The Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair lit up the political skies over Washington for well over a year in the late 1980s. The biggest scandal since Watergate, it dominated the news starting in late 1986, when word broke about the administration’s illegal backing of Contra rebels in Nicaragua and illicit sales of high-tech weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran. When President Ronald Reagan acknowledged that the two operations were connected it raised the stakes even higher, including rumblings for impeachment. Source: The National Security Archive
During my many years as a Time correspondent, I reported on memorable events. They also comprised recent history. I was one of several journalists who covered the Iran-Contra scandal. Below is an excerpt that describes my early encounter with the affair.
The downing of a C-123 supply plane over Nicaragua on October 5, 1986, was noteworthy because the crash’s lone survivor told his Sandinista captors that he was working for the CIA. Eugene Hasenfus was sentenced to thirty years but then pardoned and released. I interviewed Elliot Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, soon after the incident. We talked for nearly two hours.
He repeatedly assured me that Hasenfus was not working for or connected to the American government. Abrams stated he was simply unaware of any such relationship, that he knew of all activity and so he could authoritatively assure me that Hasenfus was not connected to the Reagan Administration.
It was just one of many lies Abrams would tell when the scandal broke. The Hasenfus incident helped uncover the Iran-Contra crimes. Hasenfus’s capture brought to light the fact that dur- ing a period when lethal aid to the Contras was banned, the National Security Council, with North in the lead, kept the arms and equipment flowing. The official line was that the Contras had been left to fend for themselves. Iran-Contra was shrouded in secrecy and American government lies.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 