I was recently watching an episode of American Dad that had the following song in it:
Pretty hilarious stuff. I’ve looked over some wikipedia articles and seems fairly accurate, but I wanted to get the opinions of people who actually lived through the media reports, the congressional hearings, etc. Does this summary, although funny and while poking a bit of fun at the situation, somewhat accurately represent how the Iran-Contra affair went down?
Specifically…
Did Oliver North really volunteer to take the blame? I read that Reagan did authorize, in some form or another, Iran-Contra. Did Oliver North go above and beyond what Reagan had authorized, or did he really just become the scapegoat for Reagan and the administration.
I also read that Oliver North did “get off totally scott free” but it was only on appeal after being found guilty because of some technicality having to do with his congressional testimony immunity.
I also looked up Fawn Hall, his “hot secretary”, and found that she did shred documents, and smuggled some out. Was this more for North, for Reagan, or for both?
I’m really asking for opinions or speculation, so I think IMHO would be the best place for this. So much of this is really unverifiable so I don’t think GQ is a good place to go. Then again, this might become a debate, so perhaps GD?
Also, why do Republicans idolize Reagan if all of this really went down?
Didn’t look at it yet, but it probably barely scratches the surface. Reagan was sold on the idea of an arms deal with Iranian moderates under the theory that it would help assuage anti-US sentiment there and perhaps increase the level of moderates in charge. That was all a lie. There were no Iranian moderates. It was an arms deal brokered for profit, nothing else. When it was uncovered that Reagan was giving (not selling) a massive amount of arms to Iran, and the arms dealers were going to profit from it, the Iran-Contra scheme was dreamed up. They decided to claim the idea was to raise money for the Contras, an artifically created handful of anti-Sandinistas in the employ of the CIA. Congress had forbidden the transfer of US funds to the Contras, so they invented the idea that the arms were sold to Iran so the arms dealers could give money to the Contras. Despite the long convoluted story, there was never a shred of credible evidence that this was anything but treasonous activity by rogue intelligence officers. There was never a penny transferred to the Contras, nor any evidence that there had ever been an intention to do so. Oliver North who should have been hung got off on a technicality after being represented by the ACLU.
Republicans who idolize Reagan are idiots, generally prolific liars, and without exception in my experience, cowards.
Thanks TriPolar, so basically it’s way worse than what this song makes it out to be. Haha! Jeesh I can’t believe I didn’t know more about Iran-Contra until this episode of American Dad. I figured I would have learned more about it if it were such a big deal… but, nope.
Any other input on the Iran-Contra affair? Even if you don’t want to go and watch the video and comment on it, any insights from people who lived through it would be greatly appreciated.
Why do you think people aren’t more aware of what happened? I’m 25 and very interested in politics and history and such, and I never thought it was such a big deal… but as I learn more it seems like this is something everyone should know about!
Am I off base here, or was it really pretty terrible.
It was indeed “acts of high treason” as the song indicates, and various people should have been either been executed as traitors or imprisoned for their role in the whole thing.
There were reasons that so many people, particularly young people, found Reagan and his ilk to be so distasteful.
The Iran-Contra concept was in itself a justification for keeping Reagan from being impeached. The motivation to sell arms to Iran was to make money. The motivation for the Sandanista opposition was to keep the populace scared of a Communist invasion while intelligence officials smuggled cocaine into the country, along with profitting from round-about arm sales to ‘private individuals’. Democrats disgust me almost as much as Republicans for letting this go.
I’m a little confused. How did the concept help keep Reagan from getting impeached… so the blame could be passed onto North (and others?). And what exactly did the drugs have to do with it? Why would intelligence officials smuggle cocaine into Nicaragua?
Why is this not common knowledge and why didn’t it bring down the republicans for decades after it was found out? Why is Reagan still considered a national hero, one of the better presidents, etc?
Yes. This deflected the seriousness (and level) of involvement that Reagan was perceived to have.
Not into Nicaragua; into the US.
When you have LOTS of money and political power, almost anything is possible. ANYTHING. The people who backed Reagan, and profited from his administrations policies, have that kind of money.
Because TriPolar is presenting the absolute worst case scenario: that Reagan personally sold the arms for profit and “invented” the Iran-Contra scheme to keep getting impeached. He then presents it as common knowledge and widely accepted.
That particular interpretation of the scandal is, to put it bluntly, simply not a mainstream view on Iran-Contra then or now (and I speak as someone who followed it closely at the time.)
What we actually know is this:
Iran had 7 Americans held hostage in Lebanon, Reagan wanted to bring them home. However he had publicly stated he would never negotiate with terrorists.
Reagan spoke both publicly and privately as a supporter of the Contras, they were not a small movement that was invented entirely by the CIA (that’s TriPolar presenting as fact something on which there is no consensus.) The Contras had over 20,000 soldiers and were receiving support from both the United States and Argentina. They were a legitimate military opposition to the Nicaraguan junta.
The Iranians approached Robert McFarlane with a request to buy weapons, they were involved in a very serious war with Iraq throughout most of the 1980s. McFarlane was an advocate of selling weapons to the Iranians. It appears McFarlane’s primary interest was he believed he could make the Iranians more pro-American and strengthen America’s position in the Middle East with such a deal. It appears Reagan was sold on the plan because he thought he could use the deal to get the Iranian terrorists in Lebanon to release some American hostages. Keep in mind the United States was actively backing the Iraqis in their war with Iran, so to start helping the Iranians is kind of dirty pool regardless of what else is going on, to support both sides in an active war.
A newspaper in the Middle East breaks the story that the arms deal has happened. Reagan denies that any such deal happened, he backs off on that as more information comes out. Even when Reagan admits the deal happened he denies that he sold arms to Iran to bring back hostages, he does this because (I suspect, this is speculation) he doesn’t want to have to publicly admit he was working the deal to get hostages returned because he had explicitly told the American people his administration would not negotiate with terrorists. (FWIW the deal seems to have gotten three of the hostages released directly but then three more were captured soon after.) At the time the widely held public belief, by something like 90% of Americans (this is based on my memory of opinion polling) was that Reagan did the deal to return hostages. That in itself may explain a great deal of the reason that, in 1989 when Reagan left office it was with one of the highest approval ratings in history. Because the overwhelming majority of the public felt Reagan clandestinely sold arms to Iran (in violation of an embargo) to rescue Americans being held hostage in Lebanon, most Americans were willing to give him a pass. Many viewed it as “breaking the rules for the right reasons” something that pretty much everyone identifies with at some point in their lives when faced with a rule or regulation that gets in the way of doing the right thing.
As the investigation into the sale of arms to Iran heats up, it is found that of the $30m the Iranians paid for missiles, only $12m is accounted for–this is where Oliver North comes in. North states that he directed the remaining $18m to the Contras, he says that he did it based on an earlier order from Reagan in which Reagan said he wanted to help the Contras “by any means necessary.” Most people feel that North was basically taking a fall for Reagan here, but what he was taking a fall for we can never really know, I guess.
Since North always maintained that he did it based on a non-specific order of Reagan’s to “help the Contras in any way possible”, he was able to argue that he thought he was acting with approval but at the same time he insulated Reagan from being directly implicated in giving the order to funnel money to the Contras (which was illegal due to the Boland Act.)
Some people maintain that the money never went to the Contras and it went somewhere else, and that North was covering up something far worse.
Some people believe that North was operating with generalized approval but genuinely did not have specific approval from Reagan to funnel the money to the Contras. Anyone speaking in absolutes here is a partisan. The Tower Commission found that Reagan did not properly manage his administration and that he had subordinates who routinely made decisions that should have required Presidential approval without even consulting Reagan.
Did Reagan specifically order the money funneled to the Contras? Was it actually sent somewhere else as part of some corrupt action on Reagan’s part? No one really knows. What we do know from the facts of history is several laws were broken but by and large everyone avoided serious penalty. North had his conviction overturned on appeal (on a technicality, but an important one, he was given immunity to testify before Congress so using that testimony to convict him was legally improper.) North’s boss, Admiral Poindexter, was forced into retirement. Various smaller players had indictments come down against them. Robert McFarlane was convicted but pardoned by Bush.
In total, the Iran-Contra scandal is thus two scandals. The first is the selling of weapons to Iran. Reagan got a pass on that because the public more or less felt it was “justified misbehavior.” The funneling of the proceeds to the Contra was a second scandal, one that people generally did not support to the same level. Funneling the money to the Contras was a dirty act in violation of specific laws to stop such a thing, and additionally was not for a “noble” reason like freeing hostages but was for supporting armed revolutionaries in a covert action. Hardliners in America who were staunchly anti-Communist (such as myself) applauded this part of the action at the time, because we were all about undertaking activity in central and South America to undermine Communists. The more liberal Americans who were not supportive of such goals eventually seem to have given Reagan a pass (based on his approval ratings when he left the White House), because Oliver North successfully took most of the blame and kept Reagan clean for this part of the scandal.
The idea that the whole scheme was to make money and the rest of this is made up is, to be honest, not supported by anything I heard at the time, the findings of the Tower Commission, or any of the congressional investigations I’ve ever seen.
Keep in mind we’re talking about $30m, chump change for everyone involved. If that was going right into Reagan’s bank account, sure, that’s not chump change. But there is absolutely no way that happened. $30m is chump change to the arms company that made those missiles (who weren’t directly involved), and it was chump change to the United States (even then we had a budget in the hundreds of billions a year.) The logical conclusion is, since the money was generated covertly and thus didn’t have to go through the Congressional appropriations process it was easy money to use for something else Reagan wanted to do (fund the Contras) and for a group like the Contras $30m (or $18m actually) was a large amount of funding (it buys a lot of small arms.)
Basically the damage control was solid, the linkage to Reagan directly for criminal acts was not strong. Many in the public felt the understood reasons this happened justified at least parts of it. Many felt Oliver North was a scheming liar, but not so much Reagan himself. Also, this story broke at the end of 1986, which was near the end of Reagan’s Presidency. The investigations continued into the 90s, but by January of '89 when Reagan left the White House the scandal had mostly been de-emphasized. Remember that with the Berlin Wall falling and the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s many people felt we had won the war against Communism, and thus any unsavory acts that happened during that struggle were mostly something the public wasn’t interested in rehashing ad infinitum.
Thank you Martin Hyde for that extremely detailed and easy to read post. I feel much more educated on the whole affair and now I feel like I can understand more about the sentiments and history behind it.
This is exactly the kind of insight and information I was looking for. I really, really appreciate your response.
Poindexter, McFarlane and North were also involved with Air America. I’d pay good money to get my hands on copies of “Guns, Drugs and the CIA” as well as “The Secret Government”. I believe they were PBS documentaries.
I neither stated nor implied any such thing. Reagan was senile and probably didn’t know what day of the week it was. I’m not convinced he had any prior knowledge of the arms sales.
That part at least, is accurate.
Consensus is irrelevant, and the type of thing used to determine the existence of the tooth fairy. There is no evidence that the Contras ever consisted of more than handful of people operating under the instructions of the CIA. If you have actual evidence to the contrary present it. Don’t bother with anecdotes. I have personal knowledge of intelligence activities in Nicaragua, I didn’t just read about this in the newspapers.
Unlikely to be true. The Iranians would have no reason to approach the US. The deal was brokered from outside. The Iranians themselves faced the same problems Reagan did for dealing with the enemy.
The deal wasn’t done for hostages. The Iranians had no intention of releasing the intelligence operatives that had been captured. This was the excuse presented to intelligence, that there was a chance to get William Buckley back (not that one, a former CIA station chief who never should have returned to the middle east after his cover was blown).
Once again, there is no evidence that any of this money ever went to the Contras, nor any evidence that this plan existed prior to the knowledge of the arms sales becoming public. North was protecting himself, he was the person who had committed the actual acts of treason. Again, there is no credible evidence that Reagan had any idea that this arms deal even existed.
Some people believe it!?!? A commission stacked with conservative Reagan supporters found these things. No one has any reasonable basis to deny it.
You can echo all the apologist sentiments you want, it doesn’t change the facts. All of these claims about the moderate Iranians and Contra funding came from the people criminally culpable.
That is a pretty good summary. Rogue operators were after personal gain. The political machine stepped in to manufacture a cover up. It’s even possible that Reagan was unaware of the arms deal when he stated that we hadn’t given arms to Iran. I recall some of the money was returned to the US after it was found, but I don’t recall a breakdown of the rest of it, and I hope to soon be very intoxicated, so I’m not doing any research tonight.
To correct a misunderstanding I feel has has happened here, let me state that my explanation to the OP was not intended to be “my factual interpretation.” It was instead “my repeating what the public consensus was in the 1980s.” The reason that is relevant is, at least I thought, the OP was interested in why the public reacted the way they did, why Reagan wasn’t forced out of office, why Reagan’s image has mostly not been tarnished long term over this and etc.
The reasons I stated are basically what I feel are exactly the reasons that Reagan came out of it mostly “okay.”
The Contras numbered in the thousands, it’s up to you to prove the ludicrous assertion it was literally a “handful of people.”
The only evidence we have suggests this is how it happened. As with everything in the Iran-Contra scandal how likely something is to be true is almost entirely based on opinion. I don’t necessarily stake any reputation on this part being true, but it’s been repeated in most of the Congressional investigations, I believe McFarlane has repeated it many times and etc. It’s not a major point in any case of who went to who first.
I never made a factual claim about why the deal was made. I only stated that the public perceived it was done for hostages (even though Reagan publicly stated it was not, some 90% of Americans when polled in the 80s felt that Reagan lied and the deal was done for hostages.) I think if Reagan was involved the hostage angle probably factored in.
All evidence I’ve seen for the dealings with the Iranians show a divided opinion between Reagan’s top advisers, and the arms deal going down because Reagan supported that action over the objections of some of his close inner circle. Is it possible Reagan didn’t even know it was going on? I suppose so, but this part of it is fairly well reported upon, and a lot of people talk about Reagan having supported the arms deal and that being why it happened at all.
I never said there was evidence of what happened with the money. What I said was how it went down in public. Literally, Attorney General Meese was like “okay, we see you made $30m selling missiles, where is $18m” and North appeared on the public stage saying “oh yeah, that was me, I diverted it to Nicaraguan rebels.” As I said, some people believe it went somewhere else. There is no one other than the parties involved who know where the money actually went.
Some people do not believe North was working with “generalized approval”, which is what I said. It’s kind of we weird phrase but I basically used it to mean “Reagan wanted North moving money to the Contras but never specifically ordered it.” However both in the 1980s and now, some people believe Reagan directly ordered this, some people believe Reagan was totally unaware of what was going on.
Again, my intention was to restate how things went down for the public, not make factual assertions about what happened.
What I do know is the almost overwhelming consensus opinion of the American public can be summed up briefly:
The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran in contravention of an embargo, in the hopes of getting some American hostages released in Lebanon. They took the proceeds of this arms sale, and through Oliver North, funneled that money to the Contras.
I’m not saying that’s actually what happened, only what the overwhelming majority of the public believes happened.
I should also point out, as sexy as all the stories of Oliver North overseeing vast drug operations and things of that nature, those stories are also totally unverified and unsourced. Not saying Oliver North did do or didn’t do that stuff, but there is as much evidence for that stuff as there is that he funneled money to the Contras or that a bunch of rogue operatives ran the Iran-Contra affair in the shadows to pocket a bunch of money.
What actually happened with $18m of the missile money is a genuine mystery, but that part of it has always been a mystery.
The idea that this program was set up as a money-making operation is silly. The guys at the top were running the United States - if they wanted to make a few million, there were plenty of easy and less illegal ways for them to do it. I’ll grant that once the program was started, some of the guys at the bottom of the pyramid (including North) used it as an opportunity to divert part of the funding into their own pockets. But that’s the kind of thing you expect when a willingness to break the law is one of the job requirements.
