Video

In the summer of 1987, Congress held forty days of public hearings on the Iran-Contra affair; during which time they listened to twenty-eight witnesses give more than 250 hours of testimony. The most memorable witness was Colonel Oliver L. North of the National Security Council (NSC), who had, in violation of the Boland Amendments passed by Congress in 1984, directed NSC efforts to fund the anticommunist Contras fighting in Nicaragua. The funding had come from a variety of domestic and foreign sources, including, most controversially, the proceeds of secret arms sales to Iran. Reagan admitted to having given tacit approval to the Iran arms sales (to bring about the release of American hostages in Lebanon), and to the Contra aid (to prevent the spread of communism in Central America), but denied knowledge of the Iran-Contra connection or of the scope of the NSC's wrongdoing. During the congressional hearings, most witnesses, including NSC head John M. Poindexter, held up Reagan's passive role in his administration's Iran-Contra activity. Oliver North was one of the few to directly implicate the president, but his portrayal of his conduct and of the Iran-Contra operation itself as patriotic and logical did much to strengthen public support for the administration's well-meaning, if illegal, activities abroad. The final congressional report on the Iran-Contra affair condemned President Reagan for failing in his constitutional duty and said he bore the ''ultimate responsibility'' for the wrongdoing of his aides. However, the president was not among the thirteen White House, State Department, and intelligence officials indicted on charges ranging from perjury to conspiracy to defraud the United States. North and Poindexter were both convicted on conspiracy charges, but eventually had their convictions overturned because prosecutors had used testimony that they had given to Congress under immunity.