safe return of the American hostages. The money from these sales was then diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras, the anti-Communist rebels that Reagan hoped could supplant the Communist Sandinista government.
Attempting to support the Nicaraguan rebels was nothing new for Reagan, who had been trying for quite some time to provide them with aid but continuously ran into congressional opposition. A major roadblock came from a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, Edward Boland, who had won the passage of several amendments designed to block the Reagan administration from sending military equipment to the Contras. Though the Iranian component of the deal sought to free American hostages, the affair generally raised questions in the press over the extent to which it sought a clandestine solution around a Congress that was unresponsive to the administration’s pro-Contra agenda. As the story of the Iranian arms sale unfolded, the central question that began to emerge in the media concerned whether or not this arrangement violated Boland’s amendments and thus United States law.
Once reporters smelled a scandal in the water, they began to confront the administration over the level of its involvement. Reagan’s Attorney General and longtime aide and close friend Ed Meese learned of the situation and brought it to the president, and they together publicly disclosed it to the White House press corps on November 25.19 Unsatisfied with the disclosure, the media wanted more, sensing what some journalists hoped might be “another Watergate” on the horizon. News anchors like CBS’s Dan Rather provided continuous, wall-to-wall coverage in their broadcasts, while op-ed pages around the country overflowed with voices demanding answers.
Central to the discussion and a subject of great speculation was the level of Reagan’s personal involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, with reporters seeking to piece together the elusive timeline that explained what Reagan knew, when he knew it, and whether he was complicit in a cover-up. Quickly it became clear that no matter how much the administration wanted the issue to go away, it simply refused to do so. By December, critics of the administration had their voices heard, and Lawrence Walsh, a former federal judge, was appointed as a special Independent Counsel to investigate, which he proceeded to do intently.
While the investigation took place over the course of 1987, and failed to turn up any direct link between Reagan and the main questions of concern, the damage nevertheless had already been done. Occupying the administration’s attention for the end of 1986 and much of 1987, the scandal became the focus of the news media and thus the country, forming an indelible stain on the administration’s record. Perhaps the greatest tarnish of the Iran-Contra Affair was that it slowed Reagan’s otherwise remarkable productivity. As the administration became increasingly focused on quelling the rising furor over Iran-Contra during 1987, Reagan was forced to spend less time focusing on his plans to fight Communism and more time centered on how to reduce public anger over the situation. While his prolific presidency had been marked by tremendous strides against the Communists, 1987 turned out to be a much different year, one in which Reagan was to some degree forced to shift focus away from the Communists and to domestic damage control.
But although this particular effort to get arms to the Contras landed Reagan in the midst of his presidency’s largest scandal, it was consistent with his long-stated policy of promoting democracy and denying Communism wherever possible. “Our goal in Nicaragua must be to make democracy irreversible,” he stated unambiguously. “Only the freedom fighters [Contras] can do that; only they can be our insurance policy for democracy in Central America.” He insisted that “the freedom tide that has swept Latin America is pushing up against the borders of Nicaragua.” That tide in that place, he warned, could “go either way.”20
What Reagan recognized in his support of the Contras was that Communism lacked borders and would continue to spread as long as democracy was not there to counter it. In Nicaragua, Reagan feared the potential for much of Latin America to spin out of control and into the waiting arms of Communism, and in no less than America’s backyard.
TALKING LIBERATION
Despite the limitations imposed by the Iran-Contra investigation, Reagan continued to employ the power of his voice whenever possible, using his words to compensate for the unfortunate distractions from his crusade. On August 26, 1987, Reagan gave a speech at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, where his remarks were broadcast via satellite to a conference on U.S.–Soviet relations in Chautauqua, New York.21 He received a warm reception as he approached the podium that day at 1:02 pm. The customary note cards he held in his suit jacket, wrapped tight by a rubber band and scribbled in bizarre shorthand coherent only to Reagan, contained some brash declarations. And yet, unlike the speech he had given at the Brandenburg Gate two months earlier, this one would somehow slip through the cracks of time.
Reagan began the speech by rejecting detente, declaring that his administration “could not gloss over” the differences between totalitarianism and democracy, nor could it be “content anymore with accepted spheres of influence, a world only half free.” That was why his administration “sought to advance the cause of personal freedom wherever opportunities existed to do so. Sometimes this meant support for liberalization; sometimes, support for liberation.” He spoke openly of the need to liberate that sphere controlled by the USSR, all the way to the remotest, jagged edges of the Iron Curtain:
Our foreign policy… has been an attempt both to reassert the traditional elements of America’s postwar strategy while at the same time moving beyond the doctrines of mutual assured destruction or containment. Our goal has been to break the deadlock of the past, to seek a forward strategy—a forward strategy for world peace, a forward strategy for world freedom. We have not forsaken deterrence or containment, but working with our allies, we’ve sought something even beyond these doctrines. We have sought the elimination of the threat of nuclear weapons and an end to the threat of totalitarianism.
We know what real democracy constitutes; we understand its implications…. It means liberation of the captive people from the thralls of a ruling elite that presumes to know the people’s good better than the people…. And that’s why we know we must deal with the Soviet Union as it has been and as it is, and not as we would hope it to be. And yet we cannot rest with this. The opportunity before us is too great to let pass by.22
Reagan’s intent was unmistakable: He wanted an “end to the threat of totalitarianism and liberation of the Communist peoples.” He gazed intently at the audience: The opportunity was there—upon them, upon “us”—too momentous to miss. He concluded the speech by saying that in looking back over the previous six-and-a-half years, he could not help but reflect on “the most dramatic change to my own eyes: the exciting new prospects for the democratic cause.” He hoped that “we may finally progress beyond the postwar standoff and fulfill the promises made at Yalta but never acted upon.” To him, the promise of Yalta was a promise of freedom for those “captive people” in Eastern Europe.
Reagan continued the momentum after Los Angeles. In a September 16, 1987 speech in Washington, he likewise candidly stated that, “containment is not enough. Our goal has been to break the deadlock of the past, to seek a forward strategy—a forward strategy for world freedom.”23 This was a sentiment that Reagan would continue to echo throughout the remainder of that fall as he moved toward his final year in the White House. At once a restatement of containment’s flaws and a forward-looking analysis of the current state of Communism, these words corralled the direction in which Reagan was headed as he entered the final year of his presidency.
Though the Iran-Contra scandal had marred another year of progress in Reagan’s fight against the Soviets, the dramatic changes that would eventually culminate in the USSR’s fall were already starting to show their faces. Once again the administration’s attention would shift back to Afghanistan, where the final shots by the Mujahedin against the Soviets were being fired. This would prove to be just the beginning of Reagan’s tumultuous final year, a year which helped set the stage for Communism’s collapse.
