Reply #8: I just got done watching this on Iran Contra

[seemslikeadream]

we are in a rerun and will a Clinton let them off the hook again?

COVER-UP: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4755829652615170641&q=iran+contra+cover+up&total=60&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6363522851504883872&q=COVER-UP%3A+Behind+the+Iran-Contra+Affair%3A+Part+2&total=5&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8622796487067551025&q=COVER-UP%3A+Behind+the+Iran-Contra+Affair%3A+Part+3&total=8&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2550812





What happens when unresolved scandals take a back seat to a domestic agenda?


http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

My book, Secrecy & Privilege, opens with a scene in spring 1994 when a guest at a White House social event asks Bill Clinton why his administration didn’t pursue unresolved scandals from the Reagan-Bush era, such as the Iraqgate secret support for Saddam Hussein’s government and clandestine arms shipments to Iran.

Clinton responds to the questions from the guest, documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, by saying, in effect, that those historical questions had to take a back seat to Clinton’s domestic agenda and his desire for greater bipartisanship with the Republicans.

Clinton “didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people,” Sender told me in an interview. “He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”

Clinton’s relatively low regard for the value of truth and accountability is relevant again today because other centrist Democrats are urging their party to give George W. Bush’s administration a similar pass if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress.

Reporting about a booklet issued by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council, the Washington Post wrote, “these centrist Democrats … warned against calls to launch investigations into past administration decisions if Democrats gain control of the House or Senate in the November elections.”




http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/hamiltoniran-contra.htm

"......former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House select committee investigating the Iran-contra affair, was shown ample evidence against Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but he did not probe their wrongdoing. Why did Hamilton choose not to investigate? In a late 1980s interview aired on PBS 'Frontline,' Hamilton said that he did not think it would have been 'good for the country' to put the public through another impeachment trial. In Lee Hamilton's view, it was better to keep the public in the dark than to bring to light another Watergate, with all the implied ramifications. When Hamilton was chairman of the House committee investigating Iran-contra, he took the word of senior Reagan administration officials when they claimed Bush and Reagan were 'out of the loop.' Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh and White House records later proved that Reagan and Bush had been very much in the loop. If Hamilton had looked into the matter instead of accepting the Reagan administration's word, the congressional investigation would have shown the public the truth. Hamilton later said he should not have believed the Reagan officials. However, today, George W. Bush is considering appointing Hamilton UN ambassador."


For example, when it was revealed in 2005 that the Bush administration had been illegally spying on Americans, Cheney responded: “If you want to understand why this program is legal…go back and read my Iran-Contra report.” In that report — authored in 1987 — Cheney and aide David Addington defended President Reagan by claiming it was “unconstitutional for Congress to pass laws intruding” on the “commander in chief.”


THAT'S MR. 9/11 COMMISSION HAMILTON


http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/09/savage-cheney

Charlie Savage: Cheney Plotted Bush’s Imperial Presidency ‘Thirty Years Ago’

The Bush administration has long held that President Bush’s expanded executive power is justified due to 9/11. “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority and I think that the world we live in demands it,” claimed Vice President Cheney in 2005.

But in his new book, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage reveals that Cheney has been on a thirty-year quest to implement his views of unfettered executive power.

For example, when it was revealed in 2005 that the Bush administration had been illegally spying on Americans, Cheney responded: “If you want to understand why this program is legal…go back and read my Iran-Contra report.” In that report — authored in 1987 — Cheney and aide David Addington defended President Reagan by claiming it was “unconstitutional for Congress to pass laws intruding” on the “commander in chief.”

Decades later, Bush’s legal team used their first meeting in January 2001 — nine months before 9/11 — to map out a plan to expand presidential authority. According to Savage, who appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, Cheney was looking for a moment to “seize” power in the weeks before 9/11:

We are going to expand presidential power in any way we can. This was discussed in January 2001 at the first meeting of the White House legal team after the inauguration, long before 9/11. If an opportunity arises to expand presidential prerogatives, you will seize it.