November 25, 1986, 30 years ago: Of all the scandals in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, what already should have been the biggest one gets a lot bigger.
On November 3, 1 day before the midterm Congressional elections, Ash-Shiraa (Arabic for "The Sail"), a magazine based in the Middle Eastern nation of Lebanon, reported that the American government had secretly been selling weapons to Iran, in order to secure the release of 7 American hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups.
And if this had been the extent of Reagan's involvement, it would have been bad enough, an impeachable offense. This was not the extent of it.
On November 4, the Democratic Party gained 8 seats in the U.S. Senate, enough to take control for the 1st time in 6 years. That was actually more seats than they gained in the House of Representatives, 5, but they already had control there. For the last 2 years of Reagan's 2nd term -- regardless of whether he finishes it -- Congress will be fully under Democratic control, making it more willing to investigate any misdeeds for which he and his men were responsible.
On November 25, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, who had worked with Reagan since the beginning of his tenure as Governor of California in 1967, publicly admitted that profits from weapons sales to Iran were made available to assist the Contras, a right-wing paramilitary group looking to overthrow the Communist government of Nicaragua.
This was prohibited by the Boland Amendment to the War Powers Act of 1973. Eddie Boland was a Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, and he wanted to outlaw such assistance, because people from his district, aid workers in Nicaragua, had been killed by the Contras. It was unanimously passed by Congress in 1982, and Reagan himself had signed it into law.
Therefore, if it could be proven that Reagan had authorized the "Contra" part of what had now become known as "The Iran-Contra Affair," he needed to be impeached by the House, and convicted and removed from office by the Senate. This was just 12 years after Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency, rather than face that likelihood over the Watergate scandal, and many of the major players in Congress in 1974 were still there at this point, so it was fresh in people's memory.
Also on the 25th, former U.S. Navy Admiral John Poindexter, Reagan's National Security Adviser, up to his neck in the scandal, resigned. One of his aides, Oliver North, a Lieutenant Colonel still on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, was discovered to have shredded documents relating to the funding of the Contras, and Reagan flat-out fired him.
An actor before going into politics, Reagan made 69 films between 1937 and 1964, 4 with his 1st wife, Jane Wyman, and 1 with his 2nd wife and eventual First Lady, then billed as Nancy Davis. In 2 of his films, he, a former football player at NCAA Division III Eureka College in Illinois, played sports legends: Notre Dame back George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All-American in 1940; and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (a man named for a President) in The Winning Team in 1952.
But there was no role he played better than "President Reagan." Parodying a commercial for pain reliever that debuted during his 1st term, "I'm not a doctor, but... " I said, "Ronald Reagan isn't a great President, but he plays one on TV." And no matter what bad things happened on his watch, nothing seemed to stick with him, earning him the nickname "The Teflon President," and nothing seemed to faze him.
Iran-Contra fazed Ronald Reagan. He was now approaching his 76th birthday, and, for the first time, he looked tired. The familiar smile was seen less often. There were times, especially during press conferences, where not only was his famed ability to verbally fence with, and disarm, reporters gone, but he looked like, as had often been said of boxers who had taken a beating, he didn't even know where he was.
After bad performances in his debates with Walter Mondale during the 1984 election, people began to joke that Reagan, by that point the oldest President in American history, had Alzheimer's disease. Now, it looked like it was no longer a joke. Indeed, in 1994, he revealed that he now had it, but wouldn't admit to having had it while still President.
Howard Baker, the former Senate Majority Leader from Tennessee who had been one of Reagan's competitors for the 1980 Republican nomination for President, and had been a member of the Senate Select Committee investigating Watergate, was brought in as his new White House Chief of Staff, to get the White House running properly again, and also to calm his old friends in Congress down.
By early May, when hearings were underway, it became clear that, unlike with Nixon, nobody was going to "flip" on Reagan. There would be no John Dean, only "G. Gordon Liddys." No Articles of Impeachment were ever drawn up against him. If he was still alive on January 20, 1989, the end of his 2nd term, he was going to serve it out.
He did, leaving office just short of turning 78. (The current President, Joe Biden, has broken his record. Despite attacks by Republicans, his mind is still sharp.) Reagan admitted to having Alzheimer's in 1994, stepped out of public life, and died in 2004, at age 93, at the time the oldest former President ever.
In 1998, with Reagan and most of the people associated with his Administration still alive, PBS aired a documentary as part of its series The American Experience: The Presidents. Nancy was not interviewed, but his children were: Sons Michael and Ronald, and daughters Maureen and Patti (who uses her mother's maiden name as her last name, Davis).
Meese was interviewed, but while he resigned as Attorney General due to his apparent role in the Wedtech scandal, he has never been indicted for any crimes, and he appears not to have committed any of the crimes connected to Iran-Contra. The major figures involved in Iran-Contra were not interviewed: Not Poindexter, not North, not Fawn Hall, the secretary he ordered to do the document shredding.
One exception was Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane, Poindexter's predecessor as National Security Adviser. In his interview, he said that, on July 18, 1985, while Reagan was hospitalized for cancer surgery, he presented the President with the plan of the arms sales to Iran and the redirection of the profits to the Contras, and that Reagan -- possibly compromised due to the drugs he was being prescribed -- approved it.
This contradicted what McFarlane had said in his testimony before Congress. He had already pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress, and was sentenced to 2 years' probation -- no jail time. Reagan's Vice President and successor as President, George H.W. Bush, made McFarlane the beneficiary of one of his "Christmas Pardons" on December 24, 1992.
If McFarlane had told Congress the truth in the Spring of 1987, Reagan could well have been impeached and removed by the end of the calendar year. Bush would have had a full year as an incumbent under his belt as he ran for President in 1988, but would have had to do a lot more defending of himself, his people, and the Republican Party in general than he actually ended up having to do. And, instead of winning in a landslide, he might have lost.
McFarlane is still alive, age 79. Lots of people were convicted in connection with Iran-Contra. Thanks to Bush, few of them really paid for it. Reagan got away with it completely.
(UPDATE: McFarlane died on May 12, 2022, at 84.)
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