administration. The mines and the refusal of
the Reagan administration to accept the World
Court’s declaration motivated the U.S. Con-
gress to act. Revising a law known as the Boland
Amendment (first passed in 1982), Congress
banned the U.S. government from using any
finances to support military or paramilitary
actions by the Contras.
In 1984, free elections were held in Nicara-
gua and supervised by the United Nations.
Rather than compete in the elections, however,
the Reagan-backed Contra leaders boycotted
them. Ortega was elected president of Nicara-
gua when his party received 67 percent of the
vote. These events seemed to strengthen the
moral weight of the Boland Amendment, as
the Contras had now refused to participate in
their nation’s democratic process and chosen
instead to use violence against a democratically
elected socialist government.
Circumventing the Ban Despite the elec-
tions and the law forbidding the Reagan ad-
ministration from doing so, either President
Reagan or his subordinates decided to con-
tinue supporting the Contras, eventually trig-
gering a major scandal. Coordination of the
Contra movement was transferred from the
CIA to the National Security Council (NSC),
headed by Robert McFarlane (1983-1985) and
Vice Admiral John Poindexter (1985-1986).
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a U.S.
Marine who had worked for the NSC since
1981, would serve as the chief liaison with the
Contras. Elaborate schemes were devised to
create and channel foreign and private fi-
nances into a slush fund so that funding of
the Contras could continue. The strangest of
these schemes involved the covert sale of arms
to Iran, the United States’ bitter enemy since
the seizure of the U.S. embassy staff in 1979.
However, Iran, locked in the final phases of a
major war with Iraq, was in desperate need of
modern equipment and could not look to the
Soviet Union for assistance.
As originally set up by Michael Ledeen (a
consultant to Robert McFarlane), the opera-
tion called for modern antitank missiles and
other military supplies to be sent through Is-
rael, which would sell the missiles to Iran and
The Eighties in America Iran-Contra affair 529
On November 13, 1986, President Ronald Reagan ad-
dressed the nation, responding to reports that the United
States had supplied weapons to Iran in exchange for the
release of American hostages in Lebanon:The charge has been made that the United States has
shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the
release of American hostages in Lebanon, that the
United States undercut its allies and secretly violated
American policy against trafficking with terrorists.
Those charges are utterly false. The United States
has not made concessions to those who hold our peo-
ple captive in Lebanon. And we will not. The United
States has not swapped boatloads or planeloads of
American weapons for the return of American hos-
tages. And we will not.
Other reports have surfaced alleging U.S. involve-
ment: reports of a sealift to Iran using Danish ships to
carry American arms; of vessels in Spanish ports be-
ing employed in secret U.S. arms shipments; of Ital-
ian ports being used; of the U.S. sending spare parts
and weapons for combat aircraft. All these reports
are quite exciting, but as far as we’re concerned, not
one of them is true.
During the course of our secret discussions, I au-
thorized the transfer of small amounts of defensive
weapons and spare parts for defensive systems to
Iran. My purpose was to convince Tehran that our ne-
gotiators were acting with my authority, to send a sig-
nal that the United States was prepared to replace the
animosity between us with a new relationship. These
modest deliveries, taken together, could easily fit into
a single cargo plane. They could not, taken together,
affect the outcome of the six-year war between Iran
and Iraq nor could they affect in any way the military
balance between the two countries.
Those with whom we were in contact took consid-
erable risks and needed a signal of our serious intent
if they were to carry on and broaden the dialog.
At the same time we undertook this initiative, we
made clear that Iran must oppose all forms of inter-
national terrorism as a condition of progress in our
relationship. The most significant step which Iran
could take, we indicated, would be to use its influ-
ence in Lebanon to secure the release of all hostages
held there.Arms for Hostages?