WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Robert McFarlane, a White House adviser who tapped Saudi royals to fund a covert war in Nicaragua and flew on a secret mission to sell arms to Iran in the scandal that shook Ronald Reagan’s presidency, has died.
He was 84.
McFarlane, who was in Michigan visiting family, died on Thursday of complications from a prior illness, his family said in a statement.
McFarlane first worked in the White House under Richard Nixon, as a military aide to foreign policy chief Henry Kissinger, after serving two tours in Vietnam as a Marine officer.
Quiet and poker-faced, McFarlane gathered power in Reagan’s White House “under a cover of dullness,” reporter Robert Timberg wrote. Reagan appointed him national security adviser in 1983 mainly because he was the least controversial choice.
Four years later, televised congressional hearings that revealed McFarlane as a linchpin in the scandal known as Iran-Contra riveted millions of Americans.
McFarlane led arms sales to people he thought were moderates in Tehran on hopes they could free seven U.S. hostages held by Iran-linked Hezbollah in Lebanon. The failed attempts to free them circumvented a U.S. arms embargo to Iran and took place only a few years after Iranian militants had held 52 hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran for more than a year.
In the hearings, McFarlane told lawmakers he was unaware that profits from the arms sales were diverted to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua who were fighting the socialist Sandinista government until his protégé and fellow Marine, Oliver North, told him so.
But years earlier McFarlane had set in motion ways to fund the Contras, who were fighting the democratically elected Nicaraguan government, without Congress knowing. In the end, the scandal highlighted the ability of White House officials to conduct foreign policy on their own and skirt the Constitution’s system of checks and balances meant to keep such policies from spinning out of control.
While McFarlane worked on nuclear weapons control and many other tough issues in Reagan’s White House, he feared he would ultimately be remembered for Iran-Contra. He regretted resigning from the White House in the middle of it, yet became ever deeper involved in the scandal after leaving.
