Iran-Contra

aka Irangate

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

If you're an American pondering whether to sell missiles to a foreign power with a proven history of sponsoring terrorism against the United States, you probably ought to think twice. It could reasonably be argued that this would be giving aid to an enemy of the U.S., and therefore expose you to a charge of treason. Seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it?

And yet this is precisely what President Ronald Reagan did. But did he get impeached? Nope. The American people decided that if the President was paving a road with his very best intentions, it didn't really matter where that road ultimately led. Who cares about a few broken laws? And in the wake of overwhelming public apathy, the whole affair was quietly set aside.

Illegal Arms for Terrorists

LET PEACE TAKE ROOT

THIS CEDAR OF LEBANON TREE GROWS IN LIVING MEMORY OF THE AMERICANS KILLED IN THE BEIRUT TERRORIST ATTACK AND ALL VICTIMS OF TERRORISM THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

In October 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with 2.5 tons of TNT into the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The explosion killed 241 American servicemen. And the Iranians were behind it. They financed the operation. They coordinated it from their embassy in Syria. They trained the suicide bomber in Iran. They even manufactured the truck there. The Iranians were in it up to their eyeballs.

And we knew it. One month before the Beirut bombing, the NSA intercepted a phone call made by the Iranian ambassador to Syria. The ambassador described having given Hezbollah orders to kill American forces in Lebanon and also "undertake an extraordinary operation against the Marines" in Beirut. Somehow, this information got lost in the Pentagon until two days after the bombing.

President Reagan later described the events in his memoirs:

The evidence indicated that both suicide vehicles were driven by radical Shiite fundamentalists suicidally bent on the pursuit of martyrdom. They were members of the same group responsible for the barbarous bombing of our embassy in Beirut the previous April, a group whose religious leaders promised instant entry to Paradise for killing an enemy of Iran's theocracy. Nancy and I were in a state of grief, made almost speechless by the magnitude of the loss.

In July 1985, President Reagan denounced Iran as part of a "confederation of terrorist states" which had committed "outright acts of war" against the U.S. He declared Iran to be an enemy of the United States:

"Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua -- continents away, tens of thousands of miles apart, but the same goals and objectives. I submit to you that the growth in terrorism in recent years results from the increasing involvement of these states in terrorism in every region of the world. This is terrorism that is part of a pattern, the work of a confederation of terrorist states. Most of the terrorists who are kidnapping and murdering American citizens and attacking American installations are being trained, financed, and directly or indirectly controlled by a core group of radical and totalitarian governments -- a new, international version of Murder, Incorporated. And all of these states are united by one simple criminal phenomenon -- their fanatical hatred of the United States, our people, our way of life, our international stature."

And yet only 39 days after making that speech, Reagan's men began furnishing some of these fanatical America haters with what would eventually amount to 107 tons of anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. These shipments continued for more than a year. They even continued beyond August 1986, when President Reagan signed into law a federal ban on arms sales to terrorist nations, which included Iran.

That's how he committed treason. But if Ronald Reagan's a traitor, he also had a whole bunch of accomplices. Like his Vice President, George HW Bush. But thanks to some convenient Presidential pardons, everybody got away scot-free.

But why would they do this? What rationale did they have for selling missiles to a bunch of terrorists? Why would our highest elected leaders commit treason against their own country?

Illegal Payments to the Contras

Unfortunately, the Congress felt differently. Much differently. So differently, in fact, that it passed a set of laws making it a crime to give aid to the Contras. In doing so, the U.S. government had forbidden itself from furnishing the Contras with money or supplies of any kind.

The White House was suddenly facing a crisis. They weren't allowed to send money. But even if they were, where would they get it? During a June 1984 meeting of the National Security Planning Group, the President and his closest advisors weighed their options:

KIRKPATRICK:	If we can't get the money for the anti-Sandinistas, then we have to make the maximum effort to find the money elsewhere.
SCHULTZ:	I would like to get the money for the Contras also, but ... Jim Baker said that if we go out and try to get the money from third countries, it is an impeachable offense.
CASEY:	Jim Baker said that if we try to get money from third countries without notifying the oversight committees it could be a problem.
SCHULTZ:	Baker's argument is that the U.S. government may raise and spend funds only through an appropriation of the Congress.
PRESIDENT REAGAN:	We must obtain the funds to help these freedom fighters.
VICE PRESIDENT BUSH:	The only problem that might come up is if the United States were to promise to give these third parties something in return, so that some people could interpret this as some kind of an exchange.
McFARLANE:	I certainly hope none of this discussion will be made public in any way.
PRESIDENT REAGAN:	If such a story gets out, we'll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House until we find out who did it.

It didn't take long for somebody to hit on the idea of soliciting donations from private individuals. They set up a front organization and issued newspaper ads urging Americans to contribute $16 a month to sponsor a Nicaraguan rebel. The poster boy -- a Contra soldier with the highly dubious name "Charley" -- appealed simultaneously to both our noblest ideals (as well as our own sense of self preservation) when he wrote:

There is no "country" called Nicaragua. Only a nation of people living under a totalitarian regime funded by Cuba and the Soviet Union. Aren't you as Americans, committed to governments of the people, by the people, and for the people? Isn't that what you fought for just over 200 years ago? In America you have so much. We have nothing. Our very future and the future of the democratic world is at stake. Please help me and my fellow patriots. We haven't got long. Vaya con Dios, Charley

But despite the efforts of the White House PR machine, the Contras increasingly appeared to be a particularly ruthless and bloodthirsty bunch. Stories of atrocities against civilian noncombatants certainly didn't help. In the words of human rights group Americas Watch, "the Contras systematically engage in violent abuses ... so prevalent that these may be said to be their principle means of waging war." Another NGO compiled a year's worth of Contra atrocities, which included murder, rape, torture, maiming children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, and amputating genitals.

An eyewitness to a Contra raid in Jinotega province said:

"Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off and their eyes poked out. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."

And then there were the CIA manuals. The Central Intelligence Agency printed and distributed two booklets to the Contras. One was a 16-page comic book depicting techniques for sabotaging the Sandinista government from within, mostly through vandalism and demolition. It was essentially a course in monkeywrenching.

The other tract was a pamphlet entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare. It was basically a how-to manual for mounting a covert insurgency. One particularly chilling passage described the assassination of government officials:

Selective Use of Violence for Propagandistic Effects

It is possible to neutralize carefully selected and planned targets, such as court judges, mesta judges, police and State Security officials, CDS chiefs, etc. For psychological purposes it is necessary to gather together the population affected, so that they will be present, take part in the act, and formulate accusations against the oppressor.

When asked in November 1984 to clarify this passage from the manual, President Reagan claimed that the problem was just a misunderstanding which stemmed from a simple mistranslation:

PRESIDENT REAGAN:	[T]here was nothing in that manual that had anything to do with assassinations or anything of that kind.
	[...]
REPORTER:	Didn't the manual say "neutralize?" And can't that be construed as meaning "assassination?"
PRESIDENT REAGAN:	I suppose you could construe it any number of -- several ways. But in the context in which it was recommended -- actually, that was not the choice, the original choice of the word. The real word was remove, meaning: "remove from office." If you came into a village or town, remove from office representatives of the Sandinista government. When they translated it into the Spanish, they translated it "neutralize" instead of "remove." But the meaning still remains the same.
REPORTER:	Well, how would you go about doing that without violence and force?
PRESIDENT REAGAN:	No. You just say to the fellow that's sitting there in the office: "You're not in the office anymore.''

Then the press corps broke into laughter. Literally. Which might be the reason nobody asked Reagan why this astonishingly polite technique would be listed under the heading "Selective Use of Violence for Propagandistic Effects." They just let it go. Why spoil the mood?

Despite the obvious moral ambiguities, some private funding did materialize. One prominent source was Christian televangelist Pat Robertson, who coughed up millions for the anti-Communist rebels.

The Reagan administration continued to lobby Congress for Contra support. But in light of all the unseemly revelations, lawmakers refused to budge. A solution was found the following year. The White House would secretly sell surface-to-air missiles to the "terrorist state" of Iran at a hefty profit. The country which had killed more than 200 U.S. Marines in Beirut ponied up $12,237,000 for a cache of American-made weapons whose wholesale price was only $6,965,752. The resulting profit of $5,271,248 was kept totally under the table. Congress didn't know about it. Nobody did.

Most of the proceeds were funneled to the Nicaraguan Contras, in violation of the Boland Amendment. Hence, it was illegal. Simple as that.

The remainder was kept as startup capital for an off-the-books covert action agency referred to internally as "The Enterprise." It controlled a multimillion dollar slush fund available for any sort of operation that absolutely no one was supposed to know about. Disbursements from these accounts were not subject to any form of scrutiny or oversight by Congress. In addition to its Swiss bank accounts and shell corporations, The Enterprise possessed five airplanes, two landing strips, twenty contract pilots, and a boat. This enabled them to violate the Boland amendment with total impunity.

Creating a Market for American Hostages

Oliver North championed the following deal in his December 4, 1985 email:

the following proposal has evolved which the Iranians today said they wd like to discuss in detail on Saturday: -- The total "package" from the Israelis wd consist of 50 HAWKs w/PIP (product improvement package) and 3300 basic TOWs. -- Deliveries wd commence on or about 12 December as follows:

H hr: 1 707 w/300 TOWs = 1 AMCIT
H+10hrs: 1 707 (same A/C) w/300 TOWs = 1 AMCIT
H+16hrs: 1 747 w/50 HAWKs & 400 TOWs = 2 AMCITs
H+20hrs: 1 707 w/300 TOWs = 1 AMCIT
H+24hrs: 1 747 w/2000 TOWs = French Hostage

AMCIT stands for "American citizen." Therefore, the average American citizen was evidently valued at 260 TOW anti-tank missiles and 10 HAWK anti-aircraft missiles. Meanwhile, a French hostage was worth 2,000 TOWs. (Go figure.) According to their product pages on Raytheon's website:

• The "Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided" (TOW) missile can destroy ground targets (tanks, trucks, schoolbuses) up to 3.75 km away. It's fairly portable, and can be carried by 3 or 4 men. Raytheon also trumpets the TOW's lethality ("high probability that a hit is a target kill"). And their shelf life is at least 15 years without maintenance.

• The HAWK is an "all-weather, surface-to-air, medium-range/medium-altitude" missile. With a warhead consisting of 300 pounds of high explosives, the HAWK can bring down warplanes, helicopters, and commercial jetliners at a range of 24 km and a maximum altitude of 30,000 feet (9.1 km).

Ultimately, we managed to bargain down the Iranians. Altogether, we sold them 2,008 TOWs plus a bunch of HAWK missiles. In total, they weighed more than 107 tons. That's a lot of weaponry.

The Cover-Up

And still the American people elected George HW Bush as their next President. What's a guy gotta do?

As Reagan's Vice President, Bush got a bunch of shit jobs. One of his duties was heading up the Presidential Task Force on Terrorism. At the same time, he attended at least five high-level meetings where the sale of arms to Iran was discussed. Even so, Bush stood up in front of news cameras and somehow managed to announce with a straight face:

"Today I am proud to deliver to the American people the result of the six months effort to review our policies and our capabilities to deal with terrorism. Our policy is clear, concise, unequivocal. We will offer no concession to terrorists, because that only leads to more terrorism. States that practice terrorism, or actively support it, will not be allowed to do so without consequence."

Then the media began reporting that Bush had attended at least five of these meetings where illegal Contra payments were discussed. The Vice President did his best to help clarify things for reporters:

"I saw some references in one of these stories to the nine, nine o'clock meetings. Let me tell you how it works. Somebody comes in there, like there's Don Regan, me, and the President. 'Anybody hear anything new on the hostages today? We got and heard of that? Has it moved forward at all? No, but we'll ask Poindexter.' Poindexter would come in the room, 'No, we haven't had a report.' That's the end of that meeting. Then you go ahead and talk about the budget, or talk about something else."

Bush steadfastly maintained that he had never been "in the loop." Notice, however, that when the journalist asked about funding the Contras (illegal under the Boland Amendment), Bush only claimed not to know about the specific terms of the Iranian deal (weapons for hostages):

REPORTER:	Did you know about the Contra aid or not?
VICE PRESIDENT BUSH:	I sensed that there were -- that we were sending arms. And I sensed we were trying to get hostages out. But not arms for hostages.
REPORTER:	Did you not begin to smell a rat here?
VICE PRESIDENT BUSH:	Not really, no. I could see that it was -- got a little close, but not, not, enough to say -- no, this is not arms, that this is purely arms for hostages.

As Senator Bob Dole put it, "The record is that he was either absent or silent. I don't know what that does for him."

Arms for Hostages timeline

Contras timeline

Followup