Word: iran-contra
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...question that dominated foreign ministries in capitals around the world last week, as the Iran-contra scandal continued to explode, was whether it would have the same kind of disabling effect on Ronald Reagan's presidency as Watergate had on Richard Nixon's. That was a matter of great concern to both friends and foes, but particularly to U.S. allies. "There is a basic given within the NATO alliance," said a French official. "This is that we rely on the solidity of the American regime." His unspoken point was that, temporarily at least, this basic stability has come into question...
Despite the atmosphere of normality in Geneva, there were signs that the Iran-contra affair could indeed affect superpower relations. Coming on top of Reagan's decision to violate the unratified SALT II arms treaty, the scandal has evidently prompted the Kremlin to allow Soviet commentators to attack Reagan personally, something that was avoided in the recent past. Georgi Arbatov, head of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, called the scandal "a truly cinematic story out of second-rate Hollywood films, in which Ronald Reagan has been featured for years...
...office are like. And this White House can only envy the final trajectory of Clinton's presidency--in a trough with two years to go and then celebrated as he ran up surpluses and pulled all-nighters negotiating Middle East peace. President Ronald Reagan, stung by the Iran-contra scandal, plunged in polls 23 months before he moved out of the White House. But he overhauled his staff and went on to give his "tear down this wall" speech and sign a missile-reduction treaty with the Soviets...
...Gatess came to that hearing with baggage, having withdrawn his nomination to be CIA director four years earlier because of questions raised about his role in the Iran-contra affair. By 1991, the Berlin Wall had fallen, but Gates's nomination to be the nation's top spy reopened an intense debate that had been festering within U.S. intelligence since the dawn of the Cold War: How big a threat was the Soviet Union...
...also seen his share of controversy. Partly because he worked for Casey, Gates was a minor player in the Iran-contra scandal and was criticized for skewing intelligence analysis on the Soviets to suit hard-liners in the Reagan White House. More than 30 Democrats--10 of whom are still in the Senate--opposed his nomination to be CIA director in 1991. Gates went into his confirmation that year carrying a small, white oblong stone in his pocket, a memento of a hike he had taken in the Olympic mountains the summer before. He wanted a reminder of what...