The Iran–Contra affair

On 5 October 1986 Nicaraguan government soldiers shot down an American cargo plane carrying weapons to the contra rebels. The one survivor, an American, told his captors he worked for the CIA. Four weeks later, on 3 November, a Beirut magazine, Al-Shiraa, reported that Ronald Reagan's former national security adviser had flown secretly to Tehran. On 25 November Attorney General Edwin Meese told reporters that some of the money from American arms sales to Iran had gone to the contras¹.

Those three events joined two secret programs that the independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, later summed up in one sentence: "high-ranking Administration officials violated laws and executive orders in the Iran/contra matter"¹.

Two operations run from the White House

The contra half came first. Between 1982 and 1984 Congress passed the Boland Amendments limiting help to the rebels fighting Nicaragua's Sandinista government, and from October 1984 to October 1986 it barred military aid outright. Reagan, in Walsh's words, encouraged and "in general terms" ordered that the contras be kept going anyway. The job fell to a National Security Council staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who with private partners built what they called the Enterprise: a network of companies and Swiss bank accounts that bought arms and aircraft. Money came from foreign governments, from wealthy American donors solicited through a tax-exempt foundation, and later from Iran^1,5.

The Iran half began in 1985 as a way to free Americans held hostage by groups in Lebanon. The United States had an embargo on arms for Iran, then at war with Iraq. Israel shipped American-made TOW antitank missiles to Iran with Washington's consent, on the understanding that the United States would replace them. After an Israeli-chartered aircraft delivered 408 TOWs on 14 September 1985, the Reverend Benjamin Weir was released in Beirut the next day. A shipment of HAWK missiles in November 1985 went badly wrong. On 17 January 1986 Reagan signed a covert-action Finding that allowed the arms to be transferred through third parties and was to be withheld from Congress until the transactions were complete¹.

Walsh found that the arms sales were known to the President, Vice President George Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, CIA Director William Casey and national security advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter. Only Shultz and Weinberger objected, and Weinberger "eventually acquiesced" by ordering the Pentagon to supply the weapons¹.

The diversion

The two operations met when North priced the missiles above cost and steered part of the profit to the contras. More than $47 million passed through the Enterprise's accounts. Walsh put the amount "clearly diverted" from the Iran sales at $3.6 million, a figure he called conservative because it left out contra spending he could not prove in court¹. Hostage releases came slowly and others were taken: Father Lawrence Jenco was freed on 24 July 1986 and David Jacobsen on 2 November 1986¹.

Investigations

The Tower Commission, appointed by Reagan, reported on 26 February 1987. Joint House and Senate committees held televised hearings in the summer of 1987 and issued their report on 18 November 1987^3,4,5. Walsh had been appointed by a special division of the federal appeals court in Washington on 19 December 1986¹.

His investigation charged 14 people. Some crimes were operational, mostly the misuse of money; most were "cover-up" crimes such as false statements to Congress and destruction of documents. North was convicted in May 1989 of three counts including destroying documents; Poindexter in April 1990 of five felonies. Both convictions were overturned on appeal because trial witnesses might have been influenced by the two men's televised testimony to Congress, given under grants of immunity. Other convictions or pleas included McFarlane, the CIA's former operations chief Clair George, the CIA's Central American task force chief Alan Fiers, and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. The case against a CIA station chief in Costa Rica was dismissed when the Attorney General refused to declassify information needed for his defense¹.

The cover-up and the pardons

Walsh's sharpest findings concerned what happened after November 1986. He concluded that senior officials "deliberately deceived the Congress and the public," and that notes kept by Weinberger, Shultz and White House chief of staff Donald Regan had been withheld until his office obtained them in 1991 and 1992. Weinberger was indicted on charges of false statements and perjury¹.

He never stood trial. On 24 December 1992 President Bush pardoned Weinberger and five others, including McFarlane, Abrams, George, Fiers and the CIA's former Latin America chief Duane Clarridge. Walsh wrote that the pardons meant the cover-up "has now been completed"^1,5. His final report went to the court on 4 August 1993, and the court ordered it released on 3 December 1993¹.

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