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No issue stirred so much controversy during Ronald Reagan's Presidency as the so-called Iran-Contra Affair. Regardless of "what the president knew and when he knew it," regardless of the role played by those like Oliver North, the "affair" resulted from the failure of Reagan's earlier campaign to secure legitimate military aid from Congress for rebels fighting against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. His efforts had almost certainly been hampered by a sense of confusion among Americans.
When rebellious groups overthrew a long-standing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979, Congress supported the new government. The victorious faction, calling themselves the Sandinistas, received aid from the United States until as late as 1981. Reagan soon reversed that policy, and urged aid to those attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government. Our concurrent support for the government of Nicaragua's neighbor, El Salvador, also fighting off armed rebellion among its own citizens, further jumbled Americans' views of Central America. Add to this charges and counter-charges regarding the use of "death squads" by and against all four groups of government and rebel forces, and you have a challenging rhetorical situation for the leader of yet a third country who has a vision of what the region should be.
The Reagan vision may be found in speeches made during the two and one-half year period from May, 1984, through October, 1986. Subsequent to his first major televised address on May 9, 1984, the President continued to press for aid to the rebels in speeches to special interest groups, to the public in his Saturday radio addresses, to the United Nations General Assembly, to legislators from other nations in the Western Hemisphere, in news conferences, and in additional major televised messages. By the time Congress voted to provide aid in August of 1986, covert aid was being delivered by a variety of means. The campaign virtually ended in October, 1986, four days after an airplane carrying Eugene Hosenfus was shot down in Nicaragua. At that point Reagan attempted to link groups of mercenaries like Hosenfus with the so-called Abraham Lincoln Brigade, those Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War against Francisco Franco. Charges of covert aid and questions about weapons sales to Iran to raise money for the Contras soon...