Iran-Contra Affair

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IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR

The Iran-Contra Affair was part of America's Cold War strategy to overturn communist or socialist regimes by encouraging coups d'état or by supporting paramilitary forces fighting those governments. This strategy raised constitutional questions about the president's warmaking powers. The affair had its origins in two secret operations of the U.S. government that took place during the early and mid-1980s under the administration of President Ronald Reagan. The first of these, which began in November 1985, involved the sale of weapons by the United States to Iran. The goal of these arms sales was to improve relations with "moderates" within the Iranian government and to gain their support for the release of several U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon. The second involved ongoing support by the U.S. government for the Contras, who opposed the left wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. These otherwise disparate operations became linked in early December 1985 when staff members of the National Security Council developed a plan for using surplus funds generated by the weapons sales to Iran to provide support to the Contras.

Both weapons sales to Iran and aid to the Contras were inconsistent with U.S. law and official foreign policy. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, the United States had imposed an arms embargo against Iran's Islamist regime and sought international support for the military isolation of Iran in its war with Iraq. Moreover, throughout the 1980s President Reagan publicly repudiated any policy that involved trading arms for hostages, arguing that to make concessions to terrorists would only encourage further hostage-taking. Public support for U.S. efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government fluctuated, and Congress responded by restricting aid to the Contras. This culminated in enactment of the Boland Amendment in October 1984, which prohibited the use of appropriated U.S. funds to support military and paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. Supporters of the amendment, however, did not have enough votes to prohibit the use of unappropriated funds—a loophole that made the operation possible.

Reagan's national security advisor, Robert McFarlane, and his successor, Admiral John Poindexter, authorized a covert operation run by a member of their staff, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, in which funds from the arms sales to Iran were diverted to the Contras. These activities were concealed from Congress, as well as from

the American public. In October 1986, a plane carrying military and paramilitary supplies was shot down over Nicaragua and one of its crew members was taken prisoner by the Sandinista government. He was later discovered to have been part of the covert operation run by Oliver North. The next month Al-Shiraa, a Lebanese newspaper, reported the sale of arms to Iran. These sales were subsequently linked to attempts to gain the release of American hostages and to the diversion of funds to the Contras.

In January 1987, a Joint House-Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition was convened to hear testimony on events surrounding the Iran-Contra Affair. After weeks of public testimony, including testimony by and questioning of Poindexter, McFarlane, North, and other key officials involved in these operations, the committee was able to determine much of what had taken place during this period but it was unable to determine what role the president had played in authorizing the conduct of his advisers and staff since their roles were obscured, in large measure, by a practice known as plausible deniability, which meant that operatives within the National Security Council and intelligence communities sought to provide the president with a way to deny involvement in covert operations. Official chronologies of these events were rewritten to make them consistent with the president's public statements and key documents that might have been critical to the committee's investigation were shredded by North, Poindexter, and others. As a result, it remains unclear what President Reagan's role was in authorizing these activities and thus the precise nature of his responsibility for a scandal in which, in the words of the Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, "fundamental processes of government were disregarded and the rule of law was subverted" (Inouye and Hamilton, p. 11). The Iran-Contra Affair was a major blow to the Reagan administration and to the president's popularity.

bibliography

Cohen, William S. and Mitchell, George J. Men of Zeal: A Candid Inside Story of the Iran-Contra Hearings. New York: Viking 1988.

Draper, Theodore. A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs. New York: Hill & Wang, 1991.

Inouye, Daniel K., and Hamilton, Lee H. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987.

North, Oliver, with Novak, William. Under Fire: An American Story. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

President's Special Review Board. The Tower Commission Report: The Full Text of the President's Special Review Board. New York: Bantam, 1987.

David Bogen and

Michael Lynch

Americans at War