of information.

My mother was just very worried

about what people would do to him.

She would always say, you know,

"He's a very gentle man."

You know, I think she was worried

that he would be injured in some way

or killed in some way.

And then, suddenly, there was news.

The letter was dated February 15th.

It was mailed February 19th from Beirut.

Reverend Weir's captors released videos and letters,

giving his family the proof of life they were desperate for.

"I am writing to ask you

"to do everything in your means to demand

"that the U.S. government intervene effectively

with the government of Kuwait."

The Shia group holding Reverend Weir

wanted the U.S. to negotiate a prisoner swap with Kuwait,

but the Reagan administration was unwilling to assist.

While President Reagan clearly wanted

to bring about freedom for the hostages,

the American policy was,

"We don't make concessions to terrorists.

We're not gonna compromise."

The United States gives terrorists no rewards

and no guarantees.

We make no concessions. We make no deals.

"We make no deals."

What started as a talking point

in Reagan's campaign

had become a mantra for the administration.

Let me further make it plain to the assassins in Beirut

and their accomplices

that America will never make concessions to terrorists.

We have tried our best, through every kind of channel,

to establish their whereabouts.

It is an extremely difficult, seemingly impossible task.

And no, we haven't given up on them.

We have never given up.

It's... as you can realize,

it's very frustrating.

We're doing everything that can be done,

and I have no further comments

that I'm going to make at this time.

Every government in the modern era

has had to figure out

what to do about hostage-taking and terrorism.

Some governments are more known

for being willing to strike deals.

The United States has almost always had a policy

of no negotiation... at least a formal policy.

The Reagan White House had made a lot of political hay

out of Jimmy Carter's issues with the hostages in Iran.

We've endured this humiliation

for just lacking one week of a year now.

People have been telling me

that Jimmy Carter's doing his best,

and that's our problem.

It was pretty clear to us

that they were kind of suppressing,

as much as they could,

discussion of hostages or use of the word "hostages,"

and they did not want to have a hostage problem

like Jimmy Carter'd had.

Promising retaliation had been easy

when Reagan was welcoming hostages home.

Let terrorists be aware that when the rules

of international behavior are violated,

our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution.

Now it was another thing altogether.

We have used every effort

to see if we can locate who has them, where they are,

whether they're together or separated.

For now, this new hostage crisis

was not receiving the same level of public attention

the 1979 crisis had,

and that was convenient for President Reagan.

But it wouldn't last.

It's been 311 days

since an American Presbyterian minister

was grabbed on the streets of Beirut,

one of four missing Americans presumed to be in the hands

of extremist Shiite Muslims in Lebanon.

As Carol Weir continued to search for answers,

she relied on the personal contacts

she had made during her 30 years in Lebanon.

She knew people, and she knew the players.

Though my mother was not in tune

to all the local political details

like my dad was,

she certainly, you know, was politically aware

of some of the things that were going on.

And, you know, she started trying to figure out

who had him, what was going on,

what did they want, what could she do

to accelerate the process of getting my dad released.

But Carol Weir's questions to Washington

were going unanswered.

We met with Secretary of State George Schultz...

my mother, myself,

and a couple of the executives of the program agency,

and we found that to be a very, very frustrating meeting

and that Secretary Shultz

really did not have very much information.

We had asked for a meeting with the president.

He said he would convey that to the president.

We were never given an appointment

with the president.

We were told he wouldn't have time.

It was just a very discouraging

and rather disillusioning time for me.

When she finally did hear something,

she was assured the U.S. government

was doing all they could.

They were just being quiet about it.

It became described as "quiet diplomacy."

You know, "You just need to be patient."

To Reagan, quiet diplomacy was working with our allies,

working with the countries

where we had established relationships,

not necessarily holding summits

or press conferences,

but coming up with some kind of at least

a short-term or daily strategy

to try to get the hostages freed.

That was not an answer

that my mother was willing to accept.

None of the American officials were able or willing

to give her any significant information.

And it didn't seem, to her,

that they were making any progress.

So she was very frustrated.

Carol Weir decided then

to take matters into her own hands.

It's been more than ten months

since the Reverend Benjamin Weir

was kidnapped outside his apartment

by terrorists in Beirut.

- Good morning, Mrs. Weir. - Good morning.

Do you think the government

has been doing all it can to gain his release?

Well, I think the government has been at work,

but I think a special effort needs to be made now,

and that's what I'd like to see happen.

Weir began what was essentially

a cross-country press tour.

This has been nearly 11 months

since my husband, the Reverend Benjamin Weir,

was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon.

She gave speeches at churches, on TV shows

to anyone who would listen.

I'm convinced that the administration

is not doing enough to get my husband released.

I would like the United States government

to open all channels of communication.

He was kidnapped not because of any relationship

we have had with the Lebanese,

but he was kidnapped because he is an American.

And once they had the attention of the media,

the Weirs renewed their lobbying efforts.

I am asking the administration

to give a higher priority to this matter.

And I need your help too.

I urge you to write to the president

seeking his personal intervention

for the release of Ben

and the other hostages being held.

We were constantly trying to come up

with a way of delivering the message

that this had gone on long enough.

Part of it was just keeping it in the public eye,

reminding the White House that we were there,

hoping that somebody would be able

to come up with an answer.

- Mrs. Weir, good luck. - Thank you.

We're... we're all with you.

Finally, the Weirs got in direct contact

with the president.

Nope. Not that one.

We asked for a meeting with Jimmy Carter

and put out some feelers,

and some people responded that they could set it up.

So we flew to the airport in Atlanta,

and Jimmy Carter met us in a lounge at the airport.

That the Weirs wanted to meet with former President Carter

may come as a surprise.

Then again, he did have experience

navigating a hostage crisis.

And he was a very humble guy, very modest.

He said, "You know,

I'm not really sure you're gonna want my advice."

And we said,

"No, you know, we really want to hear from you.

"You know, what can we do?

What aren't we doing that we should be doing?"

He said, "You know, Bud McFarlane works

"in the current administration,

"in the National Security Council.

And Bud is a good guy."

And here we should step back to introduce

one of the key players in the Iran-Contra scandal:

Robert "Bud" McFarlane,

who became Reagan's National Security Adviser in 1983.

Mr. President, there's several things

this morning on the agenda.

For McFarlane,

the job of National Security Adviser

was a logical step in a distinguished career

that included two tours in Vietnam

and stints as an aide

for some of the top political minds of his era.

I had worked for Henry Kissinger for four years.

Was on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Henry was and remains

a profoundly important influence in my life

in shaping how I go about defining a problem.

As an assistant to Henry Kissinger in 1971,

McFarlane witnessed Kissinger's landmark achievement

of opening relations with China.

And ever since, he had aspired

to a foreign policy trophy of his own.

He had a framework within his mind,

which I admired and generally adopted for my own behavior

in analyzing a given set of problems.

My first impressions of Bud McFarlane

was that he was a hard-nosed, strategic thinker.

And I was extremely excited about the prospect

of actually working with someone who had studied

and worked with Henry Kissinger.

Another member of the National Security Council

was Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz.

And, as it turned out,

Schultz had a different view of the NSC than McFarlane.

As national security adviser, Bud McFarlane had Reagan's ear.

So the Weirs traveled to Washington to meet with him.

McFarlane's an extremely deliberate speaker.

Very thoughtful guy.

Very calm.

He said, "You know, I understand what's going on.

"We're working on this.

"We're well aware of what you guys are doing.

"And you guys should keep it up.

"And I got a guy on my staff,

"Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North,

"and he will be your contact person.

"And if you have any questions or any issues,

Colonel North will make himself available to you."

The Weirs were thankful

to have a contact in the White House.

But, initially, at least, Oliver North didn't seem

to deliver any further breakthroughs.

Colonel North would provide information from time to time

about trips he was taking.

He wouldn't give any details, but he would say,

"Well, you know, I flew in an F-14 to go to Europe

for a quick meeting that was really important."

They never really gave us any solid information.

It was never really clear to us what they were up to

or what they were doing, and when they thought

the hostage situation would be resolved.

But we did feel like we were finally talking

to the right people.

The Weirs were cautiously optimistic.

But President Reagan's hostage crisis was just beginning.

110 hostages, at least 85

and possibly as many as 102 of them Americans.

Only a few feet from the cockpit.

I can see Captain John Testrake.

When TWA 847 was hijacked,

that specific hostage situation

became nearly all-consuming.

There was very little that happened

where the president didn't ask about hostages.

They said that they would shoot

an American every five minutes

if they did not get their demands.

The hijacking took Reagan's hostage problem

to a new level.

The CBS movie will begin immediately

following the CBS News report on today's hijacking.

This hijacking took TWA Flight 847

on a horror-filled odyssey from almost one end

of the Mediterranean to the other.

TWA Flight 847 lifts off

from Athens, Greece bound for Rome.

Two men who were sitting in the rearmost seats

of the aircraft got up and ran to the front of the plane.

20 minutes into a routine flight from Athens to Rome,

two Shia militants took control of Flight 847

and the 145 passengers aboard, most of them Americans.

They went into the cockpit.

One of them re-emerged with a... with a gun.

The TWA hijackers eventually redirected

the flight to Beirut International Airport.

Pleads from the plane crew became more urgent.

He wants to fuel now.

Immediately. Five minutes, at the most,

or he's going to kill passengers.

We are doing our best.

The hijackers collected passports

and began separating passengers.

Those with Jewish-sounding names

were moved to the front.

Three members of the U.S. military were identified,

putting their lives in danger.

Among them was a U.S. navy diver named Robert Stethem.

Fuel was not all they wanted.

The hijackers demanded that all Lebanese Shiite Muslims

held by Israel be released to the Red Cross.

There are some 700 in Israeli prisons.

After some negotiation,

the plane was refueled in exchange for the release

of 17 women and two children.

I hope everybody back home will pray for us.

But even with their release,

the situation on the plane continued to deteriorate.

That afternoon, the plane is forced to fly to Algiers,

the first of two very long round-trip journeys

the terrorists will make in a day and a half.

We have been flying all day long.

The pilot told the control tower the hijackers

were now threatening to throw one of the Americans

out of the plane.

The runway was cleared and lit.

The plane landed with only a few minutes fuel remaining.

The White House had been monitoring

the situation closely.

But before President Reagan could deliver

an official address on the hijacking,

tragedy struck.

Robert Stethem was brought to the tarmac

and shot in the temple.

Reagan couldn't stay silent any longer.

His murder and the fate of the other American hostages

still being held in Beirut underscore an inescapable fact:

the United States is tonight a nation being attacked

by international terrorists and want...

and who wantonly kill

and who seize our innocent citizens as their prisoners.

Two days after Stethem's murder,

Reagan called an emergency meeting

of the National Security Council.

He began by unfolding a letter and reading it out loud.

The letter, written by 29 of the American hostages

on Flight 847,

was addressed directly to Reagan.

This letter from the TWA hostages was very painful.

It was clear that the president was in pain.

In the letter,

the hostages made a desperate plea for the president

to negotiate their release, to convince the Israelis

to free the 700 Lebanese prisoners

the hijackers had demanded.

When the president finished reading,

he looked around at his aides

and asked them what could be done.

But then you have to say,

"We're gonna do everything we can to get you out,

"but we're not going to change "our principles or our morality

"or the things we believe in just to save you.

We're not gonna compromise."

The risk was that we would be seen as a country

that would pay money for hostages,

and that put everybody at risk.

So it was very important to bring an end to that idea.

With the pushback from Reagan's secretary of state

and the rest of his National Security Council,

the conversation stalled.

But Reagan kept thinking about the letter.

The humanity was visible to everyone.

Everyone was moved.

And I'm sure it actually hardened

the president's determination

to bring about a peaceful solution.

Reagan's sense was,

"This is something that I can really

"make an impact on as President.

"It's my job...

it's my responsibility to get them back."

Facts are hard to come by, difficult to confirm.

As sure as anything can be in the hurly-burly and horror

of a murderous hijacking...

You now had global coverage.

We know what the power of television still is,

and it was very powerful then.

And no one understood that better than Ronald Reagan.

In Beirut, five of the Americans held hostage

were put on display by terrorists holding them,

paraded into a room and surrounded

by about 100 teenagers with machine guns.

Sit down, sit down!

When they were having their first conference,

it really scared us, really scared us.

There had never been anything like it.

It was a worldwide first: competitive journalists

interviewing captors with captives.

We, as a group do most importantly want

to beseech President Reagan and our fellow Americans

to refrain from any form of military or violent means

as an attempt, no matter how noble or heroic,

to secure our freedom.

I miss my wife very much. I want to go home.

And God willing, we'll be home soon.

Critics call the coverage excessive

and accuse journalists of interfering in a crisis,

of turning from observers to negotiators.

There were a lot of ethical concerns at the time.

I always felt that we had the responsibility

to keep people apprised of what was happening.

The families needed to know.

The American government needed to know.

But we were also giving a free platform

to these groups that were using us.

The terrorists in the TWA crisis

received immeasurable attention.

But it was the way they got it

that has inflamed the new debate over the role

and responsibility of the news media.

Here, you had a situation

of human beings isolated from their families,

totally controlled by the... by the thugs,

knowing that men with AK-47s

were prepared to blow them away,

knowing they were gonna leave that room

and go back into... into prison,

and yet that press conference

was dealt with as though it was normal people

talking to us in a normal setting.

That's crazy.

We were kind of caught in the middle.

I remember reporting

with a very uneasy feeling at the time.

Yet, in a way, we were held hostage,

because it was a story that could not be ignored.

With the media storm growing,

Reagan became further preoccupied

with the task of freeing the TWA hostages.

Reagan met with his national security team every morning.

At what point can you pay off the terrorists

without endangering people from here on out

once they find out that their tactics succeed?

That question always came up

because he never wanted them not to be focused on it,

wanted it on the tops of their minds

as it was on Reagan's...

and to find a way to get them back.

On July 1, after more than two weeks in captivity...

...the TWA hostages were finally released.

And three days later,

the Israeli government freed 300 Lebanese prisoners.

The U.S. denied any connection to the release,

and Israel claimed the timing was just a coincidence.

There's only one thing to say,

and I say it from the bottom of my heart,

in the name of all the people of our country:

welcome home.

The release of the TWA hostages

should have brought a measure of relief for Reagan.

But there were still seven American hostages in Beirut

who needed his help.

We can be thankful that our faith, courage,

and firmness have paid off.

But this is no moment for celebration.

Let it be clearly understood that the seven Americans

still held captive in Lebanon must be released

along with other innocent hostages from other countries.

In the emotionally fraught days after the TWA crisis,

Bud McFarlane took a meeting with a trusted associate

who seemed to offer a way to help the Beirut hostages.

An Israeli diplomat named David Kimche.

David Kimche was

the director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry.

I think that this is a test of the sincere attitude

of our neighboring countries to terrorism.

They had their relationship going back several years.

They knew each other quite well.

And they regularly met and talked about the world.

So this was another one of those meetings.

But at this meeting,

Kimche came up with a particular suggestion.

Out of respect for David and his wisdom,

I listened to what he said, and it was simply stated

that there are elements in the Iranian Army

that are prepared to open a dialogue with us.

Kimche was offering a back channel to Iran

that could help de-escalate the hostage crisis.

Given the relationship between the U.S. and Iran at the time,

the possibility of such a back channel was astonishing.

But there was no one happier to entertain the idea

than Bud McFarlane.

McFarlane had long believed it was possible

that there were moderates within the Iranian government

who would be receptive to a diplomatic relationship

with the United States.

I really didn't imagine

that we had a plausible prospect

of being able to engage with this government.

I did think, however, that there were reasons

why the circumstances facing Iran

might give us an opportunity to influence a regime change.

It was essentially just a hunch,

but it was guided by the same strategic thinking

that he had learned from his mentor,

Henry Kissinger.

But there was a catch.

David's opinion was that

the people that his intermediary

was dealing with in the Iranian Army

were people who had the military and political wit,

and for them to engage with us at all,

being at risk and us being at risk,

each would have to show evidence

to their own constituencies.

Iran wanted the U.S. to supply them with weapons

for use in their war with Iraq.

It was a big request.

But the Iranians were offering something valuable in return,

something that Reagan was desperate for.

As long as those people are there and threatened,

we cannot give up on them.

And I hope that they have confidence in that.

Kimche was saying

Iran could help free the hostages in Beirut.

He proposed a meeting between McFarlane

and an Iranian intermediary

who could move the conversation forward.

Kimche presented it as their being able to achieve

the release of the hostages.

And while his name may be unfamiliar to most,

he is an essential character in the Iran-Contra story.

So, where should we resume?

We want to talk about Ghorbanifar.

The Iranian intermediary

for the Iran initiative, as we called it,

was a man named Manucher Ghorbanifar.

He was a short, overweight,

balding, bearded guy

who you certainly wouldn't have taken

for an international arms dealer.

But that's what he was.

Ghorbanifar played this pivotal role,

sort of a classic rug merchant role...

try to bring the sides together.

He had a relationship with the Israeli government,

and he convinced them

that there were elements in Iran

that were now becoming more pragmatic,

who wanted to talk.

And after a few weeks of discussion,

a proposal was made:

100 American missiles would be traded

for all seven American hostages.

It was straightforward,

but presented some major risks.

There was only an acceptable risk

if you had very high confidence

in the good faith of the Iranian counterparts.

And I didn't know any of them.

Even though McFarlane didn't know Ghorbanifar,

his reputation preceded him.

We called him Gorba,

and that was the polite name we had for him.

He was a prevaricator, liar,

thief of the first magnitude,

well-known for these attributes

amongst various agencies.

Ghorbanifar was well-known to the CIA.

And although the CIA concluded he was a fabricator,

many countries, including Israel,

continued to deal with him.

They wanted to re-establish diplomatic,

government-to-government relations with Iran.

And by the way, we get the hostages out too.

It was a noble idea, I guess.

But they picked the wrong communicator

in this guy Gorba.

McFarlane was also troubled

by the terms of the deal, specifically the weapons.

After the 1979 hostage crisis...

Americans held hostage. Pictures of their...

...there was an international effort

to stop weapons sales to Iran.

The United States had promoted and upheld the policy.

If the rules of international behavior are violated...

If it leaked out that they

were secretly selling weapons to Iran,

it would be a diplomatic disaster.

So there was a lot for McFarlane to look past.

But he decided to bring the proposal to the president.

There was an unexpected development

for President Reagan today

during an operation to remove a small polyp from his colon.

Doctors discovered a second larger growth on his intestine.

That will require major surgery.

Around the time of McFarlane

and Ghorbanifar's conversations,

President Reagan underwent surgery.

The hostages were one of the first things

he asked about when he woke up.

How you feeling?

And so it was at the hospital

that McFarlane spoke with Reagan for the first time

about the idea of trading arms for hostages with Iran.

I gave him the factual summary of what Kimche had said...

that he, Kimche, had concluded

that there were disaffected officers,

portrayed them as being open to working with us.

McFarlane told Reagan that the Iranian moderates

were willing to pressure their associates in Beirut

to release the American hostages

still being held in Lebanon.

And he brightened immediately and said,

"We really ought to keep the dialogue going."

I said, "This is a very high-risk venture for you,

"politically... that it's very uncertain

"that this can be maintained in clandestine terms."

But he focused upon what Kimche had said.

"But we can't let an opportunity

of that... though it's risky... go by."

It might be surprising

that Reagan was willing to accept the idea so quickly.

Negotiating with terrorists, after all, would violate

one of the core principles of Reagan's presidency.

Working on the Middle East and terrorism

was a constant struggle of reconciling contradictions.

It was important for us to have a clear policy

that we do not negotiate with terrorists.

Having said that,

sometimes realists have to break principles

and do what is necessary to try to achieve a goal.

Almost from the outset, the administration was divided

on the viability of the proposal.

McFarlane had tried to push this idea earlier

and had gotten laughed out of town, basically.

Caspar Weinberger, the secretary of defense,

said something like,

"This is almost too absurd to comment on.

"It would be like inviting Gaddafi of Libya

for a cozy chat."

So McFarlane was shut down, but he didn't give up.

George Schultz was indifferent about it.

Thought that it had merit, but was uneasy.

Weinberger was totally opposed to it.

In the end, it was Reagan who said,

"Just do it. Let's go. It has to be done now."

Bud had his marching orders, and he did not relent.

He didn't hold back, and it went forward.

So how was the United States

going to sell a cache of missiles to Iran

without anyone knowing?

We didn't want to use any American military aircraft,

so the Israelis became the sort of logistical center,

in part due to geography, but also because Ghorbanifar,

the Iranian middleman, had approached the Israelis.

And the Israelis were very cooperative.

And so it was decided.

American-owned weapons would pass through Israel,

and Israel would make the sale to Iran.

With the big picture worked out,

McFarlane turned the operation over

to one of his most trusted deputies...

Oliver North.

Terrorists, be on notice.

We will fight back against you in Lebanon and elsewhere.

We will fight back against your cowardly attacks

on American citizens and property.

We will not rest until justice is done

The Weir family and the families of the other hostages

still remained largely in the dark.

With the information they had, all they could do was hope.

Well, I'm one of the family members

that tries not to get excited,

because we ride quite an emotional roller coaster,

going from the peaks, during these rumors, to the valleys,

where you don't hear anything for many months on end.

So I'm very hopeful.

But I'm not going to change any of my plans

until I'm certain it's true.