Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra Speech
“We did not — repeat, did not — trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we.”
Reagan’s first televised address on the Iranian arms scandal, given on 13 November 1986, was the diplomatic equivalent of Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman“. The speech was supposed to put to bed rumors that the NSC was supplying arms to Iran. Not only would doing so be violating publicly stated government policy, even if it was for the exchange for American hostages held by Shī’ite terrorist groups, but it would also be assisting a country believed to support international terrorism, engaged in a lengthy war against Iraq.
Unlike most presidential addresses, the speech was not prepared over days or weeks, pored over by teams of specialists and advisors, and assiduously fact-checked. It was rushed, sketchy, and full of errors. People in government knew it and the audience at home heard it.
Reagan tried to pawn off the content of his speech as “facts from a white house source”, but its brazen inaccuracy was obvious. He talked, for example, only about modest deliveries to Iran that could fit into a single cargo plane — some 1,000 TOW antitank missiles — while it was clear to everyone within his administration that the number was at least double.
Reagan delivered his speech at a politically precarious time for the GOP. Nicholas Daniloff had been arrested by the Kremlin just months earlier, further straining diplomatic tensions between the two world superpowers. Reagan’s National Security Advisor, John Poindexter, was embroiled in a scandal about leaking misinformation to Colonel Gaddafi, informing him of his imminent removal from power. And then there was the domestic icing on the cake: for the first time in six years, the Democrats had just won control of the Senate.
It didn’t take long for the truth to come out. Beginning in November 1986, three independent inquiries gradually brought to light the fact that the NSC had both bypassed the trade embargo with Iran and continued to fund Contras in Nicaragua above the limit approved by Congress.
Both John Poindexter and his deputy Oliver North were prosecuted, and while Reagan escaped prosecution his political reputation suffered a lethal blow. At best he was complicit and had lied under oath to the American people; at worst he was incompetent, an ineffectual president presiding over a runaway train of an administration.
Read Next: President Regan Orders The CIA To Set Up The Contras.