Lawrence Walsh

Lawrence Edward Walsh was born January 8, 1912, in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He died March 19, 2014, in Oklahoma City. He served as a federal prosecutor and judge in New York, as Deputy Attorney General under Eisenhower, as a deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations under Eisenhower and briefly under Kennedy, and as a senior partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York before his appointment as Iran-Contra Independent Counsel in December 1986. His investigation was the most extensive Independent Counsel inquiry in American history to that date.¹

Appointment and Mandate

Walsh was appointed Independent Counsel for Iran-Contra on December 19, 1986, by a three-judge Special Division panel under the Ethics in Government Act, following the revelation of the arms-for-hostages scheme and Contra funding diversion in October-November 1986. His mandate covered potential crimes arising from the sale of weapons to Iran, the diversion of proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contras, and related obstruction of congressional investigations.¹

Walsh was a Republican who had been considered for federal judicial appointment under Nixon. His selection for what became an adversarial investigation of a Republican administration created persistent accusations of partisanship from administration defenders, which Walsh consistently denied.¹

Indictments and Convictions

The Walsh investigation produced 14 criminal cases:

• Oliver North (NSC staff): indicted on 12 counts; convicted on 3 in May 1989 (making false statements, obstructing Congress, destroying documents). Conviction reversed in 1990 by the D.C. Circuit on immunized testimony grounds; charges dismissed in 1991.
• John Poindexter (National Security Adviser): convicted on 5 counts in April 1990. Conviction reversed in 1991 on immunized testimony grounds.
• Richard Secord: pleaded guilty November 1989 to one count of making false statements.
• Albert Hakim: pleaded guilty November 1989 to one misdemeanor count.
• Tom Clines: convicted September 1993 of four tax offenses.
• Elliott Abrams (Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs): pleaded guilty October 1991 to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress. Pardoned December 1992.
• Robert McFarlane (National Security Adviser): pleaded guilty February 1988 to four misdemeanor counts. Pardoned December 1992.
• Duane "Dewey" Clarridge (CIA European Division chief): indicted November 1991 for perjury and false statements; pardoned before trial.
• Clair George (CIA Deputy Director for Operations): convicted December 1992 of two counts of perjury; pardoned before sentencing.
• Alan Fiers (CIA Central American Task Force chief): pleaded guilty July 1991 to two misdemeanor counts; pardoned December 1992.
• Caspar Weinberger (Secretary of Defense): indicted June 1992 for perjury and obstruction; pardoned December 24, 1992.¹

The North and Poindexter convictions being overturned on immunized testimony grounds - because testimony they had given to Congress under grants of immunity may have influenced witnesses who testified against them at trial - was the most significant legal obstacle Walsh faced. It effectively prevented full judicial resolution of the central criminal events.¹

Bush Pardons

On December 24, 1992, six weeks after losing re-election and three weeks before Walsh was to release key findings relating to the knowledge of senior Reagan administration officials, President George H.W. Bush issued pardons to Caspar Weinberger (whose trial had been scheduled for January 1993), Elliott Abrams, Robert McFarlane, Clair George, Alan Fiers, and Duane Clarridge. Walsh issued a statement calling the pardons "a misuse of presidential pardon power" and stated that Bush had sought to "undermine a criminal investigation of which he himself was a subject."²

Walsh had been investigating Bush's role in the Iran-Contra affair, including notes Bush claimed not to exist that were subsequently produced showing his knowledge of the arms-for-hostages scheme. The pardons prevented Walsh from completing that aspect of his investigation. Walsh later wrote that the pardons constituted a cover-up rather than executive clemency.²

Final Report

Walsh's Final Report was released in three volumes in August 1993 and in its complete form in January 1994. It concluded that Reagan's senior advisers had undertaken the Iran arms sales and Contra diversion with the knowledge of and in service to administration policy, and that the subsequent cover-up - including the destruction of documents and false testimony - was directed at the highest levels of government. The report documented what Walsh called "the criminalization of policy differences" - the use of secret operations and lying to Congress as substitutes for lawful policymaking when the administration could not obtain congressional approval for its objectives.¹

Publications

Walsh published a memoir, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up (W.W. Norton, 1997), documenting the investigation's obstacles including executive branch obstruction, the immunized testimony problem, and the Bush pardons. The book remains one of the primary insider accounts of the Iran-Contra independent counsel investigation.¹