Press, 2000. Documents each decade of the twen-
tieth century in a separate chapter, providing
patent illustrations and inventions’ histories. Sug-
gests resources, both print and online, to research
patents issued in thirty-nine countries.
Elizabeth D. SchaferSee also Artificial heart; Bioengineering; Business
and the economy in Canada; Business and the econ-
omy in the United States; Camcorders; Cell phones;
Compact discs (CDs); Computers; Fax machines;
Medicine; Prozac; Robots; Science and technology;
Space exploration; Superconductors.
Iran-Contra affair
The Event A scandal results from illegal, covert
arms trafficking among the United States, Iran,
and Nicaraguan rebels
Date Scandal broke in 1986
The Iran-Contra affair was orchestrated in order to circum-
vent the will of Congress, which had forbidden the Reagan
administration from continuing militar y aid to the right-
wing rebel army in Nicaragua. The ensuing scandal raised
serious questions about the abuse of presidential powers in
foreign affairs and the extent of congressional oversight of
foreign affairs. It also demonstrated the extent to which the
Cold War mentality of the 1980’s was able to justify deal-
ings with and support for almost any regime that was anti-
communist, including hostile fundamentalist Islamic re-
gimes.
From 1937 to 1979, Anastasio Somoza García and his
two sons, Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio So-
moza Debayle, ran a brutal dictatorship in Nicara-
gua. In the wake of the great earthquake of 1972,
which crumbled the capital city of Managua, the
world reacted not only to the resulting devastation
but also to the shocking corruption of the Somoza
regime. Massive humanitarian relief supplies were
shipped to the country, only to be reshipped by the
Somozas for sale abroad. A broad-based anti-Somoza
internal opposition arose in Nicaragua. The opposi-
tion called itself the Sandinista National Liberation
Front, after Augusto César Sandino, a revolutionary
leader of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s whom
Somoza García had assassinated. In 1979, following
a bloody civil war, Somoza Debayle fled to the United
States, while elements of his National Guard crossed
over the border into Honduras to organize the coun-
terrevolutionary Contra movement. Leadership of
the new Sandinista regime was placed in the hands
of Daniel Ortega, a member of the Sandinista left
wing. Ortega’s government was supported in its re-
sistance to the Contras by Fidel Castro, who send mil-
itary aid and advisers to Nicaragua.
The replacement of the pro-United States So-
moza regime by one sympathetic to Castro was only
one hemispheric problem worrying the new U.S.
president, Ronald Reagan. A second was the replace-
ment of a friendly government in Grenada by one
friendly to Castro under Maurice Bishop. At the
same time, a guerrilla war raged in El Salvador
against the military junta that had seized power. The
guerrillas received support from the Sandinistas.
From cold warrior Reagan’s perspective, there was
an evident Russian-Cuban-Nicaraguan connection.
The Ortega regime had to be stopped. Under the so-
called Reagan Doctrine, anticommunist movements
worldwide were to be supported.Aiding the Contras In March, 1981, the Central In-
telligence Agency (CIA) helped organize and fi-
nance a movement, composed of ex-Somoza Na-
tional Guard members and disenchanted former
Sandinistas, to destabilize and topple the Ortega
government. Operating from bases in Honduras, ap-
proximately fifteen thousand Contras were trained
to launch raids on bridges, fuel depots, food store-
houses, and a host of other “soft” targets. The aim of
these activities was to destabilize the Ortega regime
by causing widespread shortages of daily commodi-
ties—essentially, to make civilians suffer until they
rejected a government that could not protect them.
Opposition to this strategy grew in the United States
as the human suffering in Nicaragua increased. Re-
ports surfaced of direct attacks on civilians by the
Contras, as well as of violent repressive measures be-
ing taken by the Sandinista regime to suppress the
counterrevolution. Neither type of report could eas-
ily be corroborated.
President Reagan saw the Contras not as abusers
of human rights but rather as “the moral equivalent
of our Founding Fathers.” By 1983, the targets of
these “freedom fighters” dramatically expanded. The
CIA orchestrated the mining of Nicaraguan harbors
to prevent overseas trade. This tactic was condemned
by the World Court at the Hague as violating interna-
tional law—a conclusion rejected by the Reagan528 Iran-Contra affair The Eighties in America