• Location: the office
• Mood: geeky
• Music: Keb Mo-"The Times They Are A Changing"

Investigating the President: Ronald Reagan and the Iran Contra Affair

On May 5, 1987 Congressional hearings began into something which became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. The hearings concerned an operation to free seven American hostages being held by a terrorist group with Iranian ties. A plan was concocted by which Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the U.S. would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to effect the release of six U.S. hostages. The plan became an arms-for-hostages scheme, in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of the American hostages. Much of the plan was devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, including a scheme by which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.



President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause, but despite accusations to the contrary, no conclusive evidence has been found showing that he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras. After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages. An investigation into these allegations was hampered when large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators.
Committees were constituted both in the House and in the Senate in January 1987. It was agreed that there would be a deadline for the investigation on the 1st of August, when Congress was due to adjourn, with several more months to prepare the final report. The Senate committee decided early on not to pursue the President, not only because he was almost at the end of his second term in office, but because many of the Senators held the view that, in the words of one commentator, they "honestly thought that the country didn't need another Watergate. They were urgently hoping to avoid a crisis."

The hearings ran from May 5, 1987 to August 6, 1987. The Majority Report concluded that the "NSC staff turned to private parties and third countries to do the Government’s business. Funding which had been denied by Congress was obtained by the Administration from third countries and private citizens. The Minority Report blamed conflict between executive and legislature over foreign policy. Their report read:

"Congressional Democrats tried to use vaguely worded and constantly changing laws to impose policies in Central America that went well beyond the law itself. For its own part, the Administration decided to work within the letter of the law covertly, instead of forcing a public and principled confrontation that would have been healthier in the long run."

On March 4, 1987, in a nationally televised address, Reagan accepted full responsibility for his own actions and for those of his administration, including activities undertaken without his knowledge. In the same broadcast, he stated that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."

Neither investigation, including those by the Congress and the one conducted by the three-man Tower Commission, found any evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs. In the end, fourteen administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been vice-president at the time of the affair.

Following is a portion of President Reagan's televised address of March 4, 1987.