Word: toweringly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Appointed in early December to examine the structure of the NSC, the panel turned into an aggressive inquisition on the Iran-contra affair. Former Texas Senator John Tower, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Maine Senator and Secretary of State Edmund Muskie reached their conclusions with resounding unanimity after taking testimony from some 80 witnesses and reviewing thousands of documents, including a treasure trove of NSC computer messages notable for, among other things, their frequent misspellings...
...versions of his recollection of what he had done about Israel's sale of 100 U.S.-made antitank missiles to Iran in August 1985. This shipment started America's involvement in Iran arms sales, since it was conditioned on agreement that the U.S. would resupply Israel. Testifying to the Tower board this past Jan. 26, Reagan said he had approved the shipment sometime in August 1985. He even underlined a portion of McFarlane's testimony making the same point to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On Feb. 11, however, Reagan told the board that after discussing the matter with Regan...
...Tower commission finds the legality of these NSC staff actions murky, partly because in December 1985 Congress altered the Boland Amendment to permit some CIA intelligence exchanges with the contras. A classified appendix provided other loopholes. Scowcroft calls the Boland Amendment a "masterpiece of ambiguity...
...wonder that Lieut. Colonel North did not have the time or inclination to linger over literary style. For as the Tower report voluminously documents by reprinting those memos, North was operating as a reckless and overburdened free agent of the NSC. During 1985 and '86 he simultaneously conducted a tense and frustrating series of arms-hostages negotiations with Iran and coordinated a supply line for the contras in Nicaragua. Like the ringleader of a vast, secret circus, North masterminded an elaborate network of boats and planes, along with not-for-profit corporations and Swiss bank accounts to help...
...memos in the Tower report reveal both Ollie the dutiful Marine and Ollie the renegade cowboy. The commission found that North kept National Security Adviser John Poindexter "exhaustively informed" of his actions through a computer network they code-named "Private Blank Check." The name aptly describes the license Poindexter gave his aide to carry out foreign policy through questionable initiatives in the name of the U.S. In negotiations with Iranian officials, he announced that the U.S. was tilting away from its official policy of neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war, and he fabricated fantastic stories of meetings with the President...