Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 2

In October 1986, a Sandinista soldier in Nicaragua looked up and spotted a cargo plane flying at just 2,500 feet in broad daylight. It was a C-123 called the Provider, and it was packed with Soviet Kalashnikovs, ammunition, and rocket grenades—supplies meant for the Contras, the rebel force the United States was trying to use to overthrow Nicaragua's government. The Sandinistas shot the plane down. Four crew members were aboard; three died. The only survivor was Eugene Hasenfus, a former Marine who had borrowed a parachute from his skydiver brother. When the Sandinistas captured him, he talked. And what he had to say blew the lid off one of the most brazen covert operations in American history: the Iran-Contra affair.

Two Crises, One Shady Solution

The Reagan administration had two foreign policy problems in the early 1980s. The first was in Nicaragua, where Congress had cut off funding for the Contras, the anti-communist rebels fighting the Sandinista government. The second was in Iran, where American hostages were being held by Lebanese terrorists sponsored by the Iranian government. Reagan had publicly vowed never to negotiate with terrorists, but the hostages were a political embarrassment he couldn't ignore.