Fact check
Is it true: Iran-Contra Affair?
Yes — this is confirmed.
Documented by the Tower Board (February 1987), the congressional investigating committees (November 1987) and Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's final report (1993). Walsh charged 14 people; 11 were convicted, two of those convictions were overturned on appeal and four were pardoned, and two others were pardoned before trial. The core facts are documented; what remains unresolved is whether Reagan knew of the diversion. Walsh found no credible evidence that he violated any criminal statute and could not prove that he authorized or was aware of it.
The claim
Senior Reagan administration officials secretly sold weapons to Iran in 1985-86, partly to win the release of American hostages in Lebanon, ran a covert Contra-support operation through the National Security Council staff while Congress had banned such aid, diverted part of the Iran arms-sale profits to the Contras, and then misled Congress and the public and destroyed records to conceal it. The verdict covers that documented core; it does not extend to claims that President Reagan personally ordered the diversion, or to the separate allegation that the CIA ran or protected Contra cocaine trafficking.
Key evidence
Ash-Shiraa newspaper revelation
Reagan's knowledge of the diversion was never proved
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