Iran-Contra Affair

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The Iran-Contra Affair was the biggest political scandal in the United States during the 1980's.

President Ronald Reagan authorized his administration's plan to sell arms to Iran, an avowed enemy, and used proceeds from the sales to illegally fund the Contras, a right-wing guerrilla group in Nicaragua.

At the time, Americans were being held hostage in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a militant Shi'a organization loyal to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

President Reagan appeared to the American public and told a national television audience that the United States had not sold weapons to Iran. In a later televised Presedential Address he clarified that facts showed that the administration had done so. Reagan repeatedly denied that he had authorized the arms exchanges, but took full responsibility for what happened.

Contents

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The Plan

The Reagan Administration calculated that by selling arms to Iran, that nation would influence the Hezbollah kidnappers in Lebanon to release their hostages. Iran was in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War and could find few nations willing to supply it with weapons. Selling these arms generated large amounts of cash. Since Congress had not authorized this activity, disposing of the cash led to the second half of the plan.

In January of 1986, the administration approved a plan proposed by Robert McFarlane employee Michael Ledeen, whereby an intermediary would sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of the hostages, with proceeds made available to the Contras. At first, the Iranians had refused the weapons from Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian intermediary, when both Oliver North and Ghorbanifar created a 370% markup. The arms were eventually sold - in February, 1000 BGM-71 TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-sighted, Wire-guided) missiles were shipped to Iran. From May to November 1986, there were additional shipments of miscellaneous weapons and parts. The U.S. diverted these proceeds to the Contras, right-wing guerrillas engaged in an insurgency against the Socialist Sandinista dictatorship of Nicaragua. Both the sale of weapons to Iran and the funding of the Contras violated stated administration policy and a rider on a spending bill passed by the Congress, known as the "Boland Amendment."

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Discovery and scandal

The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the arrangement on 3 November 1986. This was the first public reporting of the weapons-for-hostages deal. The operation was discovered only after an airlift of guns was downed over Nicaragua. The scandal was compounded when on November 21, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall shredded pertinent documents. US Attorney General Edwin Meese on November 25 admitted that profits from weapons sales to Iran were made available to assist the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

On November 26 President Reagan, faced with mounting pressure from Congressional Democrats and the media, announced that as of December 1 former Senator John Tower, former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft would serve as members of a Special Review Board looking into the matter; this Presidential Commission became known as the Tower Commission. At this point, President Reagan said he had not been informed of the operation. The Tower Commission implicated North, Poindexter, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and others. It did not determine that the President had knowledge, although it argued that the President ought to have had better control of the National Security Council staff.

The U.S. Congress issued its final report on 18 November, 1987, which stated that the President bore "ultimate responsibility" for wrongdoing by his aides and his administration exhibited "secrecy, deception and disdain for the law." Oliver North and John Poindexter were indicted on multiple charges on March 16, 1988.

North, indicted on nine counts, was initially convicted of three minor counts, although the conviction was later vacated upon appeal on the grounds that North's Fifth Amendment rights may have been violated. The violation was said to be the indirect use of his testimony to Congress which had been given under a grant of immunity. Poindexter was convicted on several felony counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and altering and destroying documents pertinent to the investigation. His convictions were also overturned on appeal on similar grounds as North's. The Independent Counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, chose not to re-try North or Poindexter. Weinberger was indicted for allegedly lying to the Independent Counsel, but was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.

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Public admission

Reagan expressed regret regarding the situation on national television on Wednesday, March 4, 1987. In his speech, Reagan stated that his previous assertions that the US did not trade arms for hostages were incorrect. However, he added that he believed what he did was right, and understood how the American people might not think the same way. Reagan survived the scandal, and would see his approval ratings return to previous levels; as the scandal broke in '86, "Reagan's approval rating plummeted to 46%", but he later "finished strong with a December 1988 Gallup poll recording a 63% approval rating".[1]

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Contra-drug links

Sen. John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra-drug links concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." [2] Kerry was suspicious of North's connection with Manuel Noriega, Panama's drug-baron. According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Noriega who had previously worked for the CIA from 1950 to 1986, and had even met him personally.

In August of 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance", a 20,000 word, three-part investigative series which alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed cocaine in the United States during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Webb never asserted that the CIA directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, but he did imply that the CIA were aware of the transactions and may have given them sanction. His work, at first heralded, was later disputed and disowned by the Mercury News, effectively ending his career as a mainstream media journalist. Newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times also endorsed the retraction and denounced Webb's reports.

On December 10, 2004, Gary Webb was found dead. While acknowledging that the two fatal shots that had entered through the back of his head was unusual, coroner Robert Lyons determined that it was suicide. It subsequently became known that Webb had been suffering from clinical depression for many years, though this information was ascertained only after the fact.

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Significance: The separation of powers

The Iran-Contra Affair is significant because it brought many questions into public view that continue to resonate today:

  • Does the President have unconditional authority to conduct foreign policy over the objection of Congress and the laws it passes
  • Can the President approve selling arms to a foreign nation without congressional approval
  • What information does the President have to provide to Congress and when should that information be supplied
  • What information does the President have to provide the American people
  • Can the President present factually incorrect information to the American people about key foreign policy initiatives if he believes his motives are just
  • What authority does the Congress have to oversee functions of the executive branch
  • Does funding for foreign policy initiatives have to be approved by the Congress
  • Who defines the entire spending budget and who regulates it
  • Is the provision of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act that creates the position of independent counsel answering to the Attorney General, constitutional
  • What role does the Supreme Court have in deciding conflicts between the legislative branch and executive branch
  • How much support is America entitled to provide to armed opposition forces seeking to replace governments with ones more sympathetic to the United States

Most, if not all, of the constitutional and ethical questions are still unresolved. On one view, it appears that if the legislative and executive branches do not wish to work together, there are no legal remedies.

These unresolved issues were again in the public eye during the Presidency of George W. Bush, who selected some individuals implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal for high-level posts. These include:

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See also

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External links

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