Iran-Contra affair

The Event A scandal results from illegal, covert arms trafficking among the United States, Iran, and Nicaraguan rebels

Date Scandal broke in 1986

The Iran-Contra affair was orchestrated in order to circumvent the will of Congress, which had forbidden the Reagan administration from continuing military aid to the right-wing rebel army in Nicaragua. The ensuing scandal raised serious questions about the abuse of presidential powers in foreign affairs and the extent of congressional oversight of foreign affairs. It also demonstrated the extent to which the Cold War mentality of the 1980s was able to justify dealings with and support for almost any regime that was anticommunist, including hostile fundamentalist Islamic regimes.

From 1937 to 1979, Anastasio Somoza García and his two sons, Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ran a brutal dictatorship in Nicaragua. In the wake of the great earthquake of 1972, which crumbled the capital city of Managua, the world reacted not only to the resulting devastation but also to the shocking corruption of the Somoza regime. Massive humanitarian relief supplies were shipped to the country, only to be reshipped by the Somozas for sale abroad. A broad-based anti-Somoza internal opposition arose in Nicaragua. The opposition called itself the Sandinista National Liberation Front, after Augusto César Sandino, a revolutionary leader of the late 1920s and early 1930s whom Somoza García had assassinated. In 1979, following a bloody civil war, Somoza Debayle fled to the United States, while elements of his National Guard crossed over the border into Honduras to organize the counterrevolutionary Contra movement. Leadership of the new Sandinista regime was placed in the hands of Daniel Ortega, a member of the Sandinista left wing. Ortega’s government was supported in its resistance to the Contras by Fidel Castro, who sent military aid and advisers to Nicaragua.

The replacement of the pro-United States Somoza regime by one sympathetic to Castro was only one hemispheric problem worrying the new US president, Ronald Reagan . A second was the replacement of a friendly government in Grenada by one friendly to Castro under Maurice Bishop. At the same time, a guerrilla war raged in El Salvador against the military junta that had seized power. The guerrillas received support from the Sandinistas. From cold warrior Reagan’s perspective, there was an evident Russian-Cuban-Nicaraguan connection. The Ortega regime had to be stopped. Under the so-called Reagan Doctrine , anticommunist movements worldwide were to be supported.

Aiding the Contras

In March 1981, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped organize and finance a movement, composed of ex-Somoza National Guard members and disenchanted former Sandinistas, to destabilize and topple the Ortega government. Operating from bases in Honduras, approximately fifteen thousand Contras were trained to launch raids on bridges, fuel depots, food storehouses, and a host of other “soft” targets. The aim of these activities was to destabilize the Ortega regime by causing widespread shortages of daily commodities—essentially, to make civilians suffer until they rejected a government that could not protect them. Opposition to this strategy grew in the United States as the human suffering in Nicaragua increased. Reports surfaced of direct attacks on civilians by the Contras, as well as of violent repressive measures being taken by the Sandinista regime to suppress the counterrevolution. Neither type of report could easily be corroborated.

President Reagan saw the Contras not as abusers of human rights but rather as “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.” By 1983, the targets of these “freedom fighters” dramatically expanded. The CIA orchestrated the mining of Nicaraguan harbors to prevent overseas trade. This tactic was condemned by the World Court at the Hague as violating international law—a conclusion rejected by the Reagan administration. The mines and the refusal of the Reagan administration to accept the World Court’s declaration motivated the US Congress to act. Revising a law known as the Boland Amendment (first passed in 1982), Congress banned the US government from using any finances to support military or paramilitary actions by the Contras.

In 1984, free elections were held in Nicaragua and supervised by the United Nations. Rather than compete in the elections, however, the Reagan-backed Contra leaders boycotted them. Ortega was elected president of Nicaragua when his party received 67 percent of the vote. These events seemed to strengthen the moral weight of the Boland Amendment, as the Contras had now refused to participate in their nation’s democratic process and chosen instead to use violence against a democratically elected socialist government.

Circumventing the Ban

Despite the elections and the law forbidding the Reagan administration from doing so, either President Reagan or his subordinates decided to continue supporting the Contras, eventually triggering a major scandal. Coordination of the Contra movement was transferred from the CIA to the National Security Council (NSC), headed by Robert McFarlane (1983–85) and Vice Admiral John Poindexter (1985–86). Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a US Marine who had worked for the NSC since 1981, would serve as the chief liaison with the Contras. Elaborate schemes were devised to create and channel foreign and private finances into a slush fund so that funding of the Contras could continue. The strangest of these schemes involved the covert sale of arms to Iran, the United States’ bitter enemy since the seizure of the US embassy staff in 1979. However, Iran, locked in the final phases of a major war with Iraq, was in desperate need of modern equipment and could not look to the Soviet Union for assistance.

As originally set up by Michael Ledeen (a consultant to Robert McFarlane), the operation called for modern antitank missiles and other military supplies to be sent through Israel, which would sell the missiles to Iran and return the money to the Contra slush fund. Suspicious that the activity might not have official U.S. approval, Israel ceased its cooperation after three shipments. As an alternate plan, the NSC approved the direct sale of a massive amount of missiles and other arms to Iran at greatly inflated prices. The proceeds would go directly to the Contras without arousing congressional suspicions. As a secondary motive, it was believed that the arms shipments would gain the cooperation of the Iranian Shiite government. Six Americans were being held as hostages by the Lebanese Shiite paramilitary group Hezbollah , and members of the Reagan administration hoped that Iran might pressure its fellow Shiites to release those hostages.

Contragate Swings Open

For a time, the covert funding plan worked flawlessly. However, the downing of a plane in Nicaragua that was carrying arms for the Contras resulted in a Lebanese magazine publishing a story on November 3, 1986, that arms were being shipped to Iran in exchange for the release of the hostages held in Lebanon by Hezbollah. Iran soon confirmed that it was receiving arms shipments from the United States. President Reagan was forced to give a televised address on November 13, admitting that weapons were being supplied to Iran but denying that the sales were made in return for the exchange of hostages. Rather, he claimed that they were designed simply to breed goodwill between the two nations—and that the best way for Iran to demonstrate its goodwill would be to secure the release of the hostages.

In the meantime, North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, were busily shredding documents in their offices. Finally, on November 21, the day in which Admiral Poindexter submitted his resignation and Lieutenant Colonel North was unceremoniously fired, Attorney General Edwin Meese III revealed that the purpose of selling arms to Iran was to create funds to aid the Contras. As questions reverberated through the press and congressional criticism mounted, President Reagan created a presidential commission headed by Senator John Tower. The Tower Commission was to investigate the Iran-Contra affair (which would come to be known as both Contragate and Irangate, an allusion to the Watergate scandal of the previous decade). It was also tasked with investigating the general operations of the NSC. Meanwhile, a variety of congressional committees held hearings of their own. By the end of 1986, Lawrence E. Walsh was commissioned by Congress as a special prosecutor with the power to investigate and prosecute crimes committed during the Iran-Contra affair.

The Tower Commission worked with considerable speed and completed its report on February 26, 1987. Both North and Poindexter, as well as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, were severely criticized for their roles in the affair. Reagan came under criticism for not properly supervising the NSC. This failure was blamed, however, on his general disengagement from his administrative officials. Little was said in the report about the former director of central intelligence and then-vice president, George H. W. Bush. One week after the issuance of the Tower Report, President Reagan held a press conference in which he expressed his regrets for the Iran-Contra affair. He admitted that covert arms sales had taken place to create funds for the purchase of weapons for the Contras. Indeed, of the $30 million paid by Iran for weapons, $12 million had been returned to the government and $18 million went to support the Contras. He pointed to both Poindexter and North as the individuals responsible for the operations. Both men were questioned extensively by Congress during the summer of 1987, but they were granted immunity in return for their testimony, as Congress was seeking to establish the responsibility of their superiors for the affair. The hearings were nationally televised, and North in particular became a media celebrity.

Indictment, Conviction, Absolution

In 1988, North was indicted by a grand jury on twelve counts and was convicted of three. However, his convictions were overturned on appeal. The prosecution claimed that no information used in the trial had been obtained from North’s testimony before Congress, which would have been a violation of his immunity deal. The appellate court, however, ruled that his nationally televised testimony had tainted the prosecution irremediably, as there was no way to prove that the jury had no access to the information revealed in the congressional hearings or that the prosecution had not used that information to develop its investigation. Poindexter was convicted in 1990 of felonies such as obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and lying to Congress. His conviction was also overturned as a result of his immunity deal and public testimony.

On April 13, 1989, the Kerry Committee Report was released by Senator John Kerry , revealing that a major source of funding for the Contras came from Latin American cocaine traffickers in exchange for protection from law-enforcement activity. The same planes that flew shipments of arms from the United States to Nicaragua were used to import cocaine and other drugs into the country on their return flights. The drug connection became a major source of controversy, especially in the context of the Reagan administration’s Just Say No anti-drug campaign.

Impact

The Iran-Contra scandal fascinated the public for a time, but, unlike the Watergate scandal, it was soon forgotten. President Reagan’s approval rating plunged to 46 percent in 1986 as a result of the affair; however, it rose to 63 percent by 1989, a level only exceeded by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Reagan acquired the nickname “Teflon president,” because none of the charges tainting the rest of his administration seemed to stick to him.

There was little in the way of public outcry when President Bush later pardoned the major individuals involved in Iran-Contra. By then, the affair was only a vague memory, and it was associated with the perceived realities of a Cold War era that had recently come to an end. Bush was even able to appoint individuals implicated in the Iran-Contra affair to positions in his administration.

Indeed, from a broader perspective, the obsession with events in Nicaragua reveals the extent to which anticommunist ideology dominated US political life. It was a fitting sequel to the invasion of Grenada and an appropriate final chapter in the extreme behavior caused by the Cold War. As a beginning chapter in dealing with the threat of hostile fundamentalist Islamic regimes, however, the sale of missiles to Iran indicates a glaring lack of awareness. While the missile deal did result in the freeing of three US citizens held captive by Hezbollah in Lebanon, three more hostages were immediately seized to take their place.

Subsequent Events

In 1992, McFarlane had been convicted of crimes related to the Iran-Contra affair, and Weinberger had been indicted and was awaiting trial. President Bush pardoned them both, as well as four other officials involved in the scandal. The independent prosecutor’s report, issued in 1994, revealed that both President Reagan and Vice President Bush had some knowledge of what was going on in the Iran-Contra affair and had a role in the cover-up.

Bibliography

Byrne, Malcolm. Iran-Contra: Reagan's Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2014. Print.

Draper, Theodore. A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affair. New York: Simon, 1992. Print.

Walsh, Lawrence E. Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up. New York: Norton, 1998. Print.

Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. New York: Seven Stories, 1998. Print.

Woodward, Bob. The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981–1987. New York: Simon, 2005. Print.