Former White House national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane, a top aide to President Ronald Reagan, pleaded guilty to charges for his role in an illegal arms-for-hostages deal known as the Iran-Contra affair. McFarlane, who lived in Washington, died Thursday from complications from a previous lung condition at a hospital in Michigan, where he was visiting family, according to The Washington Post and The New York Times.
McFarlane, a former Marine lieutenant colonel and Vietnam combat veteran, resigned from his White House post in December 1985. He was later pressed into service by the administration as part of a plan to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the freedom of Western hostages in the Middle East and pass the proceeds to the contra rebels in Nicaragua for their fight against the Marxist Sandinista government.
He was a major role in the affair, leading the secret delegation to Tehran, then a U.S. adversary, to open contact with moderate Iranians who were thought to hold influence with kidnappers of American hostages. He brought a cake and a Bible signed by Reagan with him.
The scheme began after a cargo plane carrying a CIA-arranged shipment of arms was shot down in October 1986 by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, triggering one of the biggest modern political scandals.
McFarlane was rushed to a Washington-area hospital in February 1987 after taking an overdose of Valium the day before he was scheduled to testify before a presidential commission investigating the affair.
He pleaded guilty in March 1988 to four misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress, admitting his role in the affair.
"I did not withhold information from the Congress," he told reporters at the time. I believe strongly that my actions were motivated by what I believed to be in the foreign policy interest of the United States. He was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush, along with five other figures, was among the five people who were involved in the scandal.
McFarlane, a career Marine known as Bud to his friends, had risen to lieutenant colonel and to positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He served as national security special assistant to Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford during their presidencies.
During the Carter administration, he was on the Republican staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee. With Reagan's election he returned to the executive branch and served as a State Department counselor until moving to the White House as national security adviser William Clark's deputy in January 1982. He was appointed to the top national security post in 1983.
McFarlane is a graduate of the U.S. The Naval Academy was the son of a former Democratic congressman from Texas, William Doddridge McFarlane, who served from 1932 to 1938. He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son.