In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State"

by David Rohde

In a nationally televised address in March 1987, Reagan denied any knowledge of the illegal diversion of funds and apologized to the American people. “As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities,” he said from the Oval Office. “As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior.”

A select congressional committee, co-chaired by Democratic senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, held Watergate-style hearings through the summer of 1987 regarding Iran-Contra.

Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and Representative Dick Cheney of Wyoming, Ford’s former White House chief of staff, were the ranking Republicans. Guided by Inouye, these hearings produced overwhelming evidence that McFarlane, Poindexter, North, and CIA officials had flagrantly violated the congressional ban on the United States providing support to the Contras. Meese was accused of orchestrating a cover-up.

saying they were necessary to battle Communism and terrorism.

Instantly, the Marine officer became a folk hero of conservative talk radio. Poindexter, though, played the most important role. In an act that saved Reagan from potential impeachment, Poindexter testified that he acted on his own and never informed the president of the illegal diversion of funds. “The buck stops here with me,” Poindexter told the committee.

In his final remarks at the conclusion of the hearings, Senator Inouye cautioned that a “cabal” of officials who believed they had a “monopoly on truth” was a recipe for “autocracy.” The officials had operated “a shadowy government with its own air force, its own navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and from the law itself. It is an elitist vision of government that trusts no one, not the people, not the Congress and not the Cabinet. … I believe these hearings will be reme...

law.” It held Reagan responsible for the scandal. “If the President did not know what his national security advisors were

Rudman and two other Republican senators backed the majority report and agreed that the affair was a grave constitutional breach.

But Cheney, two Republican senators, and all five other Republican House members on the committee issued a minority report that dismissed the majority report as “hysterical.”

create “all but unlimited Congressional power.”

functions.” The minority report even attacked the Reagan administration, saying it should have argued that it had a constitutional right to flout Congress’s ban on funding the Contras.

At the time, the minority report attracted little attention because its views were considered outside the political mainstream. That would change after 9/11.

With the 1988 presidential election approaching, Democrats noted the similarities between the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals. A cabal of White House loyalists had broken the law—and then flagrantly lied to the American people about it.

be successor. In a series of interviews, Bush emphatically denied any knowledge of the diversion, claiming he was “out of the loop.” Walsh, the independent counsel, pressed his investigation of Bush and the administration.

Before Iran-Contra, he was thought to be in a powerful position to win the Republican nomination and the presidency. But the scandal had damaged Reagan’s popularity, driving his approval rating from 60 percent to 48 percent.

The vice president repeated his long-running claim that he knew little about the arms shipments to Iran and nothing about the illegal diversion of cash to the Contras. He reinforced the narrative that Poindexter and North had kept

from its beginning to its end,” was the full National Security Council membership “formally brought together to discuss the Iran initiative,” Bush wrote. “Not one meeting of the National Security Council was ever held to consider all phases of the operation.” Bush’s account was misleading.

Weeks after the vice president published his book, the Iran-Contra Committee’s majority report contradicted parts of Bush’s narrative. Bush, the report found, had attended a “full NSC meeting” on January 7, 1986, where Weinberger and Shultz both argued against the arms-for-hostages deal. The report also disclosed that North arranged for Amiram Nir, an Israeli counterterrorism expert who was deeply involved in the arms-for-hostage deal, to brief Bush on the operation when Bush visited Israel in 1986.

Iran-Contra complicated his campaign in other ways. On the trail, Bush touted his experience heading the “Vice President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism.” When Bush unveiled the group’s final report on March 6, 1986, he was...

Reagan administration was secretly selling tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sophisticated anti-tank missiles to Iran in exchange for its help in gaining the release of American hostages in Lebanon. After news of the arms shipments became public, members of the task force said that Bush had never informed them of the clandestine arms shipments during their work.

While Shultz and Weinberger vocally opposed the secret program in White House meetings, no clear evidence emerged that Bush—a former CIA director—had aggressively argued against them as well. Bush said that he personally had “reservations” about the sales but never publicly criticized Reagan’s ten-month delay in sharing with Congress the retroactive Presidential Covert Action finding he signed.

In the first Republican primary debate of the 1988 race, former secretary of state Alexander Haig demanded to know whether Bush had advised Reagan to carry out the arms-for-hostages deal. Bush gave a vague answer, running down the debate clock. “You haven’t answered my question,” Haig interjected. Bush replied: “Time’s up.” Several days later, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, Bush’s primary rival at that point, called for Bush to release all notes, recor...

A live, nationally televised interview on CBS Evening News between Bush and anchor Dan Rather ended acrimoniously after CBS reported that Bush was more involved in the affair than he had publicly acknowledged. “You know what I’m hiding?” Bush retorted. “What I told the Presiden...

One of them was William Barr, who had advised Bush when he testified before Congress as CIA director.

In an appeal to conservatives, he vowed, “Read my lips: no new taxes”—a promise that would haunt him politically.

plausible deniability was enough for voters to give a candidate they liked the benefit of the doubt.

Bush’s future White House counsel, asked Barr to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. One of Washington’s most coveted legal positions, the office provides advice to the president and all federal agencies. It is also considered a launching pad for more senior positions. Past directors had included Scalia and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and multiple solicitors

Several months after Barr accepted the position, he produced an unsolicited memo warning other administration officials to resist attempts by Congress to undermine President Bush’s power as president.

the powers of the Presidency had been severely eroded since Watergate

Bush also abided by post-Watergate norms and avoided taking any steps that could be seen as politicizing the Justice Department.

(Bush did not disclose that Noriega had worked as a CIA informant since 1967, including the years when Bush served as CIA director.)

Barr had played a small but secret legal role in the invasion. As the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, he issued a legal opinion that an American president has “inherent constitutional authority” to order the FBI to take people into custody in foreign countries. The opinion reversed an earlier Justice Department policy that the president lacked such authority and expanded executive branch power. After seeking refuge in the Vatican diplomatic mission in Panama, Noriega was arrested by FBI agents and later tried and imprisoned in the United States. After 9/11, the seizure of foreign nationals overseas by the United States would be vastly expanded.

Bush asked if he needed the approval of Congress to use force in Kuwait and Iraq.

Barr said the president had the power to go to war without congressional approval. Barr recalled: “I said, ‘Mr. President, there’s no doubt that you have the authority to launch an attack.’

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney objected to Barr giving Bush political advice. “Cheney said, ‘You’re giving him political advice, not legal advice,’” Barr recalled. “I said, ‘No, I’m giving him both political and legal advice. They’re really sort of together when you get to this level.’” Barr exhibited traits he would show again when he served in the Trump administration—boldness and a willingness to mix politics with legal opinions. After Bush and his aides convinced Congress to pass a bipartisan

He also carried out tough-on-crime policies, increased drug-related prison sentences, and cracked down on illegal immigration. His approach reflected the views he held before, during, and after his time as the country’s chief law enforcement officer. In a 1995 symposium on violent crime, he argued that the root cause was not poverty but immorality. “Violent crime is caused not by physical factors, such as not enough food stamps in the stamp program, but ultimately by moral factors,” he said. “Spending more money on these material social programs is not going to have an impact on crime, and, if anything, it will exacerbate the problem.”

When rioting erupted in Los Angeles after the 1992 acquittal of four police officers who were videotaped beating motorist Rodney King, Barr deployed 2,000 federal law enforcement agents to the city on military planes. He argued that federal civil rights charges should have been brought against both the rioters and the police officers who assaulted King. “We could have cleaned that place up,” he lamented. “Unfortunately, we just brought the federal case against the cops and never pursued the gangsters.”

A devout Catholic, Barr won praise from social conservatives for his staunch opposition to Roe v. Wade. In a July 4, 1992, interview on Larry King Live, he predicted that the Supreme Court would eventually overturn the landmark ruling. “I think it will fall of its own weight. It does not have any constitutional underpinnings.”

Barr also won praise from backers of presidential power for his opposition to the appointment of independent counsels. In his 2001 oral history interview, Barr warned that politically ambitious prosecutors would be tempted to in...

The most politically sensitive independent counsel request concerned “Iraqgate”—a 1992 investigation into whether Bush administration officials played an improper role in a criminal scheme involving an Italian bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. Investigators said that US government–backed agricultural loans to Saddam Hussein were illicitly used for weapons purchases. Barr rejected calls to appoint an independent counsel, drawing the ire of William Safire, a conservative columnist at the New York Times, who mockingly referring to him as “Coverup-General Barr.”

(A subsequent investigation by the Clinton Justice Department found no wrongdoing by Barr or any Bush Administration officials.)

Lawrence Walsh,

To Barr, Walsh was an example of post-Watergate congressional overreach,

someone who, as Scalia had warned, could endlessly carry out “debilitating c...

Barr was disdainful of Walsh and said his continuing investigation had hung o...

After the triumph of the first Gulf War, his approval rating plummeted from over 80 percent in the spring of 1991 to 31 percent in the summer of 1992.

punishing economic recession and Bush’s violation of his “no new taxes” pledge as part of a bipartisan deficit reduction deal.

The most damaging dynamic for Bush was the independent candidacy of billionaire businessman Ross Perot,

enough. Clinton, promising to focus on the economy and bring change to Washington,

garnering 43 percent of the vote to Bush’s 37 percent. Perot captured 18 percent