This is the true story of the Iran-Contra affair — how the United States government secretly sold weapons to a country it had officially designated a state sponsor of terrorism, took the profits, and spent them on a war that Congress had voted, in law, to stop funding. Eleven people were convicted. One man went to prison. For tax fraud.

June 18th, 1985. President Reagan tells the country that America will never make concessions to terrorists. Sixty-three days later an Israeli aircraft lands in Iran carrying ninety-six American-built anti-tank missiles. The man who sent it asked the White House for permission first. The White House said yes.

Everything in this video comes from four documents, all produced by the United States government investigating itself: the Independent Counsel’s final report, the report of the Congressional Committees, the Kerry Committee, and the CIA’s own Inspector General. Six and a half years of investigation. Five hundred witnesses. Three hundred thousand pages. Not one leak among them.

It begins in Nicaragua. In October 1984 Congress doesn’t narrow the CIA’s contra program — it ends it, banning any agency of the United States from spending a single dollar supporting the war, directly or indirectly. So the White House goes looking for money that isn’t American. On June 25th, 1984, the most senior national security officials in the country sit in a room and are told, in the minutes, that taking foreign money for the contras could be an impeachable offense. Nobody in that room stops.

Then came the hostages. Seven Americans taken off the streets of Beirut, with no ransom note and no address — you can’t storm a building when nobody can tell you which building. The only country with a line to the kidnappers was Iran. And the only channel to Tehran was an Iranian arms dealer the CIA had already put on a worldwide warning list, describing him in its own files as a fabricator. He later failed three polygraphs. They kept using him anyway.

Ninety-six missiles went. Nobody came out. So the price went up: four hundred more missiles — for one hostage. In four weeks the price of a single American had risen nearly thirtyfold. They chose CIA station chief William Buckley. He had been dead since June. Every shipment after that was made for a man who no longer existed. Total: 504 missiles for one Presbyterian minister.

Then somebody looked at the disaster and saw an opportunity — what Oliver North, under oath, could only describe as “a neat idea.” Missiles left US Army stock at one price and were billed to Tehran at a far higher one. The difference landed in Swiss accounts no committee could audit. Take money you aren’t allowed to have, from a country you aren’t allowed to deal with, and spend it on an army you aren’t allowed to fund. The Iranian sales generated around $16 million in profit. Under $4 million ever reached the contras.

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CHAPTERS

00:00 — The Promise and the Missiles
02:30 — Hanging by Our Thumbs
06:46 — Negotiating for a Corpse
13:51 — A Neat Idea
17:02 — The Cake
19:27 — The Man Who Packed a Parachute
23:13 — We Shred Every Day

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRApCXCYo5AV8hRjquS1Mffk-V-2WmrOcxa5rzuIOTo/edit?usp=sharing

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