“My purpose was… to send a signal that the United States was prepared to replace the animosity between [the U.S. and Iran] with a new relationship… At the same time we undertook this initiative, we made clear that Iran must oppose all forms of international terrorism as a condition of progress in our relationship. The most significant step which Iran could take, we indicated, would be to use its influence in Lebanon to secure the release of all hostages held there.”
US President Ronald Reagan (November 13 1986)
November 3 2020 — On November 3 1986, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the Iran–Contra scandal. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped, thereby, to fund the Contras in Nicaragua while at the same time negotiating the release of several U.S. hostages.
Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress. This affair is usually regarded as one of the most important scandals in US modern history. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
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Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
To make it easier for the readers to retrieve various chapters of my book, I have created a special page “Lockerbie” where all the links to the chapters will be listed with a brief description. You can access that page directly as it appears at the far right of the top bar of this blog.
Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
“Conspiracies do occur and they can seem quite outlandish and unexpected once publicly revealed. Who would have thought that Oliver North would sell arms to Iran from the basement of the White House and launder the money to supply arms to Nicaraguan rebels in contravention of explicit legal prohibitions.”
Stephan Lewandowsky — Professor at the School of Psychological Science and Chair of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol
UPDATE (November 3 2021) — What are the differences between conspiracy theories that are almost certainly false and the evidence for actual conspiracies?
Even if we stay away from UFO cover-ups and the assassination of John F. Kennedy — Is that JFK memo to the CIA about UFOs real? — one is often reminded that it is not always simple to tell a real conspiracy from a fantastical conspiracy theory.
Case in Point — From day one, the Wuhan lab-leak theory was dismissed by the Main Stream Media as a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ that only crackpots would consider plausible.
RELATED POST: The Wuhan Lab – Leak Theory : Did you say ‘Conspiracy Theory’?
And yet, the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) just released a declassified intelligence community assessment on COVID-19 origins.
The U.S. IC remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.
As Professor Stephan Lewandowsky — Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol — wrote, conspiracy theories are not harmless fun.
“9/11 was a false flag operation planned by the US government. That same government sold weapons to Iran in order to fund Central American terrorists, and also created AIDS to exterminate gay people, and the CIA organized a fake vaccination drive in Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA.
There is no doubt that two of those conspiracies actually happened and were hushed up by the conspirators, whereas the other two are widely dismissed as fantastical conspiracy theories.
This is the long-standing dilemma confronting philosophers: conspiracies do occur and they can seem quite outlandish and unexpected once publicly revealed—who would have thought that Oliver North would sell arms to Iran from the basement of the White House and launder the money to supply arms to Nicaraguan rebels in contravention of explicit legal prohibitions.
But by the same token, most conspiracy theories are bunkum—we can be quite certain that the US Government did not create AIDS or fly airliners into the Twin Towers.
What are the differences between conspiracy theories that are almost certainly false and the evidence for actual conspiracies?
This is a non-trivial philosophical challenge, but it is an important one to sort out, given that the mere exposure to conspiracy theories can undermine people’s trust in government services and institutions.”
Understanding the differences between conspiracy theories that are almost certainly false and the evidence for actual conspiracies is not an easy task.
The job requires years of serious research that few journalists are willing to do nowadays.
And no newspaper will pay a journalist for years of research just to publish one piece, however good, in the end. This is a serious problem. And a solution is badly needed.
END of UPDATE
“On Christmas Eve 1992, President Bush ended the Iran-Contra investigation by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. Bush pardoned all those involved, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, whose trial was about to begin. William Barr, Bush’s Attorney General at the time, did not oppose the pardons. In effect, Bush had found a way to pardon the only man the Constitution does not allow the US President to pardon: himself.”
Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
After receiving the information from Mehdi Hashemi — a senior official in the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution — the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the affair on November 3, 1986.
This was the first public reporting of the weapons-for-hostages deal.
The operation was discovered only after an airlift of guns (Corporate Air Services HPF821) was downed over Nicaragua.
Eugene Hasenfus, who was captured by Nicaraguan authorities after surviving the plane crash, initially alleged in a press conference on Nicaraguan soil that two of his coworkers, Max Gomez and Ramon Medina, worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The scandal was compounded when Oliver North destroyed or hid pertinent documents between November 21 and November 25, 1986.
During North’s trial in 1989, his secretary, Fawn Hall, testified extensively about helping North alter, shred, and remove official United States National Security Council (NSC) documents from the White House.
According to the New York Times, enough documents were put into a government shredder to jam it. [Wikipedia]
COVER UP: Behind the Iran Contra Affair
“Ultimately the sale of weapons to Iran was not deemed a criminal offense but charges were brought against five individuals for their support of the Contras.
Those charges, however, were later dropped because the administration refused to declassify certain documents. The indicted conspirators faced various lesser charges instead.
In the end, fourteen administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal.
The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been vice-president at the time of the affair.”
UPDATE (November 3 2019) — BELGA is the Belgian national news agency and main supplier of news from Belgium.
The agency describes itself as a trusted source of reliable news regarding events related to Belgium.
On August 26 2019, La Libre — one of the leading Belgian newspapers — published a piece written by BELGA regarding Belgian arms dealer Jacques Monsieur. [Jacques Monsieur n’a pas tenté de se soustraire à sa condamnation, selon ses avocats]
RELATED POST: Biography — Jacques Monsieur [Belgian Arms Dealer]
The piece reveals no new facts about the case. But one sentence caught my attention.
“[Jacques monsieur] avait été condamné aux Etats-Unis en 2010 dans un dossier lié à l’affaire Iran-Contra, qui concernait la vente illicite d’armes iraniennes à des groupes rebelles.”
Translation:
“[Jacques monsieur] was sentenced in the United States in 2010 in a case related to the Iran-Contra case, which concerned the illegal sale of Iranian weapons to rebel groups.”
This serious piece of disinformation deserves the 2019 Fake News Award! Allow me to explain…
The Iran-Contra Affair was a US operation, run directly from the White House, during which Israeli weapons were provided to Iran despite an arms embargo.
The profit of these arms sales was used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua despite strict prohibition by an Act of Congress (the Boland Amendment).
There is no doubt whatsoever that BELGA journalists know full well the nature of the Iran-Contra scandal. So, the real question is: why are Belgian MSM lying about it?
My guess is that the Belgian Deep State is very worry about the revelations that Monsieur could make now that he is back in Belgium.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Monsieur was working in collaboration with various Western Intelligence Agencies. And he certainly has a lot of stories to tell…
And by the way, the Belgian government has just drafted a law that would make it illegal to publish any State Secret. All experts agree that this text is a clear violation of the Freedom of Press granted by the Constitution… It looks as if someone has hit the panic button.
PS: And these “journalists” are the folks who want to police the internet to warn you of fake news!
UPDATE (November 3 2020) — In Chapter II of my book on Lockerbie, I wrote:
When Pan Am 103 exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988, Bush was already deep-knee in a very serious scandal: the Iran-Contra affair.
And now, on top of that scandal, Bush needs to bury the truth about Lockerbie and he must quickly find a suitable culprit for this terrorist attack.
In such a desperate situation, the recipe has always been the same. You try to use both problems to neutralize each other.
To understand how, and why, Bush picked the first suspects, you must understand the Iran-Contra scandal, its origin and the geopolitical consequences of that extraordinary affair. (…)
On Christmas Eve 1992, President Bush ended the Iran-Contra investigation by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. Bush pardoned all those involved, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, whose trial was about to begin.
William Barr, Bush’s Attorney General at the time, did not oppose the pardons. In effect, Bush had found a way to pardon the only man the Constitution does not allow the US President to pardon: himself.
And it would not surprise me if this affair was also key to understand other crimes, such as the unsolved murder case of Former Prime Minister of Sweden Olof Palme.
END of UPDATE
REFERENCES
Iran–Contra affair — Wikipedia
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On This Day — The Iran-Contra Scandal (November 3 1986)
On This Day — The Iran-Contra Scandal (November 3, 1986)
On This Day — The Iran – Contra Scandal (November 3, 1986) [2019]
On This Day — The Iran – Contra Scandal Revealed (November 3, 1986)
On This Day — The Iran-Contra Scandal Revealed (November 3, 1986) [UPDATE : Factual vs Fantastical Conspiracies]
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