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Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane (born July 12, 1937), was National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to late 1985 and was one of the major players in the Iran-Contra Affair. He and his successor, Admiral John Poindexter, were heavily involved in both the Iran and Nicaragua sides of the scandal.

After graduating high school, McFarlane attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. While there, he earned a commission in the United States Marine Corps. After attending The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, he was sent to Vietnam where he served with the Marine artillery. He left the Marine Corps at the rank of Lt. Colonel.

The Iran-Contra Affair involved running arms to Iran in order to get money to support the Contra Guerilla fighters in Nicaragua.

McFarlane was serving as an assistant to Secretary of State Alexander Haig, in 1981, when he authored "Taking the War to Nicaragua" and led the Restricted Inter-Agency Group (RIG) which formulated and carried out the administration's Central America policies. Later, as National Security Adviser, McFarlane urged Reagan to negotiate an arms deal with Iranian intermediaries against the advice of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz.

In May 1986, after his retirement, he acted as an envoy for two planeloads of weapons parts delivered to the Iranians. When the first planeload failed to win Iranian cooperation or the release of any hostages, McFarlane refused to deliver the second plane and returned to the US where he advised the president to quit. When news of the secret mission was published in the Lebanese weekly Al Shiraa complete with unflattering details and confirmation from top Iranian officials, Chief of Staff Donald Regan attempted to spin the story. McFarlane refused to speak to the press but was rattled by Regan’s accusation that he had been the sole official behind the weapons transfers. McFarlane quickly shot off an email to Poindexter threatening a libel suit and warning that he “wouldn’t tolerate lies from Don Regan.”

Disheartened, and abused by his former colleagues, McFarlane tried to kill himself with an overdose of Valium on February 9, 1987, saying he had failed his country. In 1988 he pleaded guilty to four counts of withholding information from Congress for his role in the Iran-Contra cover-up. He was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $20,000 fine but was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush in the waning hours of his presidency on Christmas Eve 1992 along with the other key players in the scandal.

McFarlane later co-founded and served as CEO of Global Energy Investors.

McFarlane is a member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Board of Advisors, the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security Board of advisors, The Advisory Council of Aegis Defence Services and he is a founding member of the Set America Free Coalition. He is also an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy.

On April 18, 2001, McFarlane said "I think in the Defense Department you may be seeing a little bit of a change, a significant change in how the Pentagon will contribute to policy formation, and that is that you have a very strong team, unusually strong team of service secretaries, who are usually irrelevant to the policy process. I think that'll be different in this administration."

• “Complaint That Donald Regan May Be Placing Blame for the Iran Initiative on Robert McFarlane,” Secret PROFS email (November 7, 1986). Original source: US National Security Council.
• Kornbluh, Peter and Malcolm Byrne, eds. The Iran-Contra Affair: The Making of a Scandal, 1983-1988 (Document collection). Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey; Washington, DC: National Security Archive, 1990.
• Kornbluh, Peter and Malcolm Byrne, eds. The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History. New York: New Press, Distributed by W.W. Norton, 1993.
• Walsh, Lawrence E. Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up. New York: Norton, 1997.
• Timberg, Robert, The Nightingale's Song. New York: Free Press, 1996.
• http://www.brook.edu/fp/research/projects/nsc/transcripts/20010418.pdf
• McFarlane, Robert C. / Smardz, Zofia: Special Trust. Pride, Principle and Politics Inside the White House. Cadell & Davies, New York, NY, 1994

• US-Iran relations

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