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Walsh vs. the System: When Convictions Weren't Enough
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Lawrence Walsh won Iran-Contra convictions against Oliver North and John Poindexter — then watched them vanish on procedural grounds. This is the story of what happens when legal accountability meets an executive branch determined to protect itself.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
December nineteen eighty-six. Lawrence Walsh is sitting in a Washington law office, newly appointed as Independent Counsel, staring at the outlines of a scandal that has already begun eating itself.
To understand what Walsh was up against, you need to understand what had already happened before he filed a single charge. By the time the scandal broke publicly in November nineteen eighty-six, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall had already spent days shredding documents in the Old Executive Office Building.
In the summer of nineteen eighty-seven, Congress held its public Iran-Contra hearings. North testified in his Marine dress uniform.
John Poindexter fared differently, at least at first. Poindexter was National Security Advisor under Reagan.
What Walsh never achieved, and what would have mattered most, was a definitive legal accounting of what Ronald Reagan knew and when he knew it. Reagan's defense throughout the investigation was consistent.
If Walsh's biggest procedural obstacle was the immunity problem, his final obstacle was a political one. In December nineteen ninety-two, just weeks before leaving office, President George H.W.
Here's what Walsh's investigation actually demonstrated, and it's worth being direct about this. Independent counsel investigations sound powerful.
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