Colonel Oliver North - Iran-Contra Affair

In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One -- the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about -- without even looking for it. A simple phone call concerning an unexceptional pending drug trial turned into a massive conspiracy involving the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, L.A. and Bay Area crack cocaine dealers, and the Central Intelligence Agency. For several years during the 1980s, Webb discovered, Contra elements shuttled thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States, with the profits going toward the funding of Contra rebels attempting a counterrevolution in their Nicaraguan homeland. Even more chilling, Webb quickly realized, was that the massive drug-dealing operation had the implicit approval -- and occasional outright support -- of the CIA, the very organization entrusted to prevent illegal drugs from being brought into the United States. Within the pages of Dark Alliance, Webb produces a massive amount of evidence that suggests that such a scenario did take place, and more disturbing evidence that the powers that be that allowed such an alliance are still determined to ruthlessly guard their secrets.

Ten years ago the Iran-Contra affair swept the headlines as the nation watched an indignant Lt. Col. Oliver North testify before a congressional committee. Although polls showed that most Americans were critical of North's actions and ambivalent toward the man himself, media coverage left the opposite impression, with its broadcasts of "Ollie-for-president" rallies and stories of congressional aides overwhelmed by a torrent of pro-North mail. In this book, public opinion is more than the sum of a pollster's tally; instead, Amy Fried defines it as a political tool, integral to the political process, where vested interests compete to legitimize their interpretation of the public voice. Fried explores the construction, interpretation, and uses of public opinion, raising important questions about the media and the role of special interest groups in determining policy.

From Kirkus Reviews , April 15, 1997
Walsh, the former independent counsel for Iran/Contra matters, submits an injudicious, self-serving brief in aid of reversing the probable verdict of history that his extended and contentious investigation of malfeasance at the highest levels of US government produced appreciably more heat than light. Drawing on the record he compiled in the course of a six-year investigation, the author delivers a largely chronological narrative built around a rehash of serious charges that were never proved in court. At issue was the question of whether Ronald Reagan exceeded his presidential authority in sanctioning a hushed-up arms-for-hostages deal with Iran, which also yielded cash used to equip the Contra forces in Nicaragua. These clandestine operations came to light in the mid-1980s, and Walsh was called in to unravel the tangled web at the start of 1987. By the author's account, he had no axes to grind at the outset of his inquiry. Perhaps not, but his office became vaultingly ambitious in its selection of targets after failing to put the usual CIA, National Security Council, or White House suspects, let alone Oliver North and John Poindexter, behind bars. At various times, Walsh recounts, he and his aides went after George Bush, Edwin Meese, Donald Regan, George Shultz, and Caspar Weinberger. The fact that he got nary a one of these men in the dock does not stop the author from repeating in detail allegations of supposed misdeeds that resulted in but a single indictment. Attentive readers will learn that feckless subordinates, ill-informed judges, and national-security hurdles, not Walsh, are to blame for the paucity of scalps. A spirited if one-sided effort by Walsh to have the last word on the Iran/Contra affair and to justify his largely unavailing stewardship of the independent counsel's office. Copyright Š1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Iran-Contra was a true case of Machiavellian politics because all of our most sacred principles were run over for the sake of the dictators ideology - that the end justifies the means.

The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History
(The National Security Archive Document)
by Peter Kornbluh, Malcolm Byrne, Theodore Draper
Paperback $24.95 (1993)

With a few exceptions, all of the 101 facsimile documents in this collection were released five and six years ago, about when those scandalized by Ollie's antics and those who defended his zeal watched his televised congressional testimony. The exceptions -- such as North's notes, CIA debriefs of its Costa Rica station chief, and Bush's diaries -- that have since come out add little to the affair's essential lessons (the political cost of pursuing unpopular policies in secret), but prying loose such evidence, with the crowbar of the Freedom of Information Act, is a virtual raison d'etre for this book's private sponsor, the National Security Archive. This Beltway entity thrives on indignation about the affair, this being its third, and not last, title about it. Whether or not anyone can seriously agree with the NSA's extravagant belief, summed by introducer T. Draper that "if ever the constitutional democracy of the U.S. is overthrown, we have a better idea of how it is likely to be done," one can support the public value of this collation. Factoring in its chronology, bio sketches, concice editorial matter, and its guts--the titillation sensation of seeing "eyes only" reports -- it will ecumenically attract all parties to the political schism, those concerned with, blase about, or even bored with the scandal that keeps on going and going and going . . . Gilbert Taylor CopyrightŠ 1993, American Library Association. All rights reserved.