Word: iran-contra
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...retired Navy admiral had walked the gangplank for his skipper in the 1987 congressional hearings, insisting that "the buck stops with me" in the Iran-contra affair. But once he faced trial on five charges of destroying documents and lying to Congress, John Poindexter switched signals and called Ronald Reagan as his star witness to share some responsibility for the Administration's secret policies to sell arms to Iran and assist the Nicaraguan contras. The former President failed to help his loyal National Security Adviser. Confused, forgetful and oblivious to the public record, Reagan would not even concede that Congress...
...Government payroll. Poindexter too was convicted of shredding a presidential finding and erasing 5,000 electronic messages (backup copies were discovered). But for the first time in the scandal, jurors were willing to sustain charges of a conspiracy to obstruct Congress and cover up the Iran-contra folly. "Admiral Poindexter did it because he wanted to protect the political viability of Ronald Reagan. And I consider that to be a selfish motive," Webb said after the verdict. No jury, of course, has been required to address the underlying constitutional question: To what extent can Congress limit a President in carrying...
...public record on Iran-contra, from the Tower commission to the congressional hearings and the various cases brought by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, is incontestable on the key points: Reagan approved the weapons sales to Iran in the hope they would lead to the release of American hostages; he ordered that the contras be financed from private and foreign sources, even though Congress had expressed its opposition by cutting off U.S. funding. And he wanted both dealings kept secret from the American public...
Whether Reagan knew that jacked-up weapons prices had created profits that went to the contras, and whether he would have disapproved if he did know, are only peripheral uncertainties. Iran-contra, which violated laws and contradicted Reagan's proclaimed policies, was undeniably the President's doing...
...Nicaragua, wittingly or not, Washington stumbled on an arm's-length policy: wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves. For Americans, the cost was minimal. True, bruising annual battles over Central America splintered Congress, and the Iran-contra scandal hobbled Ronald Reagan's second term, but hardly any U.S. soldiers were dying...