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Reagan's Contradiction: Arms for Hostages and the Boland Betrayal
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Iran-Contra scandal exposed a White House running two illegal operations at once — selling arms to Iran for hostages while secretly funding the Nicaraguan Contras in defiance of Congress. This is the chapter where the shredder jammed, the cover-up unravelled, and Oliver North's basement empire came crashing into the light.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
It's November nineteen eighty-six. The news has just broken.
To understand what was being hidden, you need to start with the contradiction that made the whole thing possible. Reagan had a public position on Iran.
Now layer in the second half of the scheme, and it gets considerably worse. In Central America, Reagan was obsessed with the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
When the scheme collapsed in November nineteen eighty-six, the administration scrambled. Reagan initially denied the weapons sales were significant.
Reagan's position throughout was that he hadn't known about the diversion of funds to the Contras. He acknowledged the Iran arms sales.
The legal outcomes told their own story about accountability. North was convicted in nineteen eighty-nine on three felony counts, including aiding and abetting obstruction of Congress and destroying documents.
What remains, stripped of the legal maneuvering and the immunity deals and the pardons, is a set of facts. Senior officials in the Reagan administration sold weapons to a hostile foreign government in violation of a U.S. arms embargo.
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