The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

In 1979, the same year that Khomeini ejected the Shah of Iran, halfway across the world in Nicaragua left-wing Sandinistas overthrew the military dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. Later, the Sandinistas (more properly known as Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional) won free and fair democratic elections. Somoza supporters, meanwhile, kept up a contra-revolution (hence «Contras») against the Sandinista regime. In 1982 Reagan authorized the CIA to create a 500-strong army of Nicaraguan exiles to fight alongside the Contras. Queried by a Congressional intelligence committee over this «action team», CIA director William Casey misleadingly stated that its activity was restricted to intercepting arms sent by the Sandinistas to El Salvadoran Marxist revolutionaries. The disingenuity of Casey’s reply was exposed, and Congress passed the Boland Amendment which banned the spending of federal money on the Contras. Ignoring the Boland Amendment, Reagan tasked the CIA with mining Nicaragua’s harbours. Congress responded in June 1984 with a second Boland Amendment, which explicitly forbade all CIA operations in Nicaragua.

Fast forward two years. On 5 October 1986 a plane piloted by one Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua while carrying arms to the Contras. Hasenfus appeared on TV, where he publicly announced that his co-workers were CIA operatives. This story coincided almost exactly with Ash-Shiraa’s investigation into US—Iranian arms deals. A political A-bomb detonated. On 25 November Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese admitted that the Contra scandal was connected to the recent Iranian arms scandal. Oliver North had directly channelled profits from the Iran arms deals to the Contras, thereby neatly but illegally bypassing Congress, the United Nations and everyone else who might disapprove. Reagan, meanwhile, tried to keep it all at arm’s length by, on 26 November, setting up the Tower Commission.

Oliver North and his immediate superior, Admiral John Poindexter, the National Security Advisor who had replaced McFarlane, were convicted on multiple accounts of lying and obstruction of justice, but their convictions were overturned on appeal because their testimonies had been used against them despite a grant of immunity. A final 1987 report into the affair by Congress failed to answer the key question: how much Reagan knew. Some researchers consider that North’s five memos sent to the president on the Contras’ illegal funding might give a clue. Then there is the entry in Reagan’s own diary from January 1986: «I agreed to sell TOWs to Iran.»

William Buckley was killed after torture by captors in Iran.

Reagan approved illegal arms deals to Iran which enabled illegal funding of Contras in Nicaragua: ALERT LEVEL 10

Further Reading

Lawrence Walsh, Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, 1993

DOCUMENT: FROM THE FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS (THE WALSH REPORT)

Part III

The Operational Conspiracy: A Legal Analysis

The central and perhaps the most important criminal charge developed by Independent Counsel was the conspiracy charge against Oliver L. North, John M. Poindexter, Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim. According to that charge — set forth as Count One of the indictment returned on 16 March 1988 — these four men conspired to defraud the United States by deceitfully (1) supporting a war in Nicaragua in defiance of congressional controls; (2) using the Iran arms sales to raise funds to be spent at the direction of North and Poindexter, rather than the United States Government; and (3) endangering the effort to rescue Americans held hostage in Lebanon by pursuing ends that were both unauthorized and inconsistent with the goal of releasing the hostages.

[…]

The Reagan Administration was unambiguously hostile to this count. In a move that Judge Gerhard A. Gesell described as «unprecedented», the Justice Department in November 1988 filed an amicus brief supporting North’s claim that the count was legally insufficient and should be dismissed. Subsequently, having been informed by Independent Counsel that the conspiracy count could be tried only if a small amount of classified information were declassified, the Administration refused to release that information. Because there was no way to appeal such a refusal to declassify, Independent Counsel was forced in January 1989 to drop Count One in North and a related charge that the diversion of profits from the Iran arms sales was a theft of Government funds.