Robert Carl 'Bud' McFarlane was a career United States Marine Corps officer who graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1959 and served, including during the Vietnam War, before transitioning to high-level government roles in the Reagan administration. As National Security Adviser from 1983 to 1985, he was a principal architect of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a proposed missile defense system against Soviet ballistic threats, and hired Michael Ledeen as an NSC consultant on Iran, authorizing his May 1985 trip to Israel that initiated the Iran-Contra arms channel. McFarlane resigned in December 1985 due to policy disagreements with other officials but remained engaged in covert negotiations involving Iran and Hezbollah. His involvement in the Iran-Contra affair led to a guilty plea in 1988 for withholding information from Congress; he was sentenced to two years probation and fined, later receiving a presidential pardon from George H.W. Bush in 1992. Post-government, McFarlane pursued business ventures, international consulting, and occasional policy commentary. He died by suicide on May 12, 2022, at age 84. McFarlane's career exemplified Cold War-era national security expertise, marked by military valor, strategic innovation, and controversy over secret arms dealings.