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Oliver North's Basement: How a Marine Ran a Secret Government
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Iran-Contra scandal didn't happen in the open — it was engineered in a basement office by Oliver North, a Marine who believed the mission justified breaking the law. This episode traces how the Boland Amendment was circumvented, how weapons flowed to Iran, and how a small group of officials built a shadow government inside the Reagan White House.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Most people think the Boland Amendment stopped Ronald Reagan from funding the Nicaraguan Contras. That's the assumption.
To understand why the Boland Amendment existed, you need to understand what Reagan's team believed about Central America. The Sandinistas had taken power in Nicaragua in nineteen seventy-nine.
The Boland Amendment wasn't a single piece of legislation. It came in stages, tightening with each iteration.
Oliver North worked in the basement of the Old Executive Office Building, just across from the West Wing. His official title was a staff position at the NSC.
At the same time the Contra operation was running, a separate problem was developing in the Middle East. American hostages were being held in Lebanon, taken by Hezbollah, which had close ties to Iran.
The operation began to unravel in late nineteen eighty-six. A Lebanese newspaper published a story about American arms sales to Iran.
The administration commissioned its own inquiry first. In November of nineteen eighty-six, Reagan appointed a three-person panel: former Senator John Tower, former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.
The congressional hearings that followed in the summer of nineteen eighty-seven became a national event. Oliver North testified over several days, and he made a choice that shaped public perception of everything that followed.
Reagan's testimony was something different. The president repeated, across multiple interviews and formal responses, that he didn't remember.
Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh pursued the investigation for eight years. His team obtained multiple indictments and convictions.
That's the real lesson of the Boland Amendment, and it's a harder one than it first appears. The amendment was constitutional.
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