In 1986 it emerged that US intelligence forces had been secretly funding a right-wing guerrilla force (known as the Contras) fighting a left-wing regime in Nicaragua (the Sandinistas) by selling weapons to Iran. These weapons sales had also been used to bargain for the freedom of US hostages in the Middle East. Whether the Republican President Ronald Reagan knew what was happening is still unclear. However, Congress had recently vetoed the continued funding of the Contra rebels and the fact that the USA was covertly supplying arms to one of its own enemies damaged his administration and led to a number of inquiries, trials and convictions of those involved. None of those convicted were jailed.
Seymour Hersch, a US investigative journalist, tried to summarise the Iran-Contra affair in an article for the New Yorker on 29 April 1990:
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