The Iran-Contra
Scandal

On November 3, 1986, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa revealed a secret arms-for-hostages deal between the United States and Iran. As the scandal unfolded, it was revealed that the profits from these arms sales had been illegally diverted to aid anti-Sandinista rebels (called Contras) in Nicaragua. For the next year, the Iran-Contra scandal, as it was known, played out in the press as questions of governmental conspiracy, abuse of power, and a White House cover-up swirled around the Reagan administration.

Since the early 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency had been funding, arming, and training groups of dissident forces opposing the leftist Nicaraguan government. After Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited further aid to the Contras, the Reagan administration then looked for other ways to continue its support for the rebels, eventually funneling sales from the Iranian arms sales.

Less than a month after the story broke, President Reagan appointed a three-person committee to investigate the allegations. The Tower Commission—named after commission member John Tower, a Republican senator from Texas—spent several months calling witnesses and poring over classified documents. Unsatisfied with the Tower Commission’s work, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives established their own joint investigative committee and held hearings in the summer of 1987. Both the Tower Commission and the congressional committee concluded that neither Reagan nor Vice President George H. W. Bush was aware of the illegal funding of the Contras, though Reagan was sharply criticized as a poor administrator who needed to exert more control over his staff.

Several of Reagan’s top officials were eventually indicted on a variety of felony accounts, including lying to Congress, destroying evidence, and obstructing justice. In all, eleven men were convicted or pleaded guilty. In late 1992, then President George H. W. Bush pardoned six men indicted or convicted as part of the Iran-Contra scandal.