IRAN CONTRA AT 25: REAGAN AND BUSH 'CRIMINAL LIABILITY' EVALUATIONS

I am honored to have been one of the editors of The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras by Scott Armstrong, Malcolm Byrne, Tom Blanton, and the National Security Archive (New York: Warner Books, 1989, 678 pp.)

The following is a link to the Archive's latest FOIA responses in this matter which continues to unfold. Having recently re-read The Chronology I feel it is as valuable a source of information about U.S. Foreign policy then as well as providing much of the back-story to current events-- especially in the Middle East.

IRAN CONTRA AT 25: REAGAN AND BUSH 'CRIMINAL LIABILITY' EVALUATIONS

Twenty-Five years after the advent of the "Iran-Contra affair," the two comprehensive "Memoranda on Criminal Liability of Former President Reagan and of President Bush" provide a roadmap of historical, though not legal, culpability of the nation's two top elected officials during the scandal from the perspective of the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh.


The documents were obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the National Security Archive for the files compiled during Walsh's six-year investigation from 1987-1993.

[This] posting comes on the anniversary of the November 25, 1986, press conference during which Ronald Reagan and his attorney general, Edwin Meese, informed the American public that they had discovered a "diversion" of funds from the sale of arms to Iran to fund the contra war--tying together the two strands of the scandal which until that point had been separate in the public eye. With the Congressional hearings featuring Oliver North, and the trials of former NSC and CIA officials such as John Poindexter and Clair George, the Iran-Contra scandal riveted the nation and dominated political and media discourse in Washington for several ensuing years.