Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 2

and you can boat over and see us. Right, So, however you get there, just be sure that you're at the State Theater on August nineteen for our show, because it's gonna be great. Ask the people in Chicago, ask the people in Toronto, ask the people in Boston who will have seen us the day before. Just buy some tickets, go to s y s K live dot com and come see us August State Theater. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to be took, Brian, there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know. Iran Contra Part two starting now. Go. Uh, maybe we should do a quick catch up. Um, well we're still going. You have to look, I just went to sleep. No, it's true. So what's going on here is the United States is UH. Congress has decided that we cannot fund the Contras to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Shut off funding. So the Reagan administration UH makes a deep covert push to continue doing so through a bunch of fun and shady ways. Right, They're fundraising, their directly, arming the Contras, their training, um, doing all sorts of crazy stuff. Yes, but if you know that this is about Iran Contra and you're like, what about Iran? What's going on here? I haven't heard anything about Iran? Keep your on. Well, here we go. This is where Iran

enters the picture. You can take your socks off, right, are your socks on? I've got on a little footy socks. Yeah, I do too cool. Oh, Jerry is too sweet. It's the way to go. Jerry has those true footies where you can't even see them at all. I can see you mine peek out just a little, which I'm not a huge fan of. I'll check out my Yeah. No seems no, seems okay, enter Iran. If we really that

was a great intro and it just went away. That's right. So, um, on the other side of the world from Nicaragua, Uh, there was another foreign policy disaster simmering that Reagan head going, and it was in the form of Iran, And specifically,

it wasn't even the form of run. It was in the form of a problem that America had doesn't really have much these days, but definitely did in the seventies and eighties, where Americans would be taking hostage around the world, um, but specifically almost exclusively by Lebanese terrorists who were, if not working on behalf of Iran. We're definitely sponsored by Iran.

And regardless of who is president, the fact that they were hostages being held by another country and there wasn't anything we could do about it, that was a real blemish on the presidency. It was not a very proud thing to think about for America, but that was reality for a while there. Yeah, So Iran at the time, this is the early eighties, This is just a few years removed from the Iranian Revolution of nineteen nine, and

this is where we've talked about it before. Go look up photos of Iran in the mid seventies pre revolution and it looks like London in the swinging sixties and seventies, very kind of hit place to be. Iranian revolution happens. Uh, fundamentalists take control of the government that was previously um the Shaw of Iran, who was um friendly to the West, sure, friendly to America generally, and and uh the Aetola Comini comani I've always heard comany coomani um installed the Islamic

Theocracy and bad things started happening pretty quickly. But yeah, there was a It was a about as quick a turn about face politically and socially as you could imagine for a whole country. Yeah, yeah, but not everyone in the country, as will learn, Like the whole country didn't just change overnight. No, but the the the Islamic Theocracy

was in power very much. So one of the things that happened was, um, they were not very fond of America or Americans, and the American embassy was famously stormed and sixty six Americans working there were taken hostage and held for more than a year. Man. That was like, this is stuff I really remember, like four hundred and forty days or something, four forty four days the Iranian hostage crisis. I remember this as a nine year old

very clearly. Oh yeah, I have no recollection. Yeah, it was a big deal, yellow ribbons, and it was on the news constantly. I remember entering the room and being like, what does this have to do with Rainbow Bright turn this newscast? I even remember. So what happened was, Uh, Jimmy Carter did not get these hostages free during his uh his I was about to say rain, but that was sort of the opposite of who Jimmy Carter was during his administration, his iron fisted rain days of terror.

But within a few days, and that may have cost some election, but within a few days of our hours, even of Reagan's inauguration, the hostages were freed. And I remember, as a nine year old hearing kids parenting their parents conversations like it was really Carter that had him freed, all the work he did up until then, and then other kids saying, are you kidding me? As soon as Reagan got in office, they knew that they were toast and that Reagan wasn't gonna be a patsy like Carter.

And I was like, what's a patsy? Who are these dudes? No? But I remember very distinctly. It's weird, like on the playground hearing the stuff. That's funny a little nine year old. I definitely didn't hear this when I was a kid, but I remember hearing later on as a grown up. UM still in the rainbow bright. Uh, that it was Reagan's campaign was somehow in touch with Iran. Yeah, and

that they broke hered this. They've also got them to wait um to release the hostages until after Reagan was in office, but the timing was not at all hours after its inauguration accident. It's a little fishy, you know what I mean. But whether it was that's funny. I'm sure somebody's parents were like, Yeah, it's because they were so scared of Reagan they knew that they better release

these guys. That's totally not the case, because there were other hostages taken by other by actual um Lebanese terrorists who were probably sponsored by Iran, and that were they were held throughout Reagan's presidency. Yeah, and that that's sort of a big part of this. The second half of this story was the fact that that was very embarrassing for Reagan. He didn't like hostages being held on his watch. No, but he had campaigned against negotiating with terrorists under any circumstances.

So he's stuck now, Yeah, because he's basically saying, if you get taken hostage, I mean, you're on your own. We'll we'll we'll use our rhetoric and whatever we can to influence you being released, but we're not going to negotiate for your release. That's just the way it is. And that's a longstanding American policy and it makes sense because if you negotiate with terrorists, then that's just gonna lead more kidnappings because they know that you're open for business,

like anywhere in the world. Yeah, there was a kidnapping of t w A flight eight forty seven, very very famous one. You know the picture of like the pilot leaning out of the cop and the guy's in the picture with the gun behind him. That was um And that was that, I mean, they that was I remember that one. That was It was probably nine then, and that was just scary because they were flying all over the place. You had no idea what was going to happen.

People were being beaten on the plane. When Navy guy was beaten and shot and throw his body thrown on the tarmac. Yeah, the eighties, like it seems comparatively tame now in a lot of way, it's compared to the things that used to go on, thank McDonald's hijackings and kidnappings and hostages. It's like the eighties were nuts. They were nuts. But um, pac Man, you know pac Man rapping Rodney? It was crazy rapping, Like are is that

Roddy Piper? No rapping Rodney? Dangerfield his big hit? Oh yeah, yeah, no respect? What about what about the Achy Shuffle that was a little crazy? Was that eighties? Sure? Late eighties? I guess so, Okay, I got one for you. Okay, the Bears what was their thing? Oh the super Bowl Shuffle? Super Bowl Shuffle? Right, yeah, that was pretty eighties. I

think they were eighty four. Yeah, we're putting you know, my band every year plays for sure one gig at Decatur's Porch Fest, and every year we try to do a theme, and this year we're doing an eighties sort of new wave and I jokingly suggested pac Man Fever the rap and Rodney. But are you guys gonna do it? No? Songs are terrible. Do you have a synth player playing with you. I bought Emily a keyboard and she's learning. Yeah, she's gonna be like wait, hold on, I hope that's

cool man. Now she's practicing. I've heard her do that um, and she played piano when she was a kid, So it's not the biggest stretch. I've heard that one that herd do. That one Blondie song she just brought the house. Yeah, we might one way or another, we might bring that back because that's eighties or was that seventies? It was so close on the Cuspo. I seriously doubt anybody's going to throw a beer can at you for it. Anyway,

Porch beest everyone. I'll publicize it in October. So Reagan's hands are tied um in every way possible because he can't on he can't negotiate with terrorists. The only option is to send in a covert delta forced team, which they Carter tried that and it didn't work. Doesn't always work. You could lose your own men, and I think that's what happened in Carter's case, right. So what he can do,

though without anyone knowing, is totally negotiate with terrorists. Yeah, just as long as the American public doesn't know, suh. And that's what happened. And he followed that Reagan playbook where it's like, okay, I said this, Well, if I just changed this one little part, it makes it all fine again as long as the American public doesn't know. So well, Reagan said America will never negotiate with with hostages.

They didn't say Israel will never negotiate with terrorists for hostages. Right, So, actually Israel had a long standing policy of negotiating with terrorists. They wouldn't. They would kidnap people from the other side, and then they'd be like, all right, I'll give you five guys. I've only got two. Let me kidnap a few of people. Okay, now I have five. Like there would be negotiations for hostage exchanges all the time between Israel and Palestine, right they would. They just knew what

they were doing. So they said, okay, well, if if Israel goes to Iran and says, hey, you know this American over there, why don't you get them released? We can help you out with some stuff. When you think about this. Yeah, So earlier when I mentioned the fact that Iran as the whole cloth did not change overnight as a country. The government did, but there were still some plenty of people there that were a little more moderate in their views, and the Reagan administration had a

channel to them. So he was talking to them, these more moderate factions and making a little headway. And they were like, by the way, will totally give you these hostages if you give us arms. Yeah, because Iran was fighting, um, the Iran Iraq War at least half of it. Yeah, And this is just where stuff is just totally crazy, because we were we were funding both sides at the very least, we were advising both sides. Well, I mean we directly gave money, Oh yeah, you're rock. We sold

them weapons, and we provided training and intelligence. And this was this wasn't secret. This was like a real deal thing. We were publicly supporting Iraq, but then we were secretly arming Iran. Yeah. I think what they never proved beyond a doubt was that we went to uh Saddam Hussein and said, hey, why don't you go in there and overthrow Iran? Yeah, that was never we started it. I

don't think that was ever. There was a lot of uh circumstantial evidence that that was the case, but never like the smoking gun that we actually encouraged Saddam Hussein to do so. But it's just, man, when you look at how all this played out over the ears, just maddening. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's it's a s show. Yeah. So Iraq and Iran or fighting. We're supplying both, playing both sides of the coin. Uh. And we offered arms to Iran. And who are you gonna call? Not ghostbusters? Oh, Gorbana

far Well, you're gonna call Ali? No? Oh yeah, okay, I would have gotten there eventually. Yeah, because okay, so remember all the North is this total novice when it comes to covert operations. Yeah, he's been running the Nicaragua op for years now, just doing a bang up job of it. So they they're like, well, sure, we'll have him do this incredibly illegal supersensitive arms sail to Iran too. Why don't you come on over here, Ali and all? He said, Okay, that's fine, but I need to go

get the lay of the land. And he actually traveled to Iran with a fake passport under an assumed name William P. Good was a knee and um. When he went it was it was dangerous enough that William Casey. Supposedly, Oliver North later testified gave him cyanide pills so that he could take his own life rather than be tortured by the Iranians. If if this were in fact like some sort of set up again right out of a movie. Yeah, but Oliver North went to Iran with cyanide pills. Yeah,

so everything went great, though it did. He didn't need the sanid pills after all. He did not um he dealt with, like you mentioned earlier, this Iranian businessman name Gourbana Far and this guy was tin shades of shady, so much so that the CIA wouldn't even deal with them. Now they issued a burn notice on him, which is I don't even know what that is. That means just

he's dead to us. It's basically stay away. It's putting him on blast to all the other intelligence agencies in the world persona on won't even deal with this guy. And so Ali North is like, yeah, I'll deal with this guy all right. So with his help, Oliver North set up a deal um where And it's so simple to look at like Israel. You give them your missiles and then we'll just replace those missiles for you with our missiles, so we're not giving the missiles you are.

And because no American explicitly said to Iran, hey, we're doing this so that you guys will get these hostages released, it wasn't an arms for hostages deal, and so Reagan's vowed and never negotiate with terrorists remained intact. That's right. Five hundred and eight t OWTOW missiles was that stand for two blaunched optically tracked wireless guided missile, which is like it's like, ah, the two launched. There's a tube and it can be like mounted on the ground, mounted

on a jeep. It's super portable. But they are they'll blow some stuff up. I think I've seen these you have. So five eight of these UM made it from Israel to Iran, and then in very short order, a couple of days later, one of the hostages, Benjamin we Are minister who was held by Lebanese terrorists for sixteen months, was released. So it worked. It did work. It was a big deal around the White House to UM, but they said, let's try it again, but this time it

seemed a little messy to get Israel involved. Let's just do this ourselves. Ali, you think you can handle this, and he said, sure, me and Gurbonafar have this. So rather than Israel giving arms to Iran, Richard S. Cord got brought in just like with Nicaragua. And again this isn't like years after Nicaragua. Nicaragua was at full bore, in full sweep and all the North is running both

operations simultaneously. Um. And so the new setup was the Department of Defense would sell the c I A missiles for thirty seven hundred bucks of pop. The CIA would sell them to Richard C. Cord at cost, and then c Cord would sell them to Gorbonafar for ten grand apiece, and then gorbona Far would go sell them to Iran for whatever he charged Ran. I can't I guarantee it was more than the ten grand. And this happened multiple times.

Over the course of a little over a year. America secretly transferred two thousand missiles and missile parts to Iran UM in eight shipments. Yeah. For the release of hostages. Yeah, ultimately there are three hostages that got released out of seven that had been taken hostage total. Yeah, And didn't he say ultimately there were three more hostages taken? So they netted out at zero zero. Yeah. So um, but that was that was the whole Iran operation. Yeah, but

here's the deals. This price markup means that that shell company, um, and those Swiss bank accounts, we're making a lot of money, and so much so that I think one of them had three million dollars made an interest alone. So at some point someone's like, hey, this this is a money making operation. Now, why don't we tie a little bow on all this and use some of that money to fund the contrast Because you guys are doing both of these things and you need money. Congress won't give it

to you. Forget the fundraising omelets. We'll just use the money from these illite arms sales to fund the contrass. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. So to put it in plain terms, America illegally and secretly sold missiles to Iran, used the proceeds from those missile sales to secretly and illegally fund the Contras to help them overthrow their government down in Nicaragua. That's what the Reagan administration did. That's right.

That's why it's called Iran Contra. That's where they came together. There was a diversion of funds. Yeah, and the I think it was by nineteen eight six. Um, Congress finally got back on board because of this drum beat from Reagan over the years of how much we need to really do this officially and keep the mind Congress still didn't know any of this is going on secretly. Um. And then Congress said all right, we'll give you a

hundred million dollars to aid this cause. UM and said you would think that was the end of all the uh covert stuff. It wasn't, though, No, No, it's still continued on, but now it was legitimized and had even better funding. But that was not the end of the whole thing. Like everybody didn't just get to walk away and say that was close, because the whole thing started to come apart. Actually, and I say that we take an ad break and come back and talk about it

after this. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh damn Chuck stuff you should know? All right, okay, Chuck, Congress is back on board. I think it's worth pointing out that that's exactly four years after the Democrats took control of the House in two. So I wonder if the Republicans took control back in eighty six and that's

why the funding got turned back. Onto the contrast, we could solve this, I like the speculating stead So this all might have Who knows if this ever would have even been found out had it not been for the sharp shooting of a young sandin Easton soldier named Jose Fernando Canales oldman. Uh. In October there was a cargo plane and see one twenty three called the provider Um flying seventy so yet Collisha coughs a hundred thousand rounds

of AMMO, rocket grenades and other supplies. Uh. And this is one of those things where you said they would fly things over and kick him out in the back of the plane. This is one of those those runs. Yeah. The problem with this particular run, though, is that they did this at feet in broad daylight, and they got a little lazy or maybe cocky. I don't even know if it was that. I think it was more like, this is just work. It was an everyday job by

this time. They've been doing it for years, you know, and the operation was just humming along so nicely that was almost an autopilot. Yeah, so yeah, they did this one supply drop on October in broad daylight and there were four crew aboard, William J. Cooper, Wallace Bus Sawyer, freddie Vilchis, and a guy named Eugene Hassan Fuss, who uh and again this sliding doors thing. Hassen Fuss is the only guy who had a parachute. He borrowed it from his brother, a skydiver, because you know, he thought

it might be smart to take a parachute. No one else had parachutes. Had he not had a parachute, this may have turned out differently. It may have. For sure, he was the only one that survived this plane crash because he was the only one who borrowed the parachute from his brother, and he jumped out, landed, made it safely into the jungle. And I think he actually survived and evaded the Sandinistas for maybe a day or something

like that before he was captured. And when he was captured, they led him out of the jungle like um with a rope around his neck, just just about as big of a prisoner as you can imagine. Super publicized. There are billboards of of him being led around by Sandinistas and they started asking him questions and he was like, what do you want to know? He's saying, like a canary, you really did? He said, Uh, this is my tense supply mission. I'm presumed that the CIA is running this.

I don't know. And he would know this would be something that he would he could legitimately guess at at least because he had actually worked on ci a um air drops over Vietnam or Cambodia for Air America back in the Vietnam War. Yeah, but he wasn't like, uh, he sings like a canary because he's not very high up on the tolden pole. Like his job was to get up there and shove the stuff out of the back of the plane for three grand a month. He wasn't even a CIA operator. He's just former marine who

had a background working with Air America years before. But by this time, by the time he joins on UM doing this. For the contrast, he was like working as a construction worker part time in Wisconsin back home, So this is like pretty good money. I think he was getting seven grand in today's dollars a month for basically kicking a k forty seven crates out the back of a plane over Nicaragua. Yeah, so he's not the kind of guy that's going to take the fall for anyone.

So he's he's singing like a canary. Even if he had kept his mouth shut, it wouldn't have mattered. Yeah, because um, all the other guys, including Hassan Fuss, had their wallets on the plane, They had all their employee I D cards and in fact, I don't think we mentioned in episode one, um the company that was set up to do these drops was set up called Southern Air Transport out of I guess Miami, So they all had their Southern Air Transport I T cards, which was

the c i A front. Like everybody knew Southern Air Transport was the CIA front, So they might as well have had like CIA Junior badges or something, or like Michael Keaton and out of Sight when he has the big FBI T shirt, I haven't seen that one. Oh, you haven't seen out of Sight? No? Is that the one where he's George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Is he a bad guy in it? No, he's a good guy, but he walks in. He plays Ray Nicolette, who played

uh same character and Jackie Brown FBI guy. But it's funny because he walks in with an FBI T shirt on. And Dennis Farina's Jennifer Lopez his dad and he's a former CUP and he goes, hey, Ray, let me ask you he got one that says undercover Dennis Farina man class, I mean, you got to see out of Sight. That's classic. All right, I'll check it out like one of the better men. I mean, I know exactly the movie you're talking about it like the Plague. It's so good you

would love it. So Southern Air Transport CIA front. There's also a log book that connected this flight, uh and all the other flights. And then hassen Fuss in his wallet had a business card to Robert w Owen. This is a big one who was working with Oliver North in Washington, right, which so that provided a direct line between Oliver North and some guys who were kicking Colashna Coughs out of the back of a plane over in Nicaragua.

So that was a really big deal that when this guy got captured and you know, told the Santinistas as much as he knew, because the Sandinistas were like attention, world, Listen to what we just found out. The CIA has um totally been funding these contra rebels who are trying to overthrow the sovereign government, and um, we think you

guys should know about it. Yeah, And it was, um, it wasn't like you could totally discount that even though it was from the Sandinistan's like, Congress and the American media were like what I'm sure Congress was like, wait a minute, this this reeks of like something that has

been happening that we tried to shut down. Yeah, because remember, even if the CIA was brief in Congress, it was either Bill Casey or Dewey Claridge, and they were doing a really obtuse job of this keeping Congress at arms linked. So any time something like this came out, almost none of Congress knew the full extent of this, and it was always in flagrant violation of whatever Congress wanted or

whatever Congress that agreed to. Yeah, and this wasn't like this was sort of the straw that broke it all open, or that broke the camel's back, broke the camel's back wide open, camel. Uh. Things have been unraveling for a bit there was a party in ve in Virginia thrown thrown by Soldier of Fortune magazine. Can you imagine know what's that party? Like? I don't want to know. I

can't imagine. I used to read Soldier of Fortune when I was in my ninja training as like a ten year old boy, and even then I was like this this magazine makes my stomach hurt. And it's in five Like can you imagine the amount of like blow being secretly done in the bathroom at that party? Sure, but also they were making snuff movies in the living room. And there's no telling what was going on in a

Soldier of Fortune. We can't tell you. At the very least, there was a lot of boasting going on openly about this contra operation. And again this is the time when people don't know about this stuff. Yeah, but you know what happens is like you get enough people in enough years and people start talking, people start bragging, and all of a sudden, you're you're you have a couple of gin and tonics at a Soldier of Fortune party and you're like, hey, guess what, and that that's what happened.

Somebody goes what, Yeah, there you go here it comes. Yeah, and they dropped the you know, they dropped the bomb that what's been going on? A concerned citizen here's this. I guess he must have been mistakenly invited. I don't know how that guy got invited. They just happened to talk to the wrong guy or whatever, but probably that. He was like, I am really fearful of my life for saying something about this, but I feel like somebody

should know. So he went to a lawyer, a human rights lawyer named David Sheehan, and he said, you go tell everybody. You put your life on the line. And he did. He submitted an affidavit to federal court. Started uh, doing interviews, talking to journalists, drumming up support. White House was like, we don't know what you're talking about. You're crazy, man,

Like this is all made up. And uh, finally it took a Lebanese newspaper, Um Al shira that reported on this deal, this arms for hostage deal, like in a legitimate newspaper. Right, So now both stories have been blown open. You've got Eugene hass't was captured and the contra operation is blown open, and now Al shira Um is reporting on the Iran arms for hostage deal. And really, crazily enough, these two separate arms of this one scandal came out within a month of each other, which is it's bizarre,

but that's what happened. And now it was like, there's it's on the table. The America's media knows about it, Congress knows about it. Heads are about to roll. All right, we'll take our final break and we'll come back talk about the aftermath of Iran contra. Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh? Can chuck it stuff you should know? All right? All right, Chuck, you promised after your math. Let's hear it. All right, So every every

everything is exposed. Um Oliver north Uh was no longer in business doing his thing. No, he shut down shop real quick, he did, but not before very famously he and his um very eighties haired secretary, Fawn Hall. I forgot it looked. I was like Fawn Hall. I looked her up, and as soon as I saw I was like, right, yeah, Fawn Hall. And forget that hair. She could barely walk through the door. No, it was ginormous, for sure. It's so great I would be fearful around a shredder if

our her, but she was not fearful at all. She and Oliver North spent a day they could. They call it a shredding party. I mean, we will never know the full truth behind this because of all the evidence that they shredded. As far as anyone knows, Oliver North decided on his own to shred every document he had on it. That's right, and yeah, that's that's it. It's

it's now. It's the the um official narrative that has been written into the history book, which you can just guarantee is not anywhere near the full story, right, So it all comes out. The Reagan administration start looking around and they're like, well, who who's going to be the patsy for this one? And Oliver North could not escape it. But they're like, he's small potatoes, he's he's he'll he'll

go down. Well, I think he was even willing to take the fall, like he knew he was going to be the fall guy, and was like, okay, that's part of the job, right. But they knew that it had to the American public, and certainly Congress wasn't going to be satisfied with just Oliver North. So who did they land on? So the the official line became this Point Dexter,

and I guess McFarland would have started it. Became uh fully aware of just how badly Reagan wanted to help the Contras and said I'm gonna do something about this and tapped all the North and said we need to help the Contras out. Go help him out, figure it out.

And North went off and basically went rogue on his own and set up this whole operation, created this entire network with c cord Um decided to do the Iranian arms deal, all this stuff basically on his own, and like Reagan and Bush knew nothing about it, nothing about it, and that the buck stopped at Point Dexter. Ultimately it didn't go any further. William Casey being CIA, he was

basically out of the loop. Um, that was the official story they came out with, right, and America went, you're kidding, right, this is a joke. Yeah, I mean I remember these hearings, um, even as a little kid, like watching these and then watching the news coverage of it, and like we mentioned, all over North strolling in there with his dress uniform and uh, you know, by all accounts being a pretty stand up guy, like he didn't write anyone out, he didn't.

But he also he was like, there's there's no way the president didn't know about this. He said, I don't have any direct evidence that the president didn't know about it, but it's my understanding that the president was fully aware of what was going on. Yeah, what was the deal with this missile supply shipment? Though? That's the one thing

I didn't quite get. So there was North got rid of all the documents that he could right well, North didn't have any control over CIA documents, and at that first missile resupply where they were resupplying Israel, he had a C I A. He basically said, hey, C I A, do you know anybody I can use to ship these things? I'm I've got an emergency here. I need to get these to is real fast. And the CIA, being the CIA is still a bureaucracy, they had to document this event.

So there was a document out there now and right that he couldn't get his hands on, that he couldn't shred. And so this led to Reagan taking responsibility or saying, okay, I was aware of this this Iran missile deal by backdating an order to William Casey saying I order you not to tell Congress about this, even though you're supposed to. So Reagan basically said, on paper, I know about this Iran, this one missile transfer to Iran. Had no idea about

the contrast and it. First they started up denying everything. Oh yeah, like after this, I'll share a story that we talked about. He went on television, Reagan did and denied everything. Every He said, all this is just total b us. Yeah exactly. Now let's now, let's stop talking

about everybody. Ten days after that, Reagan had another press conference where he talked about the Iran operation and he acknowledged it, but said, what we're really doing here is just trying to sort of send a signal to Iran that where we want friendlier relations. It was not arms

for hostage exactly. And then so that was ten days after the first den and then four months after that, because the reporting would not stop, he basically said, okay, yeah, and whatever it started out as, I admit that it devolved into an arms for hostage deal, which even that even that admission, which is the closest he ever came to admitting, you know, responsibility for it. Even that's just total bs and fantasy. It was from the outset in arms for hostages deal. The whole thing was set up

to get hostages released, and that that was it. So there was there was no other way to put it. But that's he He denied that to his dying day. As far as fallout point extra resign, Oliver North was fired. Um Casey died in a hospital. Um not too long after this whole thing was exposed, I mean like weeks so, Um, the press was all over the president. He um appointed the Tower Commission. Um, Yeah, that look into this. The president appointed a commission to investigate, Yeah, the president's own

administration's wrongdoing. That's right. And it was determined that Reagan's disengagement from the management of his White House created condition conditions such that it was possible that he did not know about this, which does the absolute best official finding he could have hoped for, because it basically says Rangon didn't know he had a rogue guy working for him, a true believer, a patriot, But Reagan didn't know about this,

and yeah, he should have. He should have had a closer watch on his executive branch, but he didn't what are you gonna do, Let's get Mr t in here for a photo op with Nancy. Uh. There was a criminal investigation and what they were really um honing in on was the eighteen million dollars in profits UM that that were made and what happened to that money where it went. Fourteen people were charged um Oliver North was

tried and found guilty on three counts. Yeah. Uh. One of the counts was um for getting a uh sixteen thousand dollar security system installed uh in his home courtesy of s Cord With with that money, there was a rumor that his his there's a bounty on his head

from terrorists and him up right. Now. That was a big problem for North because North's hole bag was I was following orders that I assumed we're coming from the president ultimately, and I was doing it out of my patriotic duty and a sense of, you know, as a true believer that we need to get rid of communism. And the American public loved it. They're like, great, make this man a saint. Congress started to love it too,

and he got off. But that was a real problem because it's saying, well, you took this gift from funds from this illicit arms sales, right, But it was a gift of a security system to help protect his family, So it's not like, you know, it was a gift of ten pounds of blow and like and Nicaraguan sex worker from the Eastern government exactly. Secord was convicted of one count of lying to Congress uh and the investigators. Um. He basically denied that North received any funds from any

of this. So it's still kind of hinged on that security system, I guess. And so everybody went to jail forever after that point. Right, No, that's not true at all. Um. Hakim got two years probation, a five thousand dollar fine. Secord got two years probation. Is that what he got? Two years probation. So the two guys who were actually running the company that ran this whole thing each got two years probation. North's conviction was overturned on a technicality,

and President Bush, the senior Bush on Christmas Eve. Um, this was Christmas Eve as he was leaving office, right, he issued six pardons basically a lot let everyone off the hook, including Casper Weinberger, who hadn't even gone to trial yet no, and neither had um Duane Claridge Dewey Claridge was going to stay in trial to both of them received preemptive pardons, and a lot of people are like, that was about the shadiest set of pardons anyone's ever issued,

because there's a lot of people out there who say Bush really walked away from the Scott free, but there is no way he wasn't even more involved in this than Reagan was. Yeah, I mean George Bush withheld subpoena his subpoena diary entries that basically indicated that he had full knowledge of this the entire time. UM. Eventually in UH Independent Council Lawrence Walsh um asked for these again and Bush like said, I asked you for these diary entrees. And Bush was like, I didn't you did, I didn't

fully understand. Uh, it was inadvertent, Like you asked me for a lot of stuff. I didn't know you asked me for the diary entrees. And Uh, walsh was really upset and he said, the Iran Contra contra cover up has now been completed. Uh. And George Bush as a president who has such a contempt for honesty and arrogant

disregard for the rule of law. Yeah, and I mean the the forestalling that the Reagan White House and then later on the Bush White House did um in in allowing these investigations to go forward and trying to keep Congress at arm's length after everything came out. It worked because there were articles of impeachment introduced in the House um against Ronald Reagan, and they managed to stave him off to where it was like while he's leaving office anyway,

forget about it. This investigation took years and years and years, and then finally when Bush pardoned everybody that was it, there was nothing else to do. Everybody who was involved was impl was was off scott free. And then um, the fact that Oliver North had shredded all those documents, they were all lost to history, like the actual truth is lost to history. Yeah. Reagan, Uh, his reputation took

a hit, temporary it um for a while there. He went from sixty in the span of a couple of months to forty three to forty seven percent depending on which poll you looked at on his approval rating. And uh, he would get it back though. Um. Despite in the position the very very famous deposition where Ronald Reagan said I don't remember or I don't recall eighty eight times. That was a very big deal, was all over the news.

Um almost as famous or just as famous as Bill Clinton's very famous depends what your definition of is is exactly. But Reagan rebounded. He did man to the most popular presidency since FDR Right. Yeah. Upon his exit, his his approval rating had bounced all the way back up to the early sixties. Mr T famously carried him out of the White House on his shoulders on his last day in office. Oh man, so that's a wrong contra Man, what a story of a story? Where's this movie? I

don't know. Hopefully we'll get some rights to it after this episode. I want to play Fawn Hall. Also, that's great. You get Jerry to play Fawn Hall. That would be great, Jerry Um. Well. In the meantime, while we find a suitable wig for Jerry Um, you can find out more about Iran Contract by going and reading contemporary articles on it. I'm telling you it's really awesome. And since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this

follow up on the moon Landing thing. Hey guys. In my opinion, the Apollo missions and Moon landings are the most significant events in the history of life on Earth. On the question why the Command module and Lunar Lander were launched separated, I think the reason was to allow the Command module to be ejected in case of an emergency. The very top of the Apollo stack was the launch escape system, like an injector seat on steroids. I imagine they had to keep things as light and nimble as

possible for the l S to be effective. I don't think you mentioned something that's really significant the Apollo eight mission. It was the very first time humans went to the Moon, on top of being the first time we broke free of Earth's gravity. Like like eleven, the stakes were incredibly high.

They had to first insert the correct trajectory to make it to the Moon, then do a burn to enter the orbit around the Moon, then perform another burn to break free of the Moon's gravity and head back towards Earth. If any piece was not in place, those astronauts would have spent the rest of their lives either orbiting the Sun or orbiting the Moon. Apollo eight also gave us the Earth rise photo. Oh yeah, yeah, I've been hearing a lot about Apollo eight um lately too, so this

person is hats off to you. Jim Lovell was on both Apollo eight and Apollo thirteen. He traveled to the moon twice but never had the opportunity to land. Signed a space geek Noah Alloy, Nice work, Noah Alloy Alloy Alloy, great name too. Thanks a lot for a getting in touch with us. We love space geeks. We love to put you guys in headlocks and rub your heads with our knuckles until you go stop. It's called a noogie

right here on Earth. That's right, um. If you want a noogie from me and Chuck, send us a space geeky or any kind of geeky thing. We love that kind of stuff. You can go onto stuff you should Know dot com and follow our social links and you can send us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you

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