Lawrence Walsh - Independent Counsel

Independent Counsel

On December 19, 1986, Walsh was named as the independent counsel in charge of the Iran-Contra investigation. His investigation led to the convictions of both former National Security Advisor John Poindexter and National Security Council member Oliver North, though both convictions were subsequently reversed. Walsh also brought an indictment on two counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice against former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger in June 1992, though much of the indictment was dismissed for technical reasons that September.

On the eve of the 1992 presidential election, on October 30, Mr. Walsh re-indicted Weinberger on one count of "false statements." The indictment conflicted with longstanding Justice Department policy of not bringing an indictment of a political figure out of a grand jury after August of an election year. Walsh went further, specifically implicating Bush in the scandal, though the accusation was irrelevant to the indictment. Bush had been closing the gap with Bill Clinton when Walsh made the indictment, and many believe Walsh's action put the final nail in his campaign. Clinton administration attorney Lanny Davis called the decision to indict a week before the election rather than after the election "bizarre." Judge Thomas Hogan dismissed the October indictment two months later for being outside the statute of limitations. Weinberger's subsequent pardon by President George Bush in December 1992 preempted any trial. Walsh steadfastly denied that the investigation was politically motivated, as Bush and others criticized it as "the criminalization of policy differences."

Walsh submitted his final report on August 4, 1993, and later wrote an account of his experiences as counsel, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up. In 2003, Walsh published his autobiography, The Gift of Insecurity: A Lawyer's Life.