The Iran-Contra Scandal was arguably the most prominent of the various questionable things about Ronald Reagan's presidency . When the complex details were exposed, the revelations proved to be explosive: Senior officials within Reagan's administration had been covertly selling weapons to Iran, which, in exchange, agreed to free U.S. hostages who were being held in Lebanon. Trading arms for hostages was shady enough, but it was soon revealed that the profits from those illicit arms sales were being used to fund anti-Communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua to assist in overthrowing the left-wing Sandinista government — something that Congress had explicitly banned.

At the center of the scandal stood Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a highly decorated U.S. Marine who'd graduated from the U.

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