Robert McFarlane

The former National Security Adviser's accounts were sometimes confusing, and he occasionally displayed an extraordinary disingenuousness. But the commission nonetheless accepted his account of how the President approved the August 1985 Israeli arms shipments to Iran and concluded that McFarlane "clearly" had Reagan's "full support" to supply those weapons to Iran, even though he may have lacked "explicit prior approval." As National Security Adviser, McFarlane "appeared caught between a President who supported the initiative and the Cabinet officers who strongly opposed it." While he made efforts to keep those officers and Reagan informed, he "was not always successful." At the same time, he tried to be protective of the President. In November, he drafted an account of the affair that sought to "gild the President's motives."