When the national press reported Friday night the death of Robert “Bud” McFarlane, the lead in stories of the Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who served as Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor was universal: McFarlane (who was 85 at the time of his death) was a figure in the Iran-Contra scandal and, as it was unfolding in 1986, he tried to commit suicide.
Tragic and indeed true, but there was so much more to the saga of the Marine who loved the Corps and who was beloved by his fellow “leathernecks”— and all of it admirable.
Like so much in official Washington D.C., McFarlane’s rendezvous with destiny began as the result of a little-noticed change in government personnel that almost never occurred.
In 1983, White House Chief of Staff Jim Baker told President Reagan he was tired of the routine in his job and asked to be named National Security Advisor (the position was then being relinquished by William P. Clark, Reagan’s longtime California associate).
Baker also proposed that Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Deaver, another Reagan intimate from California, take over as chief of staff.
“I agreed to this,” Reagan recalled in his memoir "An American Life," “But then [Counselor] Ed Meese, Bill Clark, [CIA Director] Bill Casey, and [Secretary of Defense] Cap Weinberger got together and tried to convince me it was a bad idea. Some were not enthusiastic about having Mike, whose job involved overseeing White House political and public relations, become chief of staff. There was also resistance to Jim becoming national security advisor. I decided to reverse myself and scrap the change.”
Unmentioned was that Meese and the other three were committed conservatives, and did not trust the less ideological Deaver and Baker.
After considering and rejecting UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick (“there was some bad chemistry between her and [Secretary of State] George Shultz”), Reagan decided to give the job to Clark’s National Security Council (NSC) deputy Bud McFarlane.
Appointing McFarlane to the NSC instead of Baker was “a turning point for my administration,” Reagan wrote, prophetically adding that “I had no idea at the time how significant it would prove to be.”
The 40th president was, of course, referring to what would mushroom into the only major scandal of his administration.
As NSC head from 1983-85, McFarlane’s accomplishments were many. He was at Reagan’s side when the U.S. sent in troops to Grenada to thwart a Cuba-backed coup, and had gathered messages from the leaders of neighboring countries who requested the rescue mission. McFarlane was also an early advocate of the missile defense system that Reagan would sculpt as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—in his words, “to protect the American people rather than avenge them.”
With six different factions fighting each other in Lebanon in 1984, McFarlane assumed the portfolio as special envoy to the Middle East. He also was involved in all of the administration’s efforts to get aid to the anti-Communist contras in Nicaragua and worked closely with the CIA’s Casey.
(At one meeting with the two of them and Jim Baker, Reagan — referring to Casey’s storied habit of mumbling and sometimes sounding incomprehensible — turned to McFarlane and joked: “Who’s going to interpret?”).
Based on information he received from the Israeli government, McFarlane told Reagan Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini was extremely ill and near death, that a moderate faction in the Iran government wanted a “back channel” relationship with the U.S. as a prelude to establishing normal relations between Washington and Tehran.
But it was not to be. The Iranian initiative, which involved McFarlane and others securing three American hostages, collapsed. Israeli intelligence, normally the best in the Middle East, was apparently flawed in connecting the Americans with “moderate” Iranians — who, it turned out, demanded huge sums of money for providing assistance.
The Tower Commission, which investigated violations of law and mistakes by the administration, determined there was “no hard proof” of diversion of funds from the Iranians to the Contras — the premier accusation of law-breaking by Reagan and his staff.
When Iran revealed the secret dealings it had with McFarlane, NSC staffer and Marine Colonel Oliver North, and the other figures involved were investigated and eventually prosecuted. Depressed over the embarrassment he had caused his president, McFarlane took several Valium tablets in an attempted suicide in February 1987. He recovered and eventually pled guilty to four misdemeanor counts. Sentenced to two years’ probation and a $20,000 fine, McFarlane was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Christmas Eve of 1992.
The son of a Texas congressman, McFarlane graduated near the top of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1959. Trained in artillery operations, the young Marine officer became executive assistant to the deputy Commandant for Operations and briefed him before appearances at congressional hearings.
He served with valor in Vietnam, and had two combat tours. Returning home after earning the Bronze Star, McFarlane became the first Marine Corps officer to serve as a White House Fellow. Working with then-NSC head Henry Kissinger on President Nixon’s trip to China, he developed a passion for and expertise in foreign policy. After retiring from the Marine Corps in 1979, McFarlane went to work on staff of Texas Sen. John Tower (who would later chair the commission investigating Iran-Contra) and helped mobilize the case against the SALT II arms treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union by the Carter Administration.
McFarlane first came to Reagan’s attention when he wrote much of the foreign policy planks of the Republican platform on which the Californian successfully ran for president in 1980. He named McFarlane counselor to the State Department and then to the NSC staff.
McFarlane’s love for his beloved fellow Marines and their love and respect for him was always evident. Retired Col. Jack Brennan, who served as a top aide to President Nixon, may have said it most succinctly about his old comrade-in-arms: “Bud was a great father and grandfather, and a great American. And he cared more about my welfare than his own.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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