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Iran-Contra scandal

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A group of men in a bar watching Oliver North testify before Congress.
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How the Iran-Contra Scandal Impacts American Politics Today

The Iran-Contra affair exposed how government officials can ignore democratic norms and practices.
by Alan McPherson via Made By History on May 14, 2025
Redacted declassified Top Secret memorandum written by Oliver North on Jack Terrel, terrorist suspect.

Iran-Contra and Domestic Counter-Intelligence Networks

Oliver North and his cronies in the Contra support operations put in motion a clandestine counter-intelligence apparatus to disrupt the flow of information.
by Edmund Berger via Reciprocal Contradiction on May 19, 2021
the contra military group

Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair

Reagan's commitment to deregulation, aggressive military spending, and diminished oversight created a cocktail of corruption that was worse than Watergate.
by Jeremi Suri via American Heritage on February 1, 2021
Luis Posada Carriles

Death of a Cold War Supervillain

Anticommunist militant Luis Posada Carriles, who popped up throughout Latin America over the past half-century, won’t be missed.
by Hilary Goodfriend via Jacobin on June 11, 2018

Democrats with Dreams of Impeachment Should Consider how Iran-Contra Turned Out

The investigation brought indictments and convictions — but Reagan weathered the storm.
by Nicole Hemmer via Vox on July 25, 2017

Iran/Contra Was the Prototype for Post-Vietnam Imperial Adventure

On the 30th anniversary, we can see that it was an ideological project, with the New Right reasserting the righteousness of militarism and markets.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on October 25, 2016
Michael Ledeen.

Michael Ledeen Was the Forrest Gump of American Fascism

From Iran-contra to Iraq war WMD lies to Trumpism, this right-wing pundit kept subverting democracy. 
by Jeet Heer via The Nation on May 30, 2025
Photo contact sheet from Ronald Reagan speech on Nicaragua in 1986.
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Letting the World Scream

The U.S., Nicaragua, and the International Court of Justice in the 1980s.
by Sean T. Byrnes via HNN on November 26, 2024
Ronald Reagan

What If Ronald Reagan’s Presidency Never Really Ended?

Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump’s opposite—yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on September 9, 2024
Lt. Col. Oliver North in 1987 before testifying to a committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal.
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The 1980s Hearings That Explain Why Trump’s Base Still Loves Him

Bombshell revelations won’t hurt the former president with his core supporters. We have only to look at Oliver North to know why.
by Kristin Kobes Du Mez via Made By History on June 29, 2022
Two men watch a bank of televisions showing Colin Powell testifying before the UN

Invisible General: How Colin Powell Conned America

From My Lai to Desert Storm to WMDs.
by Noah Kulwin via The American Prospect on October 22, 2021

We Used to Run This Country

Iran and surplus imperialism.
by Richard Beck via n+1 on June 22, 2020

The Loser King

Failing upward with Oliver North.
by Matt Hanson via The Baffler on March 10, 2020

The 40-Year War

William Barr’s long struggle against congressional oversight.
by Brad Miller via The American Prospect on September 9, 2019

Bernie, the Sandinistas, and America's Long Crisis of Impunity

Or, the pros and Contras of relying on political reporters.
by Jonathan M. Katz via Mother Jones on May 30, 2019

The Vice President’s Men

In the 1980s, vice-president George H.W. Bush was secretly the most important decision-maker in America's intelligence world.
by Seymour M. Hersh via London Review of Books on January 4, 2019

Is History Being Too Kind to George H.W. Bush?

The 41st president put self-interest over principle time and time again.
by David Greenberg via Politico Magazine on December 1, 2018
Ronald and Nancy Reagan smiling and waving at victory celebration.

Honey, I Forgot to Duck

Reagan’s capacity to inhabit and generate legend stemmed from his own impulse to substitute pleasing fictions for inconvenient facts.
by Jackson Lears via London Review of Books on January 15, 2025
Ronald Reagan preparing for a broadcast on Voice of America.

Whose Ronald Reagan?

Fighting over the legacy of a conservative hero in the era of Trump.
by Susan B. Glasser via Foreign Affairs on October 22, 2024
Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale at 1984 presidential debate.

When a Debate Flop Raised Concerns About Ronald Reagan's Fitness to Run for Re-Election

During the 1984 campaign, the 73-year-old president meandered his way through his face-off against Walter Mondale, prompting questions about his mental acuity.
by Eli Wizevich via Smithsonian on July 11, 2024
A racist political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as an educator teaching racialized colonial subjects in areas recently conquered by the U.S. during the War of 1898, the year of the white supremacist coup and massacre in Wilmington, N.C. and the mass disenfranchisement of Black Americans by the Supreme Court.

Heather Cox Richardson Shows the Importance of Holding Right-Wing Criminals and Frauds Accountable

Richardson’s work is as much about the contradictions of our shared past as it is an urgent call to action around the current authoritarian crisis.
by William Horne via Bucks County Beacon on March 7, 2024
Screen shots of PBS NewsHour anchors with title cards about conflicts in Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Afghanistan.
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“Burning with a Deadly Heat”

PBS NewsHour coverage of the hot wars of the Cold War.
by Alyssa Knapp via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on March 7, 2022
Black and white photo of Barbara Bush, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and Nancy Reagan, in 1994.

What Do We Want in a First Lady?

Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan grappled with the contradictions of a role that is at once public and private, superficial and serious.
by Amy Davidson Sorkin via The New Yorker on April 19, 2021
President Richard Nixon and Vice President Gerald Ford in the White House, along with their wives, First Lady Pat Nixon and Betty Ford

Gerald Ford and the Perversion of Presidential Pardons

In pardoning Nixon, the 38th president opened the floodgates to boundless executive power.
by James Bovard via The American Conservative on December 29, 2020
Joe Biden in front of a podium

Joe Biden’s Love Affair With the CIA

Biden’s assistance to William Casey, Reagan’s CIA director, and the rehabilitation of the intelligence service in general has had tragic consequences.
by Daniel Boguslaw via The American Prospect on October 10, 2019

The Making of the Military-Intellectual Complex

Why is U.S. foreign policy dominated by an unelected, often reckless cohort of “the best and the brightest”?
by Daniel Bessner via The New Republic on May 29, 2019

Donald Trump Wants to Fight the FBI? It’s a Suicide Mission.

Presidents who take on the Bureau rarely win.
by Tim Weiner via Politico Magazine on January 26, 2018
Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth the First's spymaster.

Open to Inspection

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the age of surveillance.
by Lewis H. Lapham via Lapham’s Quarterly on January 1, 2016

The War to Start All Wars

How the U.S. invasion of Panama ushered in the post-Cold War era of military unilateralism and preemptive war.
by Greg Grandin via Common Dreams on December 22, 2014

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