Reagan\'s Cold War Strategy, Iran-Contra, and \"Plausible Deniability\"

Iran-Contra Outline

Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, and "Plausible Deniability."

This paper will attempt to contextualize Oliver North and the Iran-Contra Affair within a larger discussion of Cold War strategy.

The introduction will present the paper as having 3 basic sections. The first will discuss the idea of "plausible deniability" -- invoked by North during his 1987 testimony -- and show how it fit into Cold War strategy in the 1950s. The second section will discuss Reagan's own Cold War strategy, and his reversal of the 1970s policy of detente -- this will also necessarily entail Reagan's interest in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras, and Reagan's first-term standoff with Congress over funding the Contras (leading to the passage of the Boland Amendment for three consecutive years, 1982-1984). The third section will show how North revived the notion of "plausible deniability" after it had been disavowed in the 1970s, and will demonstrate that this was consistent with Reagan's larger policy of raising the stakes of the Cold War after the detente period. The paper hopes to demonstrate Reagan's overall culpability for Iran-Contra due to the status of "plausible deniability" as an outlawed strategy, but one which Reagan's administration deliberately endorsed.

SECTION 1: "Plausible Deniability." The first overall section of the paper will focus on the actual phrase used by Oliver North, and the history of this phrase and concept in the Cold War generally.

1A. CIA Covert Actions in the 1950s -- 1960s. This will provide a broad overview of what the concept of "plausible deniability" actually entails. The paper will describe certain CIA activities -- particularly in terms of Kennedy-era Cuba policy. However it will also look at Endicott's case study of use of bio-weapons ("germ warfare") in Korea in the early 1950s, to examine the long history of the concept of "plausible deniability" (despite the fact that it only became a phrase in public discourse after the Church Committee in the 1970s)

1B. The Church Committee and investigation into CIA covert action in the 1970s. This will cover Congress's investigation into the covert actions described in the last section, and the recommendations of the committee.

1C. The Congressional legislative attack on "plausible deniability": this will entail looking at the Hughes-Ryan Act from the 1970s and its revision in 1980. This gives us some idea of the state of covert actions and congressional oversight as Reagan took office.

SECTION 2: Reagan and the Cold War. This section focuses on Reagan specifically in terms of how he himself redirected Cold War policy after his election in 1980.

2A. Detente / end of detente. This contextualizes Reagan's election in terms of the period of detente with the Soviets throughout the 1970s, which arguably ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan's long history as a Cold Warrior / anti-communist is combined with details from Reagan's electoral campaign, in which he explicitly campaigned against detente.