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Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 2
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Reagan's Denials and the Tower Commission
At 42:25 · chapter starts 40:20
Reagan's response to the scandal unfolded in carefully calibrated retreats. His first television address flatly denied all of it. Ten days later he gave another press conference acknowledging the Iran operation but characterizing it as an overture toward building friendlier relations with Iranian moderates — explicitly not arms for hostages. Four months after that, with the press refusing to drop the story, he conceded it had 'devolved' into an arms-for-hostages situation — the closest he ever came to admitting responsibility, and still, Josh insists, a fiction, since the deal was arms-for-hostages from day one. Reagan appointed the Tower Commission to investigate his own administration, and its finding was the most charitable possible: that his detachment from day-to-day management of the White House created conditions under which it was at least possible he hadn't known. Poindexter resigned; North was fired; Casey died in hospital just weeks after the scandal broke. Articles of impeachment were introduced in the House, but the White House stalled and delayed until Reagan left office.
