Attorney General Meese Reveals Iran-Contra Scandal to Public

Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran were illegally diverted to fund Nicaraguan Contra rebels, publicly exposing the Iran-Contra scandal that had been revealed three weeks earlier by the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa on November 3. The announcement comes after National Security Advisor John Poindexter and NSC staff member Oliver North have spent four days systematically destroying incriminating documents.

By this date, the Reagan administration has sold Iran 1,500 American missiles for $30 million in direct violation of the arms embargo established after the 1979 hostage crisis. While three of seven American hostages held in Lebanon have been released, Iran-backed terrorist groups have taken three more Americans hostage, demonstrating the futility of the arms-for-hostages strategy.

The diversion of funds to the Contras represents a flagrant violation of the Boland Amendment, which explicitly prohibited U.S. government agencies from providing military support to forces seeking to overthrow Nicaragua’s government. The scheme reveals a shadow foreign policy conducted by NSC officials, deliberately designed to circumvent congressional oversight and democratic accountability.

Meese’s announcement triggers multiple congressional investigations, the appointment of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, and a national crisis over executive overreach. The scandal exposes how national security secrecy can be weaponized to conduct illegal operations, launder money to paramilitary groups, and systematically deceive Congress. The Iran-Contra affair becomes the defining scandal of the Reagan presidency, revealing a constitutional crisis where executive officials placed their ideological agenda above the law.