> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.sweatyspice.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Plausible Deniability - Iran-Contra - URL: https://www.sweatyspice.com/plausible-deniability-b2-a3-e7/ - Published: 2026-11-01T15:25:37.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-01T15:25:37.000Z - Description: Iran-Contra’s pardoned alumni never left. One ended up handling Iran policy, one ran a surveillance program, and one became president of the NRA. - Author: Geoff Anderson - Tags: The Fulcrum: how Reagan was the pivotal point in conservatism *On November 13, 1986, the president told the country his administration had not traded arms for hostages. Less than four months later, he said the evidence said otherwise.* Series: [The Fulcrum](https://www.sweatyspice.com/tag/the-fulcrum/), Book Two: The Performance, Act Three: The Presidency, Episode 7 On the evening of November 13, 1986, Ronald Reagan went on television to address the story that had broken ten days earlier. He admitted authorizing arms shipments to Iran, called them small and defensive, and then offered the sentence the whole address was built around: the administration [did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages](https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-nation-iran-arms-and-contra-aid-controversy?ref=sweatyspice.com). On March 4, 1987, he went on television again. He took responsibility for his administration’s actions and acknowledged that the earlier statement had been wrong, with the line that the facts and the evidence told him it was not true. That is a reversal of the [PATCO](https://www.sweatyspice.com/the-letter-and-the-ultimatum-b2-a3-e2) sort, and unlike PATCO, the first statement was also false. What went on in between, the shipments, the shredder, the immunized witnesses and the Christmas Eve pardons, is the story of how a government built a machine whose purpose was to keep its president from knowing things, and what happened when the machine worked. --- ### The Short Version *Two scandals, joined by a pipe.* If Iran-Contra is a fuzzy memory, or you weren’t around for it, here is the whole thing in one sitting. **Story one: Iran.** Iran has been America’s sworn enemy since 1979, and during 1985 and 1986 it was also a customer. American hostages were being held in Lebanon by groups with ties to Iran. Starting August 20, 1985, Israel shipped Iran 96 [TOW antitank missiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71%5FTOW?ref=sweatyspice.com), then 408 more in September. The United States followed with 18 Hawk antiaircraft missiles in November, then 500 TOWs in February 1986, another 500 days later, 508 TOWs and Hawk spare parts in May, and a final 500 TOWs on October 28, 1986\. That is more than 2,500 missiles. U.S. policy at the time was to pressure other countries not to arm Iran. Three hostages came out: Benjamin Weir in September 1985, Lawrence Jenco in July 1986 and David Jacobsen later. Meanwhile, other Americans were being taken. **Story two: the contras.** Between 1982 and 1984 Congress passed a series of Boland Amendments limiting aid to the Nicaraguan contras. The second one, in force from October 3, 1984, to December 3, 1985, barred intelligence agencies from supporting them directly or indirectly. The administration took the position that the National Security Council wasn’t an intelligence agency. Most constitutional scholars disagreed. **The pipe.** The arms were sold to Iran at a markup, and some of the profit went to the contras. That is the diversion. **Who’s who:** - **Oliver North**, NSC staff, the operator. - **John Poindexter**, national security adviser, North’s boss. - **Robert McFarlane**, Poindexter’s predecessor. - **William Casey**, CIA director. - **Richard Secord and Albert Hakim**, the private middlemen known as “the Enterprise.” - **Elliott Abrams**, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. - **Caspar Weinberger**, Defense Secretary. - **Edwin Meese**, Attorney General. Yes, that Meese. He’s back. --- ### The Weekend *The country’s chief law enforcement officer opened an inquiry. He did not call it an investigation.* The disclosure came in pieces. In early October 1986 a plane ferrying supplies to the contras was shot down over Nicaragua and its American crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured. On November 3, a Lebanese magazine, Ash-Shiraa, revealed the arms deal with Iran. Ten days later came the speech above. Then came the weekend. From November 21 to 24, 1986, Meese ran his own inquiry into whether Reagan had known in advance of a November 1985 Hawk shipment that Congress hadn’t been told about. According to the [Brown University Iran-Contra profile](https://webhelper.brown.edu/cheit/Understanding%5Fthe%5FIran%5FContra%5FAffair/profile-meese.php?ref=sweatyspice.com), on November 22 Secretary of State Shultz told Meese that Reagan had admitted knowing about the shipment beforehand. Meese disregarded it. At a November 24 meeting with Reagan, Bush, Regan, Poindexter, Shultz, Weinberger and Casey, he said the shipment “may be a violation of law” if made without a finding, and added that the president hadn’t known. On November 25 he told the press that Reagan hadn’t learned of the shipment until February 1986\. That was wrong (a polite term for a bald-faced lie). The Select Committees later criticized him for not securing NSC documents, which North subsequently altered or destroyed, and for not taking notes of his interviews. The independent counsel saw the error as part of a pattern of omissions meant to protect Reagan. According to the profile, he never asked Reagan directly whether he knew. Meanwhile, he found the document. A North memo outlined the diversion of arms profits to the contras. Meese told Reagan, Regan and Bush privately, and announced it to the country on November 25\. That same day Poindexter resigned and Reagan fired North. Gallup had Reagan’s approval at 63 percent on October 24 to 27\. By December 4 and 5 it was at 47 percent. Sweaty's Corner doesn't have a marketing budget or an algorithm pushing it into anyone's feed. It has readers who share it. If this one landed, sending it to someone who'd get something out of it — or subscribing so the next one finds you directly — genuinely moves the needle. [ Subscribe ](#/portal/signup) Share this post #### Klieg Lights *The man running the inquiry had been through a few of his own.* It’s worth stopping on Ed Meese, because his name is on the Iran-Contra story and, it turns out, on a lot of other trouble. Reagan nominated him for Attorney General on January 23, 1984\. The confirmation took more than a year. A report to the Senate by Archibald Cox alleged a [“lack of ethical sensitivity”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin%5FMeese?ref=sweatyspice.com), and when the vote finally came in early 1985 it was 63 to 31, the most opposition an Attorney General nominee had drawn since the 1920s. His public remarks added color. In December 1983, as counselor to the president, he said he had seen no authoritative evidence that American children were going hungry, and that some people were going to soup kitchens voluntarily (as reported by the New York Times on December 10, 1983). In October 1985, discussing the Miranda warnings, he said that you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. His spokesman later said that was not what he meant. Then there was the ethics file. In February 1987, James McKay was named independent counsel, and the investigation ran 14 months. His 814-page report was made public on July 18, 1988, and covered seven areas. The [Christian Science Monitor’s summary](https://www.csmonitor.com/1988/0719/aed.html?ref=sweatyspice.com) is worth reading closely: - **His 1985 tax return.** McKay believed Meese violated the law by willfully filing a materially false return, after failing to declare certain capital gains. He chose not to prosecute, citing Meese’s otherwise clean tax history and evidence that he intended to file an amended return. - **Telecommunications policy, 1986 to 1987.** McKay concluded a fact-finder would probably find a conflict-of-interest violation beyond a reasonable doubt, and declined to prosecute, finding no evidence Meese acted for personal gain. - **The Iraqi pipeline.** Meese “became personally and closely involved” in discussions about a Bechtel-built pipeline from Iraq to Jordan. He gave conflicting testimony about whether he could have known of possible bribes meant for the Israeli Labor Party. McKay found insufficient evidence for a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charge. - **Wedtech.** Insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Wedtech, a Bronx defense contractor, won no-bid contracts worth roughly $250 million through a minority-business program it didn’t qualify for, and more than 20 officials were convicted in the scandal, including two congressmen who went to jail. Meese was never charged with anything. Meese had announced his resignation about two weeks before the report came out, which took some of the air out of it. His lawyers called the two possible violations a cheap shot. Meese called the outcome a full vindication. The independent counsel who spent 14 months on it declined to prosecute, which is the accurate way to say the legal result stands, and also the accurate way to say a prosecutor found a probable violation and walked away. None of this changed his career. President Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on October 8, 2019\. He served as a Heritage Foundation trustee until 2025, according to Wikipedia, which also notes he’s held its Ronald Reagan chair since 1988\. Put the two halves together. The man responsible for the government’s legal integrity in November 1986 had spent the previous three years under ethics scrutiny, and on the single weekend that mattered he made a false statement about the president’s knowledge and left the documents unsecured. Either he was careless or he was loyal. The record doesn’t say which, but it does say the other possibility, that he did it on purpose, is the one Walsh worried about[1](https://www.sweatyspice.com/plausible-deniability-b2-a3-e7/#fn1). --- ### The Sound of Not Knowing *The Tower Commission found a president who delegated everything, including knowing.* Reagan appointed John Tower, Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft to review the NSC’s role. On December 2, 1986, he told them he had authorized the arms deals. Then he said he had no recollection of doing so. The commission reported on February 26, 1987, after interviewing 80 witnesses, in about 200 pages. It found that Reagan did not know the full extent of the operation, especially the diversion, and criticized him for poor supervision of his staff. The ensuing speech on March 4 was what the country got from that. Then came the congressional hearings. William Casey, the CIA director who might have explained a good deal, died on May 6, 1987, the day after public hearings began. The joint committee’s report that November said that if the president didn’t know what his advisers were doing, he should have. That sentence is the backbone of the story. Poindexter’s version, which he gave to the committees, was that he had deliberately kept the diversion from Reagan. That is plausible deniability as a service (or PDaaS in the vernacular of today): the staff protects the president from the facts, and the facts’ absence is then offered as the defense. Lather, rinse, repeat. --- ### The Hearings *A secretary, a lieutenant colonel and a national television audience.* Two witnesses made the hearings a story people *remembered*. **Fawn Hall.** North’s secretary testified for two days in June 1987\. She admitted altering and shredding so many documents that the office shredder jammed, and said she smuggled other documents out in her boots and clothing and gave them to North on November 25, 1986\. Her explanation, as [quoted by Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawn%5FHall?ref=sweatyspice.com), was that sometimes you have to go above the law. She became briefly famous, signed with a talent agency, and even attempted a media career. **Oliver (Ollie) North.** He testified in July 1987, in uniform, and admitted he had misled Congress. He called the scheme a “neat idea.” The public loved him. A Newsweek/Gallup poll on July 9 to 10 found 44 percent called him a patriot and a hero, and a Time poll found 69 percent didn’t think he should be jailed. Those same polls found something else: 70 percent in the Newsweek survey believed his covert activities were approved by higher-ups, 84 percent in Time’s said the same, and 61 percent said Reagan had a larger role than he had acknowledged. The country, in other words, had decided North was a patriot and the president was in on it. North was convicted on May 4, 1989, on three counts: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and ordering the destruction of documents through Hall. His sentence on July 5, 1989, was a suspended three-year term, two years’ probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours of community service. On July 20, 1990, the D.C. Circuit vacated the convictions because trial witnesses might have been affected by his immunized testimony. The charges were dismissed on September 16, 1991. He ran for the Senate from Virginia in 1994 and lost, 46 to 43 percent, after raising $20.3 million. He hosted a radio show and then *War Stories* on Fox News until 2016. In 2018 he was announced as president of the NRA, and in April 2019 he left amid a dispute over the CEO. That story deserves a full treatment of its own, and it’s coming[2](https://www.sweatyspice.com/plausible-deniability-b2-a3-e7/#fn2). The footnote for today is that in August 2025, per Wikipedia, Fawn Hall married Oliver North. --- ### The Count *Fourteen charged, eleven convicted, and almost nobody punished.* Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh was appointed in December 1986\. His office [charged 14 people and secured 11 convictions](https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm?ref=sweatyspice.com). Two of them, North’s and Poindexter’s, were overturned on appeal. Poindexter had been convicted April 7, 1990, of five counts of lying to Congress and obstructing its committees. The D.C. Circuit reversed on November 15, 1991, on the same immunized-testimony grounds, and the indictment was dismissed in 1993. Of everyone convicted, one person went to prison: Thomas Clines, for 16 months. McFarlane, Abrams and Fiers pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. Secord and Hakim got probation. Reagan himself testified by videotape in February 1990, in the Poindexter trial. The Seattle Times, in its [account of the tape](https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19900223/1057639/iran-contra-deposition----reagan-testimony-bares-memory-loss-but-not-much-else?ref=sweatyspice.com), counted at least 124 times he said he did not remember, over eight hours. He cited about 50 million papers and 400 foreign leaders as reasons for poor recall. His memory ran short on names but held for the points that helped him. His own recollection of his instructions to staff was clear: > “Stay within the law.” He also testified that he did not authorize Poindexter to mislead Congress, which cut against Poindexter’s defense. Walsh’s final report came out August 4, 1993\. It found that Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of Reagan and Vice President Bush, among others, and that officials [“deliberately deceived the Congress and the public.”](https://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi453/PS/irancontra.htm?ref=sweatyspice.com) --- ### Christmas Eve *The pardons arrived the day before Christmas, which is when you send things you want people to read last.* On December 24, 1992, George H.W. Bush, a month and change after losing the election, pardoned six people: - **Caspar Weinberger**, indicted June 16, 1992, pardoned before trial. - **Duane Clarridge**, indicted November 26, 1991, pardoned before trial. - **Clair George**, found guilty on two felony counts December 9, 1992, pardoned before sentencing. - **Elliott Abrams**, who had pleaded guilty in October 1991 to two misdemeanors. - **Alan Fiers**, who had pleaded guilty in July 1991. - **Robert McFarlane**, who had pleaded guilty in March 1988. Walsh’s report had found that Bush knew of the Iran operations. The pardons ended the last of the active cases. --- ### The Other Ledger *Congress shut off the money. The executive found other sources, and some of them had records.* This is the cameo from [Five Grams](https://www.sweatyspice.com/five-grams-b2-a3-e4), now arriving as a payoff. The Boland Amendments were an attempt to stop funding. The Enterprise was one answer. The other, according to the 1989 Kerry Committee, was that elements of the contras knowingly accepted money and material from traffickers, in some cases after indictment. In 1998 the CIA’s own inspector general confirmed that the agency was slow to cut ties with people facing trafficking allegations, and documented a 1982 agreement that exempted the agency from reporting drug allegations involving non-employee assets until congressional funding resumed in 1986. What was proven is narrower than the legend: knowledge, delay, and a rule that kept the knowledge off the books. It is the same pattern as the rest of this episode, a structure built so that what shouldn’t be known isn’t. And the refugees from the last episode, the Salvadorans and Guatemalans with approval rates under 3 percent, were fleeing wars in this same region. --- ### The Players *Hint: None of them went away.* - **Elliott Abrams**, pardoned in 1992, served on the NSC under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009\. From January 25, 2019, he was U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela, and from September 1, 2020, to January 20, 2021, U.S. Special Representative for Iran. Iran-Contra’s pardoned alumnus handling Iran policy is the kind of detail that makes irony feel underpowered. - **John Poindexter** directed DARPA’s Information Awareness Office from January 2002 to August 12, 2003, which pursued “Total Information Awareness.” A proposed prediction market on geopolitical events, which the press portrayed as betting on assassinations and terrorism, ended his tenure. - **Oliver North** you’ve met above. The NRA piece will take it from there. - **Ed Meese** received the Medal of Freedom. The people who built the machine that kept the president from knowing were not punished by history. They were promoted by it. One speech remains. It is the one where the president tells the country what it all meant: The Farewell. [1](https://www.sweatyspice.com/plausible-deniability-b2-a3-e7/#end1) \- Remember this when the Never Trump gang talks wistfully about how great and honorable the people that have been in conservative politics were before Trump... [2](https://www.sweatyspice.com/plausible-deniability-b2-a3-e7/#end2) \- This whole thread has given me a lot of cast-offs that need their own treatment. Reagan's flopping around like a fish out of water on freedom/liberty and gun laws is something you would expect the Conservative and especially the second amendment absolutists to puch back on, but they are surprisingly mum on it. A future post or two is in the works. Stay tuned!