Iran-Contra affair

The Iran-Contra affair , also called Irangate after the Watergate affair , was a political scandal during the tenure of US President Ronald Reagan .

Arms deals

The Reagan administration passed on proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran to the right-wing Contras guerrilla movement in Nicaragua to support them in the Contra war against the Sandinista government . Firstly, the support of the Contras was a clear violation of a corresponding US Congress decision ( Boland Amendment ) , on the other hand the money-American US was originally to ransom hostages in Lebanon provided. In the period from August 20, 1985 to October 28, 1986, a total of 2,515 TOW systems and 258 HAWK systems or their parts were delivered to Iran , including via Israel . Most of the transports were carried out by civil airlines such as Southern Air Transport or St. Lucia Airways .

This was also problematic from a domestic and geopolitical point of view in several respects because Iran has been considered a hostile state to the United States since the more than a year of taking 52 American citizens hostage during the 1979 revolution . At the same time, he waged war against Iraq , in which the US tended, if not officially, to support Iraq under Saddam Hussein .

Drug smuggling

The hearings on the affair in the US Congress also revealed that the Contras had smuggled tons of cocaine into the US over the years and that the CIA knew and tolerated these activities. The paramilitary contra groups used the proceeds from drug sales to finance their fight against the leftist Sandinista government . In detecting particularly did US Senator John Kerry out, who also own commission of inquiry led to drug trafficking connections from US authorities.

Although these illegal activities were just as serious as the arms deals with the enemy Iran, they hardly play a role in the public perception of the affair to this day. 1996 described investigative journalist Gary Webb in the series of articles Dark Alliance detail how the large amounts of cocaine, particularly in the ghettos of Los Angeles had been put on the market.

aftermath

The US has been found guilty by the International Court of Justice in The Hague of military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua. In a resolution , the UN General Assembly called on the USA to recognize the court ruling. Only the US, Israel and El Salvador voted against the resolution. After the Nicaraguan government was voted out of office in 1990 and the US threatened to stop aid payments to the country, the successor government abandoned all claims from the judgment.

Results of the investigation

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North , U.S. Marine Corps

The extent to which President Reagan and Vice President George Bush were involved in the Iran-Contra affair could never be fully clarified by the commission of inquiry. Reagan himself made no statements and always stated that he could not remember anything. Donald Rumsfeld was a special representative for the Middle East at the time of the affair. The then CIA director William Joseph Casey played a key role . Casey was never convicted due to his poor health. Casey died in New York on May 6, 1987.

Official responsibility for the illegal activities in the affair was assigned to the then rather insignificant Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North , who was in charge of coordinating covert operations in the White House as a member of the National Security Council . Despite obvious lies before the investigative committee and proven serious offenses - u. a. if he had tried to delete all incriminating emails from the Reagan administration, North managed to survive the affair as a free man despite a judicial conviction for procedural misconduct. He subsequently gained a kind of cult status with the American Conservatives and was President of the National Rifle Association , speaker and author of numerous books until April 29, 2019 . Six of the highest-ranking actors, including former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and former Security Advisor Robert McFarlane , have been pardoned by President George HW Bush. Critical voices in the US public suspected that this was intended to prevent further investigations, including into Bush's own role as Vice President of the Reagan Administration.

Other important people involved in the scandal include Otto Reich , John Poindexter , David M. Abshire , Akbar Hāschemi Rafsanjāni , Manucher Ghorbanifar , Adnan Khashoggi and Manuel Noriega .

Overview of the most important people

Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was pardoned by George HW Bush.
Elliott Abrams pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to two years probation and one hundred hours of community service. In 1992 he was pardoned by George HW Bush along with five other convicts of the Iran-Contra affair. In January 2019, he was appointed the US Secretary of State's special envoy for the power struggle in Venezuela.
Safety Advisor Robert McFarlane pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to two years probation, two hundred hours of community service and a $ 20,000 fine . He was pardoned by George HW Bush.
Alan D. Fiers was the chief of the CIA's Central American Task Force. In 1991 he was charged with actively withholding information from Congress. He was sentenced to one year probation and one hundred hours of community service. He was pardoned by George HW Bush.
Richard R. Miller , North's partner at IBC, has been convicted of fraud against the United States.
Clair George , Chief of the CIA's Division of Covert Operations under President Reagan. George was found guilty of lying twice in 1986 to Congressional investigative boards. He was pardoned by George HW Bush.
Richard Secord was charged with nine capital felons, including lying to Congress. He pleaded guilty.
Thomas G. Clines , CIA employee. He was found guilty of making illegal payments. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison and fined $ 40,000. He was the only one who served his sentence.
Carl R. Channel - Office of Public Diplomacy. He pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the US.
John Poindexter , Reagan's national security adviser, has been convicted of conspiracy, false testimony to Congress, obstruction of justice, and two other charges. The proceedings were discontinued due to procedural errors.
Oliver North was charged on sixteen counts and sentenced to 3 years probation and a $ 150,000 fine. The verdict was overturned because of procedural errors, there was no new conviction.
Duane R. Clarridge , Senior Operations Officer for the CIA (Republican Party), was pardoned by George HW Bush.
Albert Hakim pleaded guilty to making payments to North.
Joseph F. Fernandez was charged on four counts of fraud and false testimony. The case ended when Prosecutor Richard L. Thornburgh was denied access to classified files.

literature

Richard P. Barberio: Presidents and Political Scandal: Managing Scandal in the Modern Era. Springer International, Cham 2020, ISBN 978-3-030-45503-3 , pp. 59-78 (= 4. The Reagan Administration and Iran-Contra ).
Christopher de Bellaigue: In the rose garden of the martyrs. A portrait of Iran. Translated from the English by Sigrid Langhaeuser. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006, pp. 177–190 (English original edition: London 2004).
Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall: Cocaine Politics. Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America . University of California Press, Los Angeles 1998, ISBN 0-520-21449-8 .
The Watergate ghost is gone . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 1987, pp. 86-87 ( online ).

Web links

The Oliver North File ( Oliver North's memos and diaries from the National Security Archive , with extensive explanations; English)

Iran-Contra: White House e-mail . ( Memento of February 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) ( CNN -Documentation of incriminating emails from the White House that led to the investigation of the affair; English)

Kerry's Contra-Cocaine Chapter (Article on Senator John Kerry's Drug Trafficking Inquiry)

Archive Contra Crack Series (collection of articles on cocaine smuggling of the Contras; English)

Iran-Contra Investigation Day 23 (video, 6 hours), July 7, 1987, C-SPAN

Arms and drug trafficking for the US government . Telepolis

Individual evidence

↑ Iran-Contra Report; Arms, Hostages and Cons: How a Secret Foreign Policy Unraveled . In: The New York Times . November 19, 1987 ( nytimes.com [accessed October 14, 2008]).

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