Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair: “[Oliver North’s] testimony commenced on 7 July 1987 … while not implicating the President, he incriminated a number of other senior officials, particularly [CIA director William] Casey [who had died in early 1987].[*] The Washington Post concluded that by the time the Marine had concluded his testimony he had effectively accused his superiors of providing false information to the President and the American people. He did not name Reagan directly, but rather stated that he assumed when conducting the operation that the President knew of his activities – a subtle but nevertheless important distinction. This had the pronounced benefit of providing deniability for the President, as North could provide no concrete evidence to support his speculative supposition. He was informed by Admiral Poindexter (in 1986) that the President did not actually know of the diversion of profits to Contra operations. … Admiral Poindexter appeared in civilian clothing at the Congressional hearings and, despite North’s presentational success, adopted an altogether different strategy. … The Admiral made it bluntly clear that he failed to inform Reagan of the diversion of funds from the [secret] arms sales [to Iran] to the Contra guerilla forces and, in a response derived from the famous axiom of President Truman, declared: ‘On this whole issue, you know, the buck stops here with me.’ His testimony rested wholeheartedly upon the stategy of plausible deniability. He claimed that the President was unaware of the diversion, and a number of other aspects of the scandalous activity, his objective being to protect his superior were the operations ever to be exposed to the public. … His comments served to reinforce, rather than contradict, Reagan’s previous statements on the issue of the diversion, and thus the two most senior officials involved in the scandal were in uniform agreement that the President had been ignorant of the details of the covert operations. The damage limitation exercise, in this area at least, had worked effectively. … The Democrats had, via the Congressional hearings, a perfect chance to inflict damage upon the Reagan presidency and keep it on the defensive for some considerable time. … Oliver North’s testimony shattered such hopes and was greeted with surprise and bewilderment by Democrats. Many were infuriated that North had used the hearings to make a case for the Contra freedom fighters in Nicaragua. Yet, he was preaching to a partly converted audience, several of the Democrats on the panels having previously voted for Contra aid. … In summary, three factors combined to assist in the demise of the Iran-Contra scandal at this time. Firstly, media interest waned as few fresh revelations came to the fore. Secondly, public interest subsided as time progressed and media coverage declined, and thirdly, in the light of insufficient evidence to warrant further Congressional investigation, other emergent political issues [the fedral deficit, Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme court] offered more salient and safer ground upon which to make political headway. … Watergate also had a further pronounced impact upon the Democrats’ prosecution of the hearings during Iran-Contra. Few Democrats wished to see Reagan hounded from office, for fear of accusations of malicious intent and an underlying fear that, following on from the experience of Watergate, the removal of a further President could destabilize the American political system and undermine the credibility of the Legislative branch. President Reagan faced dissimilar conditions to those faced by President Nixon, the legacy of Watergate and the painful memories evoked by that scandal subduing demands for aggressive and vindictive action against the President.” (R. Busby, Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair. The politics of Presidential Recovery [London/New York 1999], p. 159 et seq.) * “North … asserted that Casey had masterminded financial aspects of [the covert diversion of funds to the Contras]. North also suggested that Casey had been instrumental in advising him about damage control operations, and the need to ‘clean it up’ in the aftermath of the disclosure of Iranian arms sales … Material from computer records recovered in mid-January 1987 pointed to extensive CIA involvement, while one unnamed CIA source claimed that: ‘Casey knew a helluva lot about everything.'” (Idem, p. 108)