Word: contra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Unlike the Iran-contra investigation, another drawn-out federal probe was finally starting to produce results. Operation Ill Wind -- the two-year Justice Department inquiry into whether defense contractors bribed Pentagon officials for contract information -- blew in its first indictments and guilty pleas. Two defense contractors and nine men, including a middle-ranking Pentagon official, were hit with charges that include fraud, conspiracy, racketeering and bribery...
Ever since the fiasco first popped into the headlines in 1986, millions of Americans have awaited a full exposition of the Iran-contra affair. They whetted their palates with appetizers from the Tower commission and sat with rapt attention through 13 weeks of televised congressional hearings, confident they were experiencing only a first course of the full meal that would follow when special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh brought Lieut. Colonel Oliver North and three alleged co-conspirators to trial...
North still stands accused of a dozen felonies, ranging from pocketing money given to him by contra leader Adolfo Calero that was intended to help obtain release of American hostages in Lebanon to obstructing a presidential inquiry and lying to congressional committees, offenses for which he could be imprisoned for 60 years and fined $3 million. His lawyers nevertheless boasted that they had crippled the prosecution. Crowed North's chief counsel, Brendan Sullivan Jr.: "The heart of its case is destroyed." He hinted that North would continue to use the tactics that had forced dismissal of the theft and conspiracy...
...anti-Soviet, is still misguided in its apparent unreadiness to regard Gorbachev's proposals as legitimate. While we agree that both sides should be cautious, as any government should be, we cannot support insinuations that would place American presidents morally above Soviet leaders. Recent White House scandals, the Iran-Contra affair and covert CIA actions suggest otherwise...
Coincidentally, another familiar Iran-contra figure, Israeli arms agent and counterterrorism expert Amiram Nir, died last week in the crash of a small Cessna plane in Mexico. The pilot also died, and two passengers were injured. Nir, a former aide to Shimon Peres and to Yitzhak Shamir, worked closely with North in the sale of U.S. arms to Iran, traveled with him to Tehran in the attempted arms-for-hostage exchanges and briefed Vice President Bush on the ill-fated scheme...