>>804758in 1980 the republicans wanted to rig the election for reagan so they cut a deal with some iranian government officials to hold hostages in beirut until the election was over, and offered to give them money and guns which the iranians needed to fight saddam hussein. this was bad because carter was trying to free the hostage and they were sabotaging his negotiation, and it was also a violation of arms control act since iran was sanctioned, and the republicans were not elected officials yet they had no authority. once reagan came to office hours later the hostages were freed.
this was the start of several deals between the reagan-bush admin and iran. because the CIA since the 70s was under a lot of scrutiny and scandal, the NSC was used for these deals, and it was turned into a de-facto intelligence agency.
at the same time there was a lot of controversy about supporting the nicaraguan contras and death squads in central america. in 1982 the boland amendment was signed by congress making it illegal to give weapons or support to the contras by the CIA. reagan decided to continue supporting them in secret by using the NSC and private contractors. because the death squads were cash poor they were paid in drugs. the drugs were taken into the US by contractors, military, CIA, DEA flights, and then they were sold to CIAaligned criminal networks and then sold down to the street. the cash came back up and was laundered through CIA owned small banks called thrifts and in tax havens like panama.
where iran-contra really came around was when the NSC had the idea of merging these two operations. hostages kept getting taken in Beirut. reagan kept saying america does not negotiate with terrorists. iran needed weapons to fight saddam. but also it was embarrasing that western weapons kept turning up when the givernment was supposed to not be selling them. so they used private arms merchants to reach out to places like poland, hungary, USSR, to buy these weapons. the proceeds from the iranian arms sales were then given as cash to the contras. who then bought the soviet gear.
in october 1986 the scheme fell apart because a CIA plane was shot down over nicaragua. two crew members died, one survived. he went on TV and showed evidence he was a CIA contractor and in violation of us law they were helping the contras. in november a lebanese newspaper published an article about the US negotiating with iran for the arms-hostages and blew up another scandal.
it started to get published in western news and reagan faced trouble. there was an 'investigation'.
i say 'investigation' because it was a cover up. nobody was really punished. people like oliver north were 'fall guys' and he even became a folk hero for right wingers.(today hes a fox news host) selling a handful of missiles was just a fraction of what went on. nothing mentioned about how the CIA was brnging in drugs by the plane load which was sold in ghettos, and the agents had the audacity to claim it was justified because it wasn't harming white people and it was just a way of getting welfare benefits back.
i reccomend peter dale Scott's book on iran contra for the US side. i also suggest Profits of War, by a former israeli agent to get a look into what the israelis were doing, and at times they were also at odds with US foreign policy and aligned with Iran as an ally against Iraq. the israelis had x10 the arms sales to Iran than the US did.