Reagan's gun-run scandal: Following in Nixon's footsteps

Labour Briefing no. 34, 10 December 1986, p. 1

Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.

The ghost of Richard Nixon is again stalking the White House as scandal of Watergate proportions engulfs the Reagan administration. It could yet lead to the impeachment of the President.

Not only has Reagan confessed to selling arms to "terrorist" Iran, but it has since emerged that the cash from the sales was funnelled back via CIA bank accounts to the Nicaraguan Contra terrorists, in defiance of a specific vote of Congress.

Despite a reported 48-hour session at a White House shredding machine prior to his sacking, the junior "fall guy" for the operation, Colonel Oliver North, described by Reagan as "a true patriot", has felt obliged to stonewall the first hearings of a Senate inquiry, and may yet "sing like a canary" about his and other dirty tricks.

But the claim that only one other top Reagan aide — Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter — knew anything of the intercontinental arms and cash scam is quite incredible.

Even before this scandal broke, Vice President Bush a former director of the CIA, had been implicated in illegal funding of the Contras; it is impossible that whole sections of the CIA, Donald Regan's White House staff, the State Department and Pentagon did not know; it seems almost certain Reagan himself knew of the plot.

Despite Congress haggling over funds to the CIA-run Contras, Reagan had no intention of scaling down or stopping the flow of arms and cash. So the US "loaned" material and equipment to the Contras; they funded them from CIA slush funds; and then they laundered huge sums of money through Israel and the Iranian arms deals and Swiss banks.

Reagan now claims the arms shipments were part of a plan to make links with "moderates" in the Iranian government. He unconvincingly denies they had anything to do with buying out American hostages taken in Lebanon (so much for Terry Waite!).

But the fundamental reason seems to have been acceptance of Israeli guidance: the Israelis have backed Iran throughout the brutal Gulf War with Iraq, supplying arms and even bombing an Iraqi nuclear power plant to forestall a possible Iraqi nuclear bomb.

Israel's Zionist rulers would prefer a military victory by the further distant, non-Arab Iran, though they have no love of Khomeini's fundamentalism. The USA also appears to have been gambling on the likely outcome of the Gulf War, and seeking to forestall increased Russian involvement with Iran.

Whatever the reasons, Reagan's "anti-terrorist" credentials have been dealt a shattering blow in the USA itself, where the hysteria over the Teheran embassy seige helped get Reagan elected.

As the plot unravels, it remains to be seen who will survive and who will be thrown to the wolves. Reagan's only real defence appears to be to plead ignorance — and therefore total incompetence. The Presidential ambitions of George Bush for 1988 have bitten the dust, while Democratic hopefuls find it hard to believe their luck.

Almost certain losers are the murderous Nicaraguan Contras. One US Senator has said "It looks like Ollie North has shot the President's Nicaraguan operation in the foot."

If that turns out to be true, then it will be the best possible outcome of the whole affair.

transcribed from the page image, 2 Nov 2026; spelling as printed (seige, Teheran; "Vice President Bush a former director of the CIA" without a comma). Front-page lead. By-line "By Phil Hearse" in a ruled panel set into the second column below the two-paragraph intro, which runs across two columns in larger bold type; both intro paragraphs are kept in bold. Kicker "Reagan's gun-run scandal" sits in a band above the headline. Complete on the page, no jump. Left out: photo captions ("Reagan: guilty? or incompetent?", "Bush: tied in with Contra headbangers"), a cartoon and the Statue of Liberty drawings, the masthead contents box and the slogan "Labour — take the power!". Scan is low resolution but every word was legible.