Word: contras
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Nothing in recent American life--not Watergate, not Iran-contra, not the debate on the Persian Gulf War--has served to reveal more clearly than the Thomas episode the fragility of the American social experiment. Some will say, as they say at the close of every political crisis, "When all is said and done, the system worked, the people were heard and justice was done...
That was the consensus view at the close of Watergate. Now, as the Iran-contra proceedings grind toward an end, it is less apparent. There was a moment of honor during the congressional debate at the time of the Gulf War. But as we survey the moral and political debris of the past three months, only a fool or a professional optimist could rejoice in such a consensus surrounding Thomas. What went wrong...
Testimony during three weeks of hearings focused on allegations that Gates knew more than he has admitted about the Iran-Contra scandal, and that he slanted intelligence reports to fit the administration's hard-line anti-Soviet bias...
...does this sound familiar?) is political compatibility with the President. The second is ignorance of anything that happened in the CIA during the Reagan administration. While Clarence Thomas, the judge, was certifying himself free of legal thought, Robert Gates, the spy, steadfastly denied knowledge of events in the Iran-Contra scandal. Knowing what is going on is once again a liability...
...Senator accused Gates of thinking about law cases on the side, Gates could point to his role in Iran-Contra as proof that the Constitution has played very little role in his career...