Reply #19: But GHWB kept insisting he wasn't in the loop, despite being implicated by Hasenfus. [View All]

Despite the growing evidence, most of the major news media dismissed the stories of secret operations and related drug trafficking as conspiracy nonsense.

The scandal only unraveled because of outside events. On Oct. 5, 1986, one of North’s supply planes was shot down over Nicaragua.

The sole surviving crewman, Eugene Hasenfus, pointed the finger at George Bush’s vice presidential office and the CIA. Bush and other administration officials denied Hasenfus’s statement.

The second Iran-contra shoe dropped in early November 1986 with a story in a Beirut newspaper about the Iran arms sales. When the secret about North’s diverting Iranian arms profits to the contras was disclosed a few weeks later, the Iran-contra scandal was born.

But the Reagan-Bush administration was not ready to tell all. Immediately, the administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill moved to counter and to contain the scandal. For his part, Bush insisted that he was “not in the loop” on the Iran-contra business.