Iran-Contra: White House e-mail

In November 1986, as the Iran-Contra scandal broke, President Reagan's national security adviser, John Poindexter, and one of Poindexter's aides, Oliver North, began electronically destroying more than 5,000 e-mail messages in the memory banks of the White House computer system. What they apparently didn't know was that these messages were still retrievable from the e-mail system's backup tapes. Investigators from the FBI and the Tower Commission subsequently used these tapes to reconstruct the Iran-Contra scandal.

Below are some of these e-mail messages, made public after a six-year lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive and allied historians, librarians and public interest lawyers. Portions noted "Deleted, (b)(1)(s) exemption" have been deleted for national security reasons. Otherwise, the content of these messages, including abbreviations, misspellings, typographical errors, etc., are found here exactly as they appear in the originals. The NSA has made 4,000 of these messages available in a book, "White House E-mail," published by The New Press.

How to read the e-mail:

The computer system's code acronyms for the sender and recipient are at the top of each message. Thus, for example, a message reading "MSG FROM: NSOLN --CPUA TO: NSRCM --CPUA" is from NSOLN (initials for Oliver L. North, preceded by NS to indicate the National Security Council e-mail system) and is addressed to NSRCM (code for Robert C. McFarlane, Poindexter's predecessor as national security adviser).

Key:
NSOLN = Oliver North
NSRCM = Robert McFarlane, national security adviser (1983-1985)
NSJMP = John Poindexter, national security adviser (1985-1986)
NSWGH = Wilma Hall, aide to McFarlane
NSAGK = Alton G. Keel, deputy national security adviser
NSWRP = W. Robert Pearson, NSC deputy executive secretary
NSFEG = Florence Gantt, aide to Poindexter
NSPBT = Paul Thompson, deputy NSC executive secretary
OTHER - Vincent Cannistraro, NSC director of intelligence