Robert Carl McFarlane (1937 - 2022)

Born 12 Jul 1937 in Texas, United States

Ancestors

Died 12 May 2022 at age 84 in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan, United States

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Biography

Robert McFarlane is Notable.

Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane (July 12, 1937 – May 12, 2022) was an American Marine Corps officer who served as National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985. Within the Reagan administration, McFarlane was a leading architect of the Strategic Defense Initiative, a project intended to defend the US from Soviet ballistic missile attacks. He resigned as National Security Adviser in late 1985 because of disagreements with other administration figures but remained involved in negotiations with Iran and with Hezbollah.

McFarlane was a central figure in the Iran–Contra affair, an operation in which the Reagan administration funneled weapons to Iran and diverted the profits to illegally fund right-wing rebels in Nicaragua. When the scheme came to light, administration officials implemented a plan to insulate Reagan and senior officials by focusing blame on McFarlane. He ultimately pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts and admitted that he had hidden information about the Reagan administration's support of the Contras from Congress. Suffering from guilt over his role in the scheme and feeling betrayed by Reagan, who, McFarlane later wrote, "approved every single action I ever took" but "lacked the moral conviction and intellectual courage to stand up in our defense and in defense of his policy." McFarlane attempted suicide in 1987. He was later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush in Dec 1992, along with 5 other operatives in the Iran-Contra scandal,

His most notable act was bringing a Bible (signed by Reagan) and a chocolate cake (shaped like a key) to Tehran as gifts to the Ayatollah.^[1]

List of people pardoned by Bush for Iran-Contra:

Clair George

Caspar Weinberger

Elliot Abrams

Duane Clarridge

Alan Fiers

Robert McFarlane

Richard Secord and Thomas Clines were also criminally charged.

Sources

1. ↑ Gwertzman, Bernard (11 January 1987). "McFarlane Took Cake and Bible to Teheran, Ex-C.I.A. Man Says". The New York Times.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McFarlane_(American_government_official)

• "United States Census, 1940", database with images, FamilySearch (ark:/61903/1:1:K4QP-9GZ : Thu Jun 08 22:49:23 UTC 2023), Entry for W D Mcfarlane and Mary Ellen Mcfarlane, 1940.

• "United States Public Records, 1970-2009", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KT9M-24D : 18 December 2019), Robert McFarlane, 2001.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair