Reply #104: The Iran-Contra Affair 20 Years On = Role of Reagan, Gates, Negroponte, Top Aides

[L. Coyote]

The Iran-Contra Affair 20 Years On
Documents Spotlight Role of Reagan, Top Aides

Pentagon Nominee Robert Gates Among Many Prominent Figures Involved in the Scandal
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 210
Posted - Nov 24, 2006 - http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB210/index.htm

Washington D.C., November 24, 2006 - On November 25, 1986, the biggest political and constitutional scandal since Watergate exploded in Washington when President Ronald Reagan told a packed White House news conference that funds derived from covert arms deals with the Islamic Republic of Iran had been diverted to buy weapons for the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

In the weeks leading up to this shocking admission, news reports had exposed the U.S. role in both the Iran deals and the secret support for the Contras, but Reagan's announcement, in which he named two subordinates -- National Security Advisor John M. Poindexter and NSC staffer Oliver L. North -- as the responsible parties, was the first to link the two operations.

The scandal was almost the undoing of the Teflon President. Of all the revelations that emerged, the most galling for the American public was the president's abandonment of the long-standing policy against dealing with terrorists, which Reagan repeatedly denied doing in spite of overwhelming evidence that made it appear he was simply lying to cover up the story.

Despite the damage to his image, the president arguably got off easy, escaping the ultimate political sanction of impeachment. From what is now known from documents and testimony -- but perhaps not widely appreciated -- while Reagan may not have known about the diversion or certain other details of the operations being carried out in his name, he directed that both support for the Contras (whom he ordered to be kept together "body and soul") and the arms-for-hostages deals go forward, and was at least privy to other actions that were no less significant.

In this connection, it is worth noting that Poindexter, although he refused to implicate Reagan by testifying that he had told him about the diversion, declared that if he had informed the president he was sure Reagan would have approved. Reagan's success in avoiding a harsher political penalty was due to a great extent to Poindexter's testimony (which left many observers deeply skeptical about its plausibility). But it was also due in large part to a tactic developed mainly by Attorney General Edwin Meese, which was to keep congressional and public attention tightly focused on the diversion. By spotlighting that single episode, which they felt sure Reagan could credibly deny, his aides managed to minimize public scrutiny of the president's other questionable actions, some of which even he understood might be illegal.

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In that connection, what follows is a partial list of some of the more prominent individuals who were either directly a part of the Iran-Contra events or figured in some other way during the affair or its aftermath:

* Elliott Abrams
* David Addington
* John Bolton
* Richard Cheney - now the vice president, he played a prominent part as a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry
* Robert M. Gates
* Manuchehr Ghorbanifar - the quintessential middleman, who helped broker the arms deals involving the United States, Israel and Iran
* Michael Ledeen - a neo-conservative who is vocal on the subject of regime change in Iran
* Edwin Meese - currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group
* John Negroponte - ... ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005. (See previous Electronic Briefing Book)
* Oliver L. North - found guilty on three counts at a criminal trial but had those verdicts overturned
* John Poindexter - post-9/11 .. head of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program
* Otto Reich

Documents ...........