The Scandal That Threatened to Bring Down Reagan

President Reagan, flanked by John Tower and Edmund Muskie, receives the Tower Commission Report.

(Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

In November 1986 the United States government was rocked by revelations from overseas. They began on November 3, 19 years ago today, when the Lebanese magazine Al Shiraa published an article charging that the United States was actively engaged in selling weapons to Iran, an enemy state. The next day the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament confirmed the story. When the story hit the American media it stunned the public and immediately led to speculation that President Reagan was trading missiles to Ayatollah Khomeini to buy the release of hostages held by the Ayatollah’s supporters in Lebanon. There was truth to this allegation, but even more surprising, that was only one thread in a whole tapestry that was about to unravel.

Attorney General Edwin Meese III began to investigate the allegations leveled against the Reagan administration, and he quickly realized the magnitude of what he was uncovering, a conspiracy stretching from Western Asia to Central America, from the Nicaraguan jungle to the Oval Office. Thus began the crisis that defined the second term of the Reagan Presidency and threatened to bring down the Commander in Chief.

On November 25 Meese held a press conference in which he announced that representatives of the U.S. government had sold arms to Iran and funneled a portion of the profits, between $10 and $30 million, to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, a revolutionary group fighting that small country’s Soviet-aligned Sandinista government. Originally Israel had acted as a middleman in selling arms to Iran, standing in for the U.S. government, but the Israelis had stepped out of the picture, leading to direct negotiation between American officials and Iranian agents.

Such dealings appeared to constitute a direct violation of the Reagan administration’s stated policy of not sponsoring terrorism. They also appeared to be a flagrant breach of the Boland amendments, legislation that severely limited direct financing of the Contras. People realized immediately that any administration officials clearly linked to these alleged activities could be indicted. And if evidence was found implicating President Reagan, it might lead to his impeachment and removal from office. Meese, reflecting later on the subsequent special prosecutor’s investigation, said, “It was going to be a replay of Watergate.”

Investigations were launched almost immediately. In addition to Meese’s own internal examination, President Reagan requested an independent review of all the events by a three-person commission headed by former Texas senator John Tower. Soon he had a special prosecutor named, Lawrence Walsh, to look into possible illegal activities in the executive branch. Congress, not content to sit on the sidelines, convened a joint committee of the Senate and the House to hold hearings on what was being dubbed the Iran-Contra scandal.

With Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye and Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton—who would later vice chair the 9/11 Commission—presiding, the congressional investigation leveled pointed questions at the principal players in the Iran-Contra conspiracy. Its televised hearings provided some of the most dramatic moments in the entire affair, most famously when Lt. Col. Oliver North, who had been granted immunity for his testimony, offered a brazen and unrepentant defense of his actions, despite their obviously illegality.

At the center of the growing storm stood Ronald Wilson Reagan. His immediate response to Al Shiraa’s story was to deny that he had ever authorized the exchange of weapons for hostages. When Meese revealed the Contra connection, however, Reagan’s reactions became a little more complicated. He quickly apologized for the “mistake” of selling arms to Iran, but appeared to backtrack and switch stories when it came to explaining whether he was aware of the connection to Nicaragua. His public statements and his private testimony seemed contradictory at times. He maintained total ignorance of the actions of those who directly supervised the channeling of funds to Central America, like Colonel North and former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, but he also resisted the implication that he was a passive and oblivious bystander in his own administration.

Ultimately, that was the very conclusion that many reached. When the Tower Commission issued its report, in February 1987, it concluded that there had been widespread abuse of power among renegade members of Reagan’s staff who, unbeknownst to the President, had concocted and carried out an illegal conspiracy. The report faulted Secretary of State George Shultz, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, and President Reagan himself for their apparent inability to effectively oversee the actions of their subordinates. The report stopped short, however, of accusing the President of committing or authorizing any illegal acts. Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh later came to similar conclusions and was unable to prove any allegations of lawbreaking by the President. However, Walsh was hampered in his investigation by Congress, which granted immunity to a number of his key suspects, making it harder to get useful testimony from them.

Only one man went to prison because of involvement in Iran-Contra, a CIA officer who failed to report the profits from his arms sales to Iran in his tax filings. Oliver North and National Security Adviser John Poindexter had their convictions overturned when a court found that their testimony before Congress, given under immunity, might have influenced their juries. Caspar Weinberger, indicted for perjury in 1992, was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, along with a number of other figures in the scandal. Poindexter and indicted State Department official Elliott Abrams were both brought back into government after the 2000 election, when they went to work for the administration of the second President Bush.

Nearly 20 years after the first revelations of Iran-Contra, questions remain. Who were all the people involved? How much evidence did North destroy, and what would that evidence have revealed? How much did Reagan know, and when did he know it? Americans may never be able to answer these questions. Crucial portions of the Iran-Contra story remain unwritten. Like Walsh’s prosecution of the conspirators, they may remain incomplete forever. History, even recent history, does not always leave us with a clear picture.

—Alexander Burns, an undergraduate at Harvard College, is a frequent contributor to AmericanHeritage.com