And now for some friendly advice for my Republican friends. If you want to criticize President Obama on anything having to do with Iran, don't waste your energy seething about "Iran" and "ransom" and "hostages" and what Ronald Reagan would do. It won't end well for you. After all, it wasn't Reagan's inauguration that secured the released of 52 Americans held captive in Tehran, but months of negotiations by the Carter administration. And as it turned out during the Iran-Contra scandal, the American President who actually paid a "ransom" and "negotiated with terrorists" was none other than St. Ronnie himself.
Iran-Contra, as you'll recall, almost laid waste to the Reagan presidency. Desperate to free U.S. hostages held by Iranian proxies in Lebanon, President Reagan provided weapons Tehran badly needed in its long war with Saddam Hussein (who, of course, was backed by the United States). In a clumsy and illegal attempt to skirt U.S. law, the proceeds of those sales were then funneled to the Contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. As the New York Times recalled, Reagan's fiasco started with an emissary bearing gifts from the Gipper himself:
A retired Central Intelligence Agency official has confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that on the secret mission to Teheran last May, Robert C. McFarlane and his party carried a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders.According to a person who has read the committee's draft report, the retired C.I.A. official, George W. Cave, an Iran expert who was part of the mission, said the group had 10 falsified passports, believed to be Irish, and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated ''opening'' to Iran.
As his diaries published in 2005 show, President Ronald Reagan was under no illusions about the illegality of the scheme—or that it constituted anything other than a swap of arms for hostages. On Thursday, Dec. 5, 1985, Reagan wrote in his diary:
N.S.C. briefing--probably Bud's last. Subject was our undercover effort to free our 5 hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon. It is a complex undertaking with only a few of us in on it. I won't even write in the diary what we're up to.Nevertheless, just two days later the Gipper wrote about that very topic. On Saturday, Dec. 7, Reagan noted this in his diary: