1987-88
Iran-Contra Investigations

Jeremy Scahill

April 27 2021, 5:53 p.m.

President Ronald Reagan announces the reassignment of national security adviser John Poindexter, who was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, on Nov. 1, 1986.

Photo: Karl Schumacher/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images

As the Reagan administration entered its second term, it began to dramatically escalate covert U.S. involvement in dirty wars in Central America and carried out a secret extrajudicial plan to circumvent Congress in an effort to fund and arm the Contra death squads in Nicaragua. In 1986, details began to emerge on the program, including the secret sales of weapons to the Iranian regime in an effort to free U.S. hostages held in Lebanon. It was also revealed that proceeds from those sales were then funneled to the Contras behind Congress’s back.

The White House initially claimed that the reports were false, and in November 1986, President Ronald Reagan gave a televised address on the emerging scandal. “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,” Reagan declared. “The United States has not made concessions to those who hold our people captive in Lebanon. And we will not. The United States has not swapped boatloads or planeloads of American weapons for the return of American hostages. And we will not.”

When news of the Iran-Contra scandal first broke, Joe Biden spoke in forceful terms about its implications, outspoken in his belief that Reagan needed to be held accountable. “If the president is lying, he’s finished,” Biden warned. “He is absolutely finished.” Biden sponsored legislation that sought to require congressional authorization for weapons sales and transfers. His initiative never gained momentum.

“If the president is lying, he’s finished. He is absolutely finished.”

After months of prolonged silence, during which details emerged showing that Reagan had lied, the president was forced to give another nationally televised address. Reagan now admitted that the thrust of the allegations was true, but he offered a bizarre and twisted logic for his earlier denials. “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages,” Reagan said in March 1987. “My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” Reagan’s logical gymnastics were also promoted in the official Tower Commission report on the scandal, which portrayed rogue U.S. operatives conducting the actions and only directly faulted Reagan for not effectively monitoring what was being done by his underlings. “I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration,” Reagan said. “As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I am still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior.”

Biden broke with many of his Democratic colleagues and said he believed Reagan. ”I’m not angry with the president,” Biden said, as he began his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1987. “I think his action was one from the heart. I think his action was not one that was political. I think his action was not one done with any malevolence.” Biden justified Reagan’s motivations, saying, “I think he bled for those hostages.” Biden said that through Reagan’s sincere desire to win the hostages’ release, he had been misled “by people who had no competence in the area of foreign policy.” In his book on the affair, Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was the public face of the scandal, wrote: “Ronald Reagan knew of and approved a great deal of what went on with both the Iranian initiative and private efforts on behalf of the contras and he received regular, detailed briefings on both.” In a deposition after he left power, according to press reports, Reagan “said he was unable to recall virtually any specific details of the affair.”

In the 10-year Contra War, which deescalated with a shift in U.S. policy, some 30,000 people are estimated to have been killed.

The
Intercept_

1987
Update on the Kennedy Doctrine

Jeremy Scahill

April 27 2021, 5:57 p.m.

Sen. Joe Biden announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on June 1, 1987.

Photo: Cynthia Johnson/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images

As Joe Biden prepared to launch his first failed bid for the presidency in May 1987, he gave a major foreign policy address. Speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, Biden said that President John F. Kennedy’s “pay any price or bear any burden” vision for U.S. foreign policy needed to be updated. “We must pay the right price and bear the right burden,” Biden declared. “Military interventionism — as embodied in the Reagan Doctrine — is in tatters.” He added, “It has led to deceiving our allies, trading arms for terrorists, circumventing Congress, and most profoundly, losing the confidence of the American people.” He called for legislating requirements that must be met in order for the president to use military force, except in cases of imminent threats. Biden, then 45, would go on to officially announce his candidacy in June.

In October 1987, Biden’s presidential ambitions were brought to a halt after it was revealed that he had plagiarized speeches. He pivoted back to his work as a lawmaker, and in an effort to repair his reputation, began making a series of big proposals. Among these was presenting his long-litigated case that the War Powers Act needed to be overhauled.

At the time, the Reagan administration was asserting sweeping executive powers to conduct covert operations throughout the world, with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger arguing that the War Powers Act should be abolished. Weinberger said it “is an unconstitutional invasion of the president’s power to take the kind of action that you have to take immediately, without waiting for committee discussion and without waiting for long debates and things of that kind.” The Reagan administration made clear that under no circumstances would it comply with the law. Biden took aim at that position and said he wanted to ensure that Congress preserved its constitutional authorities on war. “After 14 years in which every president from Nixon to Reagan has refused to acknowledge the constitutionality of this law — 14 years in which the law has failed to operate as envisaged — a review is clearly called for,” he said.

In 1988, Biden headed a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee to study ways the War Powers Act could be overhauled. A year later, he said the issue was “at a full constitutional impasse.” To this day, despite Biden’s consistent efforts and proposed changes, the act has been neither amended nor repealed.

The
Intercept_

1989
Panama Invasion

Jeremy Scahill

April 27 2021, 5:59 p.m.

American soldiers search people detained in front of the home of a business associate of Manuel Noriega in Panama City on Dec. 26, 1989.

Photo: Ezequiel Becerra/AP

In December 1989, President George H.W. Bush decided that the United States no longer needed Panamanian strongman, longtime CIA asset, and international narcotrafficker Manuel Noriega. The president authorized a full-scale invasion of Panama, claiming that the aim was to restore democracy and confront drug trafficking, which the U.S. had played a central role in facilitating. Despite the Bush administration’s overt refusal to invoke the War Powers Act, which it maintained was an “unconstitutional” infringement on the powers of the president, Joe Biden supported the invasion, saying Bush “made the proper decision to take action.” He called the operation “appropriate and necessary.” Biden portrayed the invasion of the nation run by a former U.S. puppet as a defensive action. “It is clear that American citizens increasingly were in jeopardy under the Noriega regime,” he said. The number of Panamanian civilians estimated to have been killed in the invasion is still contested, with most estimates ranging from 300 to 1,000 people. Human Rights Watch stated that “American forces inflicted a toll in civilian lives that was at least four-and-a-half times higher than military casualties in the enemy, and twelve or thirteen times higher than the casualties suffered by U.S. troops.”