86 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL McPherson quotes Reagan’s memoirs: “Almost every morning at my national security briefings, I began by asking the same question: ‘Any progress on getting the hostages out of Lebanon?’” At the same time, the president promised, quite publicly, to “never make concessions to terrorists.” The president’s men tried to realize these conflicting but fervently held desires with increasingly weird schemes that involved secretly selling weapons the CIA had procured to Iran, in exchange for cash and the promise of Iranian efforts to secure the release of the hostages. The project used private go-betweens—a business they called “the Enterprise”—to evade responsibility for clearly illegal arms transfers. The Contra side of the scandal involved the administration’s support for counterrevolutionaries (the Contras) against a leftist regime (the Sandinistas) that had taken power in Nicaragua. President Reagan believed the Soviet Union intended to use the Sandinistas to undermine governments in Central America and Mexico; he saw the Contras as freedom fighters whose cause was vital to U.S. national security. Congress, however, had prohibited U.S. support for the Contras by law, beginning in 1983. The administration’s efforts to support the Contras regardless of those laws were the second part of the scandal. In late 1985 or early 1986, McPherson writes, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council staff, had what he called a “neat idea.” The Enterprise, of which North was the chief architect, had so overcharged the Iranians that even after its participants had skimmed substantial sums for themselves, there was money left over. “Use it to support the Contras,” North reportedly said, providing the hyphen. These were funds that Congress never authorized or appropriated; they had been obtained illegally and used for purposes Congress had prohibited. Who Knew …? Even after the whole story blew up, as such stories will, it was never clear how much the president or other senior officials knew. North’s boss, National Security Adviser Admiral John Poindexter, testified that he did not ask the president for approval “so that I could … provide some future deniability” if the story ever leaked out. Other top officials, including the vice president, the president’s chief of staff, and the secretaries of State and Defense, were not fully informed and were eager not to be enlightened. According to the president’s chief of staff, Poindexter himself—to be sure, an unreliable witness—said: “I had a feel- ing that something bad was going on … BOOKS Here We Are, Again The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy Alan McPherson, University of North Carolina Press, 2025, $27.95/paperback, e-book available, 384 pages. Reviewed by Harry W. Kopp In The Breach, Alan McPherson, Freaney Professor of History at Temple University, has given us an account—short and wonderfully easy to read—of the Iran-Contra affair, the greatest scandal of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. McPherson tells in persuasive detail how Iran-Contra, though little remembered today, inflicted major damage on American democracy and the Constitution: the rule of law was “desecrated,” the separation of powers “violated,” judicial independence “infringed,” and truth “despoiled.” Even so, punishments from the judicial system were few, and from the electorate even fewer. Parallels to current events are unmistakable. A Three-Part Scheme The Iran-Contra affair unfolded in the 1980s and remained a subject of investigation into the 1990s. Despite its two-part name, McPherson sees the scandal in three—Iran, the Contras, and the hyphen that linked them. A quick recap, starting with Iran: President Ronald Reagan, who had defeated President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election in part because of Carter’s failure to rescue American hostages seized and held by Iran, was determined to recover American hostages held in Lebanon. By 1985 there were eight, held by terrorist organizations linked to Iran. Even after the whole story blew up, as such stories will, it was never clear how much the president or other senior officials knew.
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