He found that it would be difficult to prosecute Reagan for violating the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) which mandates advising Congress about arms transfers through a third country-the U.S. The criminality of the arms sales to Iran "involves a number of close legal calls," Mixter wrote. On Reagan, Mixter reported that the President was "briefed in advance" on each of the illicit sales of missiles to Iran. Mixter (now a partner in the Washington law firm of Morgan Lewis), and represented preliminary conclusions on whether to prosecute both Reagan and Bush for various crimes ranging from conspiracy to perjury. The criminal liability studies were drafted in March 1991 by a lawyer on Walsh's staff, Christian J. Source credit: Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library Ronald Reagan with Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz, Ed Meese, and Don Regan discussing the President's remarks on the Iran-Contra affair, Oval Office. "This particular detail was so dramatic, so sexy, that it might actually-well divert public attention from other, even more important aspects of the story," North wrote, "such as what the President and his top advisors had known about and approved." The focus on the diversion, as Oliver North, the NSC staffer who supervised the two operations wrote in his memoirs, was itself a diversion. The 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, thus tying together the two strands of the scandal which until that point had been separate in the public eye. 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. 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 a senior attorney in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. Bush chaired a committee that recommended the mining of the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983, according to previously secret Independent Counsel assessments of "criminal liability" on the part of the two former leaders posted today by the National Security Archive. Washington D.C., Novem– President Ronald Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment in the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86, and Vice President George H. The Iran-Contra Scandal, 1991 Confirmation Hearings, and Excerpts from new book Safe for Democracy The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contrasīy Scott Armstrong, Malcolm Byrne, Tom Blanton, and the National Security Archive (New York: Warner Books, 678 pp.)ĭocuments Spotlight Role of Reagan, Top Aides See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Twitter and Tumblr.The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified Historyīy Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne (New York: The New Press, 314 pp.) His younger son, Jeb Bush, served as governor of Florida and mounted a presidential run in 2016 that fell short. Bush, served as governor of Texas and became the 43rd president of the United States - the first father and son presidents since John and John Quincy Adams. After his failed 1980 presidential campaign, he became vice president in the administration of President Ronald Reagan.īush’s eldest son, George W. ambassador in Beijing, and he served almost a year as CIA director. He joined the Navy at age 18 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, served as a member of the House of Representatives from Texas, was ambassador to the United Nations and later the senior American envoy to China at a time when there was no U.S. 30, 2018.īush had one of the most impressive résumés in American public life. Before getting the keys to the White House, he served eight years as the vice president of Republican icon Ronald Reagan. 20, 1989, and was the oldest living former commander in chief. George Herbert Walker Bush took the oath of office as the United States’ 41st president on Jan. Bush and his running mate, Dan Quayle, defeated Michael Dukakis in the presidential election. Bush waves to a crowd of supporters on Nov.
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