World of Criminal Justice on Robert Carl McFarlane
Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane served in various foreign policy positions in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations. As national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1993 to 1995, McFarlane became entwined in events that came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1988 he pleaded guilty to four counts of withholding information from Congress.
McFarlane was born on July 12, 1937 in Texas. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. McFarlane was drawn to the foreign policy arena, serving as a military assistant to national security advisor Henry Kissinger from 1973 to 1975. He remained in this position when Brent Scowcroft succeeded Kissinger in the Ford Administration. McFarlane retired from the Marine Corps in 1979 and joined the State Department as an undersecretary when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. The following year he moved to the White House to become deputy national security advisor, serving in that position until July 1983, when he became a special presidential envoy to the Middle East.
President Reagan named him national security adviser in October of 1983. In this position McFarlane served as the president's chief advisor on foreign policy and oversaw the National Security Council Soon after taking this position McFarlane became involved with questions involving U.S. relations with Iran and with U.S. support of Nicaraguan Contra rebels who were fighting the Marxist Sandinista government. At the time Iran was viewed as a hostile nation and one that the U.S. government considered off-limits to American business and trade. As for Nicaragua, Congress had placed strict limitations on providing military aid to the Contra rebels.
By 1984 McFarlane and other high-ranking aides to Reagan had conceived a plan to secretly sell arms to Iran and to divert these revenues to the Contra rebels. As these arms sales moved forward, McFarlane and others sought to use the influence of Iran to free American hostages held in Lebanon. In May, 1986 McFarlane traveled to Teheran, the capital of Iran, with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North to negotiate a deal to exchange U.S. arms for American hostages held by Islamic extremists in Lebanon. The mission ended in failure.
In early 1987 details of the Iran-Contra affair began to leak out. A presidential commission and a congressional investigation were launched. Soon after the scandal broke McFarlane took an overdose of a tranquilizer in an attempt to end his life. He later said that what drove him to despair"was a sense of having failed the country." McFarlane, unlike most of the others implicated in the scandal, came to question the wisdom of misleading Congress and the American people.
Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh charged McFarlane with a number of serious crimes. He pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors and was sentenced to two years probation and 200 hours of community service. McFarlane also had to pay a fine of $20,000. President George H. Bush, who as vice president during the Reagan era denied any direct involvement in the Iran-Contra efforts, pardoned McFarlane in 1992, shortly before leaving office.
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