The Breach

Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy

Alan McPherson

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781469686349
  9781469686332
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469683614
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

A president defying Congress. Disrespect for the law. Attacks on the press. Evasion in the courts. The privatization of war. Quid pro quos with foreign nations. The mounting dangers to American democracy have long been with us. But all these perils first emerged together during the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan-Bush era. This opaque foreign policy mess has receded from history, a minor speedbump at the triumphant end of the Cold War. With American democracy in increasing jeopardy from the inside, however, Iran-Contra must be reassessed as a major step down that dark path.

In this gripping blow-by-blow account of the 1980s efforts to trade arms with Iran illegally, fund rebels in Central America despite a congressional prohibition, and dodge political and legal consequences once the truth emerged, Alan McPherson argues for the salience of six democracy-degrading behaviors throughout the fiasco. At the time, many warned of the broad attack on democratic norms, yet no one paid a real price or learned a lesson. Those failures left the country more divided than ever before, and ill-equipped for more severe assaults to come.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Halftitle Page
• Introduction Democracy in Six Standards
• PART ONE SCHEME
• 1 The Counter-Congress Contras
• 2 War, Inc.
• 3 Arms for Hostages for Profit
• 4 Fabricating Findings
• 5 The Hyphen
• Part Two Scandal
• 6 Crash and Cover-Up
• 7 A Cloud Removed
• 8 Montesquieu versus Machiavelli
• Part Three Scrutiny
• 9 Justice Demoralized
• 10 Democracy on the Docket
• 11 The Whole Truth and Nothing But
• 12 Impunity
• Conclusion Ongoing Assault
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index