An Iran-Contra Reflection

This travesty of democracy I remember well. The US government selling weapons to Iran, then using the proceeds to fund a a guerrilla army trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, all in violation of the law. Then when they were caught red-handed, they lied, shredded, perjured, and pardoned themselves. Sound familiar? It should-some of the same people are responsible for the current mess in which the US finds itself, both in its resource wars abroad and in its transition to a police state at home. People like Oliver North (seen in the video), John Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, and Robert Gates.

First, let us deal with the common charge of Republicans that the Iran-Contra affair was a partisan witch hunt. The Independent Counsel who investigated this scandal was Lawrence E. Walsh, former judge, Deputy Attorney General under Eisenhower-and a Republican.

To discuss this, some summary is appropriate. From the Report of the Independent Counsel Executive Summary:

The Basic Facts of Iran/contra

The Iran/contra affair concerned two secret Reagan Administration policies whose operations were coordinated by National Security Council staff. The Iran operation involved efforts in 1985 and 1986 to obtain the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East through the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran, despite an embargo on such sales. The contra operations from 1984 through most of 1986 involved the secret governmental support of contra military and paramilitary activities in Nicaragua, despite congressional prohibition of this support.

The Iran and contra operations were merged when funds generated from the sale of weapons to Iran were diverted to support the contra effort in Nicaragua. Although this ``diversion'' may be the most dramatic aspect of Iran/contra, it is important to emphasize that both the Iran and contra operations, separately, violated United States policy and law.2 The ignorance of the ``diversion'' asserted by President Reagan and his Cabinet officers on the National Security Council in no way absolves them of responsibility for the underlying Iran and contra operations.

Just so everyone knows what we're talking about here. Let's look at some highlights from the timeline:

Oct. 5, 1986: Nicaraguan soldiers shoot down a contra-resupply plane; Eugene Hasenfus, an American, survives.
Nov. 3, 1986: Lebanese newspaper Al-Shiraa reports that the United States secretly sold arms to Iran.
Nov. 6, 1986: President Reagan denies arms were sold to Iran.
Nov. 13, 1986: President Reagan acknowledges weapons were sold to Iran but denies that the arms were sold to win the release of American hostages.
Nov. 25, 1986: White House discloses contra diversion from the Iran arms sales.
Dec. 19, 1986: Walsh appointed Independent Counsel.
March 11, 1988: McFarlane pleads guilty to withholding information from Congress.
March 16, 1988: North, Poindexter, Secord and Hakim indicted on conspiracy to defraud the United States and other charges.
Jan. 31, 1989 to May 4, 1989: North trial, resulting in three-count conviction.
April 7, 1989: Secord is indicted on nine additional charges of obstruction, false statements and perjury.
Nov. 8, 1989: Secord pleads guilty to making false statements to Congress.
March 5, 1990 to April 7, 1990: Poindexter trial, resulting in five-count conviction.
Sept. 6, 1991: Clair E. George is indicted on 10 counts of perjury, false statements and obstruction.
Oct. 7, 1991: Elliott Abrams pleads guilty to withholding information from Congress.
June 16, 1992: Former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger is indicted on five felony charges of obstruction, perjury and false statements in congressional and Independent Counsel investigations.
Dec. 9, 1992: George is found guilty on two counts of false statements and perjury before Congress; sentencing is set for February 1993.
Dec. 11, 1992: White House informs Independent Counsel that President Bush has kept diaries relevant to Iran/contra, which have never been produced to investigators.
Dec. 24, 1992: President Bush pardons Weinberger, Clarridge, McFarlane, Fiers, Abrams and George. Independent Counsel denounces pardons.

President Ronald Reagan and Vice President (and former CIA director) George H.W. Bush both avoided possible prosecution by claiming ignorance. From the Walsh Report:

...Reagan stated that he did not monitor the details of the Iran arms sales and had no specific knowledge of such key matters as North's role or Secord's role. The President said he did not authorize any profits from the sale of arms to Iran and that he was unaware that there were excess proceeds and that some of them were diverted to aid the contras.
...on November 3, 1986, the President convened a series of meetings with his top national security advisers and permitted the creation of a false account of the Iran arms sales to be disseminated to members of Congress and the American people.4 These false accounts denied the President's knowledge...during a discussion of the need for funds to keep contras in the field until an expected congressional appropriation became available, President Reagan said: ``Can't some of Ollie's people help out?'' ...[Reagan]:``These [the contras] are people who are fighting for democracy and freedom in their country. And here there's no question about my being informed. I've known what's going on there...And to suggest that I am just finding out or that things are being exposed that I didn't know about -- no. Yes, I was kept briefed on that. As a matter of fact, I was very definitely involved in the decisions on the support to the freedom fighters. It was my idea to begin with.''

...By July 1992, when Reagan agreed to a final, extensive interview with Independent Counsel, it was obvious that the former President truly lacked specific recollection of even the major Iran/contra events which took place in 1984-1987.

Reagan would be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease two years later. What about Bush 41's role?

...In an early interview with the FBI in December 1986 and in the OIC deposition in January 1988, Bush acknowledged that he was regularly informed of events...These statements conflicted with his more extreme public assertions that he was ``out of the loop''...Before Bush's election as President, the investigation was primarily concerned with the operational conspiracy and the careful evaluation of the cases against former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North of the National Security Council staff, prior to their indictment... On December 24, 1992, twelve days before former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger was to go to trial, Bush pardoned him...President Bush also pardoned former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, former CIA Central American Task Force Chief Alan D. Fiers, Jr., former CIA Deputy Director for Operations Clair E. George, and former CIA Counter-Terrorism Chief Duane R. Clarridge. The Weinberger pardon marked the first time a President ever pardoned someone in whose trial he might have been called as a witness, because the President was knowledgeable of factual events underlying the case.
The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete...In issuing pardons to Weinberger and five other Iran/contra defendants, President Bush charged that Independent Counsel's prosecutions represented the ``criminalization of policy differences.''

From 2001 to 2003, John Poindexter headed the DARPA Information Awareness Office, as the father of the Total Information Awareness Program. As of this writing, Elliot Abrams has the job title "Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy" in the administration of GW Bush. Oliver North has a high-profile position as an administration mouthpiece on their house organ, FOX News. Other Iran-Contra figures inside the current syndicate-in-charge include John Negroponte, and Otto Reich. Aided and abetted by these and others, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W.Bush, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush-criminals all-have cut a swath of destruction through our country and our world of such a magnitude as can hardly be overstated. We can likewise thank Gerald Ford for making the pardon of criminal Republicans politically acceptable, establishing the idea that Republicans only commit crimes for noble, patriotic reasons. A recent example of this is the prosecution of Cheney Chief of Staff and serial perjuror "Scooter" Libby, convicted by a jury and commuted by Bush, all the while being lionized in the right-wing propagandasphere. Like those other cases, as well as the current torrent of scandal pouring from the Bush 43 White House, the Iran-Contra scandal represents democratic government being usurped and reduced to Kabuki theatre, while the covert-operations apparatus, under the direction of an Imperial Unitary Executive, goes about their daily business, which is assuming the functions of government.