November 25, 1986: The Iran-Contra Scandal

November 25, 1986: Of all the scandals in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, what already should have been the biggest one gets a lot bigger.

On November 3, 1 day before the midterm Congressional elections, Ash-Shiraa (Arabic for "The Sail"), a magazine based in the Middle Eastern nation of Lebanon, reported that the American government had secretly been selling weapons to Iran, in order to secure the release of 7 American hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups.

And if this had been the extent of Reagan's involvement, it would have been bad enough, an impeachable offense. This was not the extent of it.

On November 4, the Democratic Party gained 8 seats in the U.S. Senate, enough to take control for the 1st time in 6 years. That was actually more seats than they gained in the House of Representatives, 5, but they already had control there.

Representative Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill of Massachusetts, retiring after 34 years in Congress, the last 10 as Speaker of the House, told the media, "The Reagan Revolution is dead." It sure seemed likely: For the last 2 years of Reagan's 2nd term -- regardless of whether he finished it -- Congress would be fully under Democratic control, making it more willing to investigate any misdeeds for which he and his men were responsible. And the new Speaker would be Jim Wright of Texas: While O'Neill and Reagan put partisanship aside enough to become friendly when not talking politics, relying on their shared Irishness and love of baseball, Wright had no such connection with Reagan.

On November 25, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, who had worked with Reagan since the beginning of his tenure as Governor of California in 1967, publicly admitted that profits from weapons sales to Iran were made available to assist the Contras, a right-wing paramilitary group looking to overthrow the Communist government of Nicaragua.

This was prohibited by the Boland Amendment to the War Powers Act of 1973. Like O'Neill, a close friend of his, Eddie Boland was a Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, and he wanted to outlaw such assistance, because people from his District, aid workers in Nicaragua, had been killed by the Contras. It was unanimously passed by Congress in 1982, and Reagan himself had signed it into law.

Therefore, if it could be proven that Reagan had authorized the "Contra" part of what had now become known as "The Iran-Contra Affair," he needed to be impeached by the House, and convicted and removed from office by the Senate. This was just 12 years after Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency, rather than face that likelihood over the Watergate scandal, and many of the major players in Congress in 1974 were still there at this point, so it was fresh in people's memory. 

Also on November 25, former U.S. Navy Admiral John Poindexter, Reagan's National Security Adviser, up to his neck in the scandal, resigned. One of his aides, Oliver North, a Lieutenant Colonel still on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, was discovered to have shredded documents relating to the funding of the Contras, and Reagan flat-out fired him.

An actor before going into politics, Reagan made 69 films between 1937 and 1964, 4 with his 1st wife, Jane Wyman, and 1 with his 2nd wife and eventual First Lady, then billed as Nancy Davis. In 2 of his films, he, a former football player at NCAA Division III Eureka College in Illinois, played sports legends: Notre Dame back George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All-American in 1940; and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (a man named for a President) in The Winning Team in 1952.

But there was no role he played better than "President Reagan." Parodying a commercial for pain reliever that debuted during his 1st term, "I'm not a doctor, but... " I said, "Ronald Reagan isn't a great President, but he plays one on TV." And no matter what bad things happened on his watch, nothing seemed to stick to him -- hence the nickname "The Teflon President" -- and nothing seemed to faze him.

But Iran-Contra fazed Ronald Reagan. He was now approaching his 76th birthday, and, for the first time, he looked tired. The familiar smile was seen less often. There were times, especially during press conferences, where not only was his famed ability to verbally fence with, and disarm, reporters gone, but he looked like, as had often been said of boxers who had taken a beating, he didn't know where he was.

After bad performances in his debates with Walter Mondale during the 1984 election, people began to joke that Reagan, by that point the oldest President in American history, had Alzheimer's disease. Now, it looked like it was no longer a joke. Indeed, in 1994, he revealed that he now had it, but wouldn't admit to having had it while still President.

One great performance came on the December 6, 1986 episode of Saturday Night Live. Phil Hartman played Reagan, showing that his friendly but out-of-it persona was a façade, and that the Iran-Contra scandal was actually masking a James Bond-style supervillain, trading money, armaments and illicit goods all over the world -- including to Iraq, with whom America would end up at war 4 years later.

Hartman as Reagan on SNL

Howard Baker, the former Senate Majority Leader from Tennessee, who had been one of Reagan's competitors for the 1980 Republican nomination for President, and had been a member of the Senate Select Committee investigating Watergate, was brought in as his new White House Chief of Staff, to get the White House running properly again, and also to calm his old friends in Congress down.

On February 26, 1987, the Tower Commission -- chaired by his old friend, former Senator John Tower of Texas -- issued its report. As historian Michael Farquhar put it in his 2015 book Bad Days In History:

Rather than being seen as a maniacal schemer bent on undermining the law, Reagan was portrayed by the commission as something almost as bad: in essence, a doddering old coot who remained clueless as members of his administration ran amok, dealing with terrorists and illegally funding a foreign war.

By early May 1987, when hearings were underway, it became clear that, unlike with Nixon, nobody was going to "flip" on Reagan. There would be no "John Dean," only a bunch of "G. Gordon Liddys." No Articles of Impeachment were ever drawn up against him. If he was still alive on January 20, 1989, the end of his 2nd term, he was going to serve it out.

He did, leaving office just short of turning 78. (The current President, Joe Biden, has broken his record. Despite attacks by Republicans, his mind is still sharp.) Reagan admitted to having Alzheimer's in 1994, stepped out of public life, and died in 2004, at age 93, at the time the oldest former President ever.

In 1998, with Reagan and most of the people associated with his Administration still alive, PBS aired a documentary as part of its series The American Experience: The Presidents. Nancy was not interviewed, but his children were: Sons Michael and Ronald, and daughters Maureen and Patti (who uses her mother's maiden name as her last name, Davis).

Meese was interviewed, but while he resigned as Attorney General due to his apparent role in the Wedtech scandal, he has never been indicted for any crimes, and he appears not to have committed any of the crimes connected to Iran-Contra. The major figures involved in Iran-Contra were not interviewed: Not Poindexter, not North, not Fawn Hall, the secretary he ordered to do the document shredding.

One exception was Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane, Poindexter's predecessor as National Security Adviser. In his interview, he said that, on July 18, 1985, while Reagan was hospitalized for cancer surgery, he presented the President with the plan of the arms sales to Iran and the redirection of the profits to the Contras, and that Reagan -- possibly compromised due to the drugs he was being prescribed -- approved it.

This contradicted what McFarlane had said in his testimony before Congress. He had already pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress, and was sentenced to 2 years' probation -- no jail time. Reagan's Vice President and successor as President, George H.W. Bush, made McFarlane the beneficiary of one of his "Christmas Pardons" on December 24, 1992.

If McFarlane had told Congress the truth in the Spring of 1987, Reagan could well have been impeached and removed by the end of the calendar year. Bush would have had a full year as an incumbent under his belt as he ran for President in 1988, but would have had to do a lot more defending of himself, his people, and the Republican Party in general than he actually ended up having to do. And, instead of winning in a landslide, he might have lost.

McFarlane died on May 12, 2022, at the age of 84. Lots of people were convicted in connection with Iran-Contra. Thanks to Bush, few of them really paid for it. Reagan got away with it completely.

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November 25, 1986 was a Tuesday, 2 days before Thanksgiving. That made it the off-season for baseball, and an off-day for the NFL. There were 8 games played in the NBA that night:

* The New York Knicks beat the Houston Rockets, 102-93 at Madison Square Garden. Gerald Henderson came off the bench to lead Knick scorers with 21 points. Patrick Ewing did not play, for reasons I've forgotten and for which I can't find a reason online. Hakeem Olajuwon matched his uniform number by scoring 34 in defeat.

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the San Antonio Spurs, 117-99 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio. Orlando Woolridge led the Meadowlands team with 21 points.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat their arch-rivals, the Boston Celtics, 102-100 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Maurice Cheeks led the Sixers with 23 points. A young Charles Barkley scored 17. Julius "Dr. J" Erving, in his final season, scored 16. The Celtics' Big Three? Kevin McHale 29, Larry Bird 22, Robert Parish 10.

* The Washington Bullets beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 111-99 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 113-107 at the Great Western Forum in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California. Dominique Wilkins scored 26, while Magic Johnson had 22 and Byron Scott 20 for the Lakers. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was held to 16.

* The Golden State Warriors beat the Utah Jazz, 111-106 at what's now named the Oracle Arena in Oakland.

* The Sacramento Kings beat the Phoenix Suns, 123-102 at the ARCO Arena in Sacramento. This was the 10,333-seat original version, not its 17,317-seat successor built in 1988, later known as the Power Balance Pavilion and the Sleep Train Arena. The old arena, in California's capital city, has been converted into office space, and now houses the State's Department of Consumer Affairs. The new arena has been converted into a hospital for COVID-19 victims, and its long-term fate is uncertain.

* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 113-103 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

There were 3 NHL games played on the day, only 1 involving a New York Tri-State Area team:

* The New York Islanders beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-1 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Quebec Nordiques beat their arch-rivals, the Montreal Canadiens, 2-1 at Le Colisée de Québec. 

* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Los Angeles Kings, 11-5 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.