17-07-2009, 11:39 AM
THE IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR
![[Image: icbroch.gif]](http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/nsa/publications/irancontra/icbroch.gif)
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Oliver North and Brendan Sullivan confer during the Iran-Contra hearing (Wally McNamee, Folio Inc.).
Subject
The Iran-Contra Affair.
Research Problem
How to recover the complete documentary record, the thousands of "secret" materials ranging from corporate ledgers to the most highly-classified memoranda of the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency? How to grasp the still-elusive whole--fine points of plans and operations on four continents, as well as broad issues of foreign policy, Executive authority, and the Constitutional process?
Solution: The National Security Archive
The National Security Archive, a non-profit research institute and library in Washington, D.C., has for several years been diligently locating, obtaining declassification of, organizing, and indexing high-level documents on Iran-Contra and many other contemporary U.S. foreign-policy subjects.
Through systematic document searching, sophisticated use of the Freedom of Information Act, cultivation of an extensive network of government, media, and academic contacts, and computer-based cataloging, the Archive has developed an unmatchable collection of primary materials--comprehensive in scope, pioneering in organization.
Now, through a cooperative publishing program with Chadwyck-Healey, this resource, once available only to Washington insiders, becomes available in fully-indexed form to researchers everywhere.
Comprehensive Coverage
The Iran-Contra Affair: The Making of a Scandal: 1983-1988 reproduces on microfiche over 20,000 pages of rarely-seen documentation from the government as well as the private sector.
Many of these acquisitions are derived from the official bodiesinvestigating the Iran-Contra Affair, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Tower Commission, the joint select Congressional committees, and the Independent Counsel. In addition, the Archive has moved well beyond official investigative documentation through hundreds of its own Freedom of Information Act requests, and through materials provided by scholars, journalists, and even players in the scandal.
The result is a uniquely integrated, thorough history of the policies, operations, and investigations that constituted the Affair, from the autumn of 1983 when Congress first put limits on official U.S. assistance to the Contras, to the criminal indictments of Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, and Albert Hakim in spring, 1988.
Documents include:
Memos
Briefing papers
Reports
Cables
Meeting notes
Computer messages
Statements
Court records
Press Briefings
Letters
Legal depositions
Presidential Findings
Phone logs
Bank records
Hearings
Notebook entries
Corporate papers
Intelligence Reports
One-Stop Retrieval
It would take an individual researcher years of work, along with an overwhelming financial commitment, to accumulate the resources offered in this collection. Here is the first one-stop retrieval for information on events and players, government and non-government, American, Nicaraguan, Iranian, Israeli, and many other nationalities.
Materials from the White House and National Security Council, lie at the core of the collection. But important segments also come from many other government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I., Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Treasury, and Transportation, General Accounting Office, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Aviation Administration, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Congress, and U.S. District courts.
Moreover, the collection contains a wealth of documentation from groups that formed the private sector arm of these covert operations, such as the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, International Business Communications, and others.
Unprecedented Access Through In-depth Indexing
In-depth, document-level indexing gives researchers a quality of access that is rare for any published manuscript collection, government or non-government. Important transactions within each document are indexed individually. Prepared by the National Security Archive staff, the hard-bound index to names, organizations, and subjects--designed by indexing specialist David Bearman--is a major historical contribution in itself.
Also provided are:
Events chronology
Glossaries of key individuals and organizations
Chronological document bibliography
Bibliography of relevant secondary sources
Documentary Breakthroughs
No previously-published account of the Iran-Contra Affair gives researchers such consistent access to the innermost councils of executive authority.
Among the remarkable documents here, for example, are minutes of Restricted Inter-Agency Group and National Security Planning Group meetings, top-secret Presidential covert action Findings, and multiple drafts of National Security Decision Directives, which highlight the internal bureaucratic processes in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. Many of the documents included represent whole categories of government materials that have never been declassified before.
Research Vistas
The collection's documentary richness and balance of perspectives offer researchers fresh insights on:
U.S. covert actions in Central America and the Middle East
The continuing mysteries of the Affair, left unresolved by the 1987 hearings
Interactions among U.S. officials, private organizations, and Contra leaders
Shifting needs and perceptions in U.S.-lranian and Israeli-Iranian relations
Divisions within the Executive Branch over approaches to revolution and terrorism
The machinery of intelligence analysis and decision-making in national security agencies
The Affair as a test case for the effectiveness of Congressional oversight of intelligence activities
The Collection Will Be A Necessity For
Scholars of American government and international relations
Legal affairs analysts
Specialists on the Middle East, Latin America, and theThird World
Intelligence and policy analysts
Librarians and bibliographers
Newspapers, radio, television reporters and commentators
Government and business consultants
Concerned citizens
Sample Document Titles
This is a sampling of the more than 4000 documents included in The Iran-Contra Affair :The Making of a Scandal 1983-1988:
Overview
Title: The Iran Contra-Affair: The Making of a Scandal, 1983-1988
[B]Content: Reproduces on microfiche over 20,000 pages of documentation, much of it highly-classified, pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair,1983-1988.
Materials were identified, obtained, assembled, and indexed by the National Security Archive, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit research institute and library.
Series: This title is Number 3 of a reference series, The Making of US. Policy
Arrangement: Documents are arranged in a general chronological order. Each document bears a unique accession number, to which all indexing is keyed.
Indexing: A two-volume printed Guide, prepared by the National Security Archive, accompanies the microfiche collection. Volume I is an index providing in-depth, document-level access to names, organizations, and subjects.
Volume II contains an events chronology, glossaries of names and organizations, a chronological document bibliography, and a bibliography of secondary sources.
Date of Publication:
Summer,1989
Orders and Inquiries
[/B]
[B]Iran-Contra Editorial Board[/B]
Loch Johnson Professor of Political Science University of Georgia
Nikki Keddie Professor of History University of California, Los Angeles
Kenneth Sharpe Associate Professor of Political Science Swarthmore College
Gary Sick Adjunct Professor of Middle East Politics Columbia University
Malcolm Byrne Project Coordinator National Security Archive
Peter Kornbluh Project Coordinator National Security Archive
Jeff Nason Project Analyst National Security Archive
[B]Praise for The Iran-Contra Affair, 1983-1988[/B]
"The National Security Archive represents an idea so obvious--once you think of it--that it instantly makes the transition from novelty to necessity The desirability of collecting in one location all the declassified documentation on US. foreign policy is so compelling that we are certain to ask ourselves very soon how we managed to get along without it. (Document collections and indices such as this Iran-Contra collection) will make accessible to researchers everywhere a vast body of information that previously could be obtained and used only by a few skilled and dedicated researchers. All of us who have a professional interest in contemporary security and foreign policy issues can only rejoice at the appearance of this new institutional resource. " Gary Sick
Adjunct Professor of Middle East Politics
Columbia University
Iran Specialist, National Security Council,
Ford, Carter, and Reagan Administrations
Return to National Security Archive Microfiche Sets.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publica...ancon.html
1 9 8 3 - 1 9 8 8
Oliver North and Brendan Sullivan confer during the Iran-Contra hearing (Wally McNamee, Folio Inc.).
- Overview
- Research Problem
- Solution
- Comprehensive Coverage
- One-Stop Retrieval
- Unprecedented Access Through In-depth Indexing
- Documentary Breakthroughs
- Research Vistas
- The Collection Will Be a Necessity For:
- Sample Document Titles
- Iran-Contra Editorial Board
- Praise for The Iran-Contra Affair, 1983-1988
- Letter from Oliver North to Adolfo Calero. Initial release by White House is heavily excised.
- White House photograph showing President Reagan meeting with Contra leaders (L to R) Alfonso Robelo, Arturo Cruz and Adolfo Calero. In officially released photo, Oliver North (at right) was cropped out.
Subject
The Iran-Contra Affair.
Research Problem
How to recover the complete documentary record, the thousands of "secret" materials ranging from corporate ledgers to the most highly-classified memoranda of the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency? How to grasp the still-elusive whole--fine points of plans and operations on four continents, as well as broad issues of foreign policy, Executive authority, and the Constitutional process?
Solution: The National Security Archive
The National Security Archive, a non-profit research institute and library in Washington, D.C., has for several years been diligently locating, obtaining declassification of, organizing, and indexing high-level documents on Iran-Contra and many other contemporary U.S. foreign-policy subjects.
Through systematic document searching, sophisticated use of the Freedom of Information Act, cultivation of an extensive network of government, media, and academic contacts, and computer-based cataloging, the Archive has developed an unmatchable collection of primary materials--comprehensive in scope, pioneering in organization.
Now, through a cooperative publishing program with Chadwyck-Healey, this resource, once available only to Washington insiders, becomes available in fully-indexed form to researchers everywhere.
Comprehensive Coverage
The Iran-Contra Affair: The Making of a Scandal: 1983-1988 reproduces on microfiche over 20,000 pages of rarely-seen documentation from the government as well as the private sector.
Many of these acquisitions are derived from the official bodiesinvestigating the Iran-Contra Affair, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Tower Commission, the joint select Congressional committees, and the Independent Counsel. In addition, the Archive has moved well beyond official investigative documentation through hundreds of its own Freedom of Information Act requests, and through materials provided by scholars, journalists, and even players in the scandal.
The result is a uniquely integrated, thorough history of the policies, operations, and investigations that constituted the Affair, from the autumn of 1983 when Congress first put limits on official U.S. assistance to the Contras, to the criminal indictments of Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, and Albert Hakim in spring, 1988.
Documents include:
Memos
Briefing papers
Reports
Cables
Meeting notes
Computer messages
Statements
Court records
Press Briefings
Letters
Legal depositions
Presidential Findings
Phone logs
Bank records
Hearings
Notebook entries
Corporate papers
Intelligence Reports
One-Stop Retrieval
It would take an individual researcher years of work, along with an overwhelming financial commitment, to accumulate the resources offered in this collection. Here is the first one-stop retrieval for information on events and players, government and non-government, American, Nicaraguan, Iranian, Israeli, and many other nationalities.
Materials from the White House and National Security Council, lie at the core of the collection. But important segments also come from many other government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I., Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Treasury, and Transportation, General Accounting Office, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Aviation Administration, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Congress, and U.S. District courts.
Moreover, the collection contains a wealth of documentation from groups that formed the private sector arm of these covert operations, such as the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, International Business Communications, and others.
Unprecedented Access Through In-depth Indexing
In-depth, document-level indexing gives researchers a quality of access that is rare for any published manuscript collection, government or non-government. Important transactions within each document are indexed individually. Prepared by the National Security Archive staff, the hard-bound index to names, organizations, and subjects--designed by indexing specialist David Bearman--is a major historical contribution in itself.
Also provided are:
Events chronology
Glossaries of key individuals and organizations
Chronological document bibliography
Bibliography of relevant secondary sources
Documentary Breakthroughs
No previously-published account of the Iran-Contra Affair gives researchers such consistent access to the innermost councils of executive authority.
Among the remarkable documents here, for example, are minutes of Restricted Inter-Agency Group and National Security Planning Group meetings, top-secret Presidential covert action Findings, and multiple drafts of National Security Decision Directives, which highlight the internal bureaucratic processes in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. Many of the documents included represent whole categories of government materials that have never been declassified before.
Research Vistas
The collection's documentary richness and balance of perspectives offer researchers fresh insights on:
U.S. covert actions in Central America and the Middle East
The continuing mysteries of the Affair, left unresolved by the 1987 hearings
Interactions among U.S. officials, private organizations, and Contra leaders
Shifting needs and perceptions in U.S.-lranian and Israeli-Iranian relations
Divisions within the Executive Branch over approaches to revolution and terrorism
The machinery of intelligence analysis and decision-making in national security agencies
The Affair as a test case for the effectiveness of Congressional oversight of intelligence activities
The Collection Will Be A Necessity For
Scholars of American government and international relations
Legal affairs analysts
Specialists on the Middle East, Latin America, and theThird World
Intelligence and policy analysts
Librarians and bibliographers
Newspapers, radio, television reporters and commentators
Government and business consultants
Concerned citizens
Sample Document Titles
This is a sampling of the more than 4000 documents included in The Iran-Contra Affair :The Making of a Scandal 1983-1988:
- 1/13/83 National Security Decision Directive 77:
Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National Security
- 6/30/83 CIA National Intelligence Estimate, "Nicaragua:The Outlook for the Insurgency"
- 2/21/84 Central America Legislative Strategy--Additional Funding for the Anti-Sandinista Forces
- 11/26/84 Assessment of Potential for Third Country Assistance to the Nicaraguan Opposition
- 1 /31 /85 Central America Strategy for the Second Term
- 6/7/85 Status of Hostage Recovery Efforts
- 12/1/85 CIA Activities: Allegations of Lobbying Assistance
- 1/6/86 Covert Action Finding Regarding Iran
- 5/23/86 Public Diplomacy Plan for Explaining U.S. Central American Policy in Europe and Latin America
- 5/26/86 Memorandum of Conversation: U.S.-lran Dialogue
- 11 /10/86 Meeting on November 10,1986 with the President, Vice President, Secretary Shultz, DCI Casey, Attorney General Meese, Don Regan, Admiral Poindexter, and Al Keel, in the Oval Office
- 11/18/86 U.S./lranian ContactsandtheAmerican Hostages
- 2/2/87 Preliminary Inquiry into the Sale of Arms to Iran and Possible Diversion of Funds to the Nicaraguan Resistance
- 3/1/87 The Department of Defense's Role in the Sale of Military Equipment to the Islamic Republic of Iran: Operation Snowball and Operation Crocus
- 3/87 Iran Arms Sales: DoD's Transfer of Arms to the Central Intelligence Agency
- 3/16/88 United States of America v. John M. Poindexter, Oliver L. North, Richard V. Secord, and Albert Hakim, Defendants
Overview
Title: The Iran Contra-Affair: The Making of a Scandal, 1983-1988
[B]Content: Reproduces on microfiche over 20,000 pages of documentation, much of it highly-classified, pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair,1983-1988.
Materials were identified, obtained, assembled, and indexed by the National Security Archive, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit research institute and library.
Series: This title is Number 3 of a reference series, The Making of US. Policy
Arrangement: Documents are arranged in a general chronological order. Each document bears a unique accession number, to which all indexing is keyed.
Indexing: A two-volume printed Guide, prepared by the National Security Archive, accompanies the microfiche collection. Volume I is an index providing in-depth, document-level access to names, organizations, and subjects.
Volume II contains an events chronology, glossaries of names and organizations, a chronological document bibliography, and a bibliography of secondary sources.
Date of Publication:
Summer,1989
Orders and Inquiries
[/B]
[B]Iran-Contra Editorial Board[/B]
Loch Johnson Professor of Political Science University of Georgia
Nikki Keddie Professor of History University of California, Los Angeles
Kenneth Sharpe Associate Professor of Political Science Swarthmore College
Gary Sick Adjunct Professor of Middle East Politics Columbia University
Malcolm Byrne Project Coordinator National Security Archive
Peter Kornbluh Project Coordinator National Security Archive
Jeff Nason Project Analyst National Security Archive
[B]Praise for The Iran-Contra Affair, 1983-1988[/B]
"The National Security Archive represents an idea so obvious--once you think of it--that it instantly makes the transition from novelty to necessity The desirability of collecting in one location all the declassified documentation on US. foreign policy is so compelling that we are certain to ask ourselves very soon how we managed to get along without it. (Document collections and indices such as this Iran-Contra collection) will make accessible to researchers everywhere a vast body of information that previously could be obtained and used only by a few skilled and dedicated researchers. All of us who have a professional interest in contemporary security and foreign policy issues can only rejoice at the appearance of this new institutional resource. " Gary Sick
Adjunct Professor of Middle East Politics
Columbia University
Iran Specialist, National Security Council,
Ford, Carter, and Reagan Administrations
Return to National Security Archive Microfiche Sets.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publica...ancon.html
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.