Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans & The Iran-Contra Arms Dealing Scandal (Part II)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: SNAFU with Ed Helms

Episode: Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans & The Iran-Contra Arms Dealing Scandal (Part II)

Release Date: May 27, 2026
Host: Ed Helms (with guest Robert Evans)

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Episode Overview

This episode, part two of a deep dive into the Iran-Contra Affair, continues the dissection of one of America’s most infamous political scandals — the secret sale of arms to Iran by the Reagan administration to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, bypassing both US law and congressional oversight. Ed Helms is joined by Robert Evans (host of "Behind the Bastards") for an unflinching, often darkly funny exploration of greed, cover-ups, and systemic lack of accountability in US politics. The discussion interrogates motives behind the scandal, how it unfolded, the cover-up attempts, and what its fallout reveals about the American system of power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Quick Recap of Iran-Contra Affair

[03:24] – [05:39]

• Basic framework: In the 1980s, the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran (despite an embargo) in hopes of freeing American hostages in Lebanon. The generated funds were funneled to the Contras, anti-communist paramilitaries in Nicaragua.
• Motivations: Mixture of political necessity (protecting Reagan from hostage fallout) and genuine desire to rescue Americans.
• Evans: “We applied a status to Iran that was these guys we absolutely shouldn't be selling missiles to...that was their legal status.” (04:26)

2. The Iran-Iraq War and U.S. Involvement

[05:39] – [06:24]

• Context: The Iran-Iraq War was a devastating conflict with “World War II kind of” human and material losses.
• Robert Evans: “The U.S., by the way, we are heavily involved in both sides...This is such a messy time in history for us and such a horrible war that doesn't get covered enough.” (05:39)

3. Parsing Motive: Political vs. Humanitarian

[06:24] – [07:39]

• Political vs. personal reasons behind the arms deal for hostage release.
• Ed Helms: “Is it possible to parse the motives here?...Is this more about political machinations...or is it ‘we gotta get these Americans home?’”
• Robert Evans: “At the level of Ali North and Reagan White House, it’s mostly politics...but...there’s absolutely folks...whose primary...concern is...my buddy’s captive too.” (07:19)

4. Revelations and the Scandal Breaks Open

[09:01] – [11:20]

• Key events:
  • October 1986: US military plane shot down in Nicaragua; survivor admits to CIA involvement with Contras.
  • November 1986: Lebanese magazine breaks the US missile sales to Iran story. Only three hostages released despite “lots of missiles” sent.
• Reagan’s response: TV address denying “we did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages.” (11:06)

5. The Diversion Memo and Ego-driven Cover-ups

[11:20] – [13:09]

• Attorney General Edwin Meese uncovers the “Diversion memo” linking the Iran arms sales directly to Contra funding—revealing one massive scandal, not two.
• Meese’s press conference: Admits the activities, but claims Reagan knew nothing.
• Robert Evans: “A remarkable line to try to cross...we have to admit breaking the law...But the President didn’t know.” (13:09)

6. Investigation Overload: Congress, Special Prosecutor, and White House

[16:08] – [17:55]

• Multiple investigations: House, Senate, independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, and Reagan’s own Tower Commission.
• Ed Helms: “It starts to feel like layers upon layers of nothing to see here.”
• Robert Evans: “That strikes me as fucky, just the sheer volume.” (17:00)

7. The Tower Commission and Reagan’s Notorious Statement

[21:38] – [22:26]

• Tower Commission findings: NSC acted far too independently, criminality was rampant.

• Reagan’s public admission:

  “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” ([22:22])

• Ed Helms: “This is not just a word salad. This is like a word salad bar. It is a full on buffet of words scrambled up into some what's supposed to be delicious, but...leaving a terrible taste in your mouth.” (22:41)

8. Congressional Hearings, Shredding Parties, and Destroyed Evidence

[23:57] – [25:35]

• TV moment: Oliver North, John Poindexter testify.
• Shredding party: North, tipped off, destroys incriminating documents.
• Ed Helms: “That is the actual language—they had a shredding party. What does calling it a shredding party do...?”
• Robert Evans: “I think it sounds worse. You're deliberately thumbing your nose at accountability.” (25:07)

9. Accountability Upended: Immunity and Pardons

[26:09] – [30:26]

• Legal fallout: 11 found guilty, but North and Poindexter escape via immunity deals.
• “Snafu” of justice:
  • Immunity intended to go after higher-ups, but instead, it protected ringleaders and punished underlings.
• Ed Helms: “...accountability is just this ephemeral concept. It doesn't actually apply to anything.” (26:20)
• Robert Evans: “The people running the government really wanted to do this and they didn't want their friends to get in trouble...” (27:22)
• Pardons: Under President George H.W. Bush, all remaining accused are pardoned—burying any further accountability.
• Robert Evans: “Probably nothing to look into there.” (35:35)

10. The Legacy of Iran-Contra: Cultural, Political, and Systemic Impact

[35:57] – [41:00]

• Ollie North as folk hero: Many Americans, even now, believe North did the “right thing” despite illegality.
• Evans’ personal note: “Oliver north was a hero in my house as a kid. Right? Like, that was exactly how I was raised...” (36:36)

Lessons Learned

• Evans:

  “...when you repeatedly make it clear that there aren't consequences for law breaking at this level in American politics...All this just begats greater and greater levels of corruption and greater senses of impunity by these actors who already just...by the fact that they’re working in the West Wing...have a degree of legal immunity...And when you take away any chance at any level of law breaking getting them in trouble, it leads inevitably to further reaches and to further crimes…” (37:21)

• Ed Helms:

  “...there has to be a...commitment to the idea that these laws are oftentimes inconvenient and annoying and frustrating for those in power. But we need to follow them anyway because it will gradually keep eroding. And I think we're in a deeply eroded place, obviously now.” (39:06)

Modern Parallels

• Helms and Evans: Draw clear lines from Iran-Contra to modern political scandals, noting how lack of consequences fosters “the imperial presidency,” erodes accountability, and removes meaningful congressional checks on the executive.
• Ed Helms:

  “Iran Contra would never be considered a scandal in this moment…Trump is taking these sweeping foreign policy actions...without so much as a nod to Congress.” (39:06)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ed Helms on Reagan’s Denial:
  “He says we did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages. I had to work in my Reagan voice.” (11:06)

• On the “Shredding Party”:
  “What does calling it a shredding party do...to the way we hear something like that? Because it's very different from destroying evidence. It is a shredding party.” (25:07, Ed Helms)

• Robert Evans on Washington Investigations:
  “That's like ass covering on a grand scale.” (17:00)

• On the lasting impact:
  “You can't just let people get away with crimes and corruption because they got elected. That's like a really bad way to run a country.” (38:39, Robert Evans)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:24] – Recap of Iran-Contra Affair and motivations
• [05:39] – The Iran-Iraq War and the US’s contradictory involvement
• [09:01] – US pilot exposed in Nicaragua; press revelations begin
• [11:06] – Audio of Reagan’s televised denial
• [12:57] – Meese reveals the full “Diversion” — one giant connected scandal
• [17:00] – Investigation overload and its performative nature
• [22:22] – Reagan’s infamous “my heart...my best intentions” admission
• [25:07] – The “Paper Shredding Party” and destruction of evidence
• [26:09] – Congressional testimony, legal immunity, and collapse of accountability
• [35:35] – Bush’s presidential pardons sweep the rest under the rug
• [37:21] – Robert Evans on the long-term consequences for American democracy
• [39:06] – Ed Helms ties lessons to contemporary politics

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Final Reflection

The episode closes with a sobering examination of how Iran-Contra’s legacy is visible in today’s political landscape: repeated elite impunity, diminished oversight, and a public conditioned to rationalize or ignore major abuses of power. Ed Helms and Robert Evans remind listeners that if laws remain unenforced for the powerful, scandals not only repeat, but metastasize.

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Highly recommended listening for anyone seeking insight into American political scandal, the psychology of power, and the long shadow Iran-Contra casts over the modern presidency.

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Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Officer, I know you found that half empty 40 in the center console of my car, but my heart tells me I haven't been drinking tonight. You know, I obeyed the speed limit at all times. I wasn't going 60 and 50.

[Kal Penn]

Exactly.

[Ed Helms]

Or as drunk people often do. They're going like 25 in a 60.

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[Ed Helms]

Hey everyone, I'm Ed Helms, and this is snafu. The show about history's greatest screw ups. It's part chat show, part history lesson, and a big old group therapy session for all of humanity. We're back for part two of the Iran Contra Affair with our incredible guest, Robert Evans. Now, if you haven't heard the previous episode, I strongly suggest you jump back and listen to that episode and then jump forward again to this moment right now and jump back into this episode. Cause we are going to wrap up our incredible recounting of the Iran Contra affair. Robert Evans, of course, is the host of the incredible podcast behind the Bastards, which I highly recommend. Tons of incredible episodes. The best two episodes are the ones on which I was a guest. Absolutely.

[Robert Evans]

On that podcast, people should certainly check out the one on Curtis Yarvin that you guessed it for.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, that was a fun one. That was a particularly interesting one. Robert, thank you so much for coming back.

[Robert Evans]

Thanks for having me back.

[Ed Helms]

I am gonna give a quick recap for our audience just in case there's been a little gap in time. So here's what went down before we move on. It's the 1980s. Reagan was president and quite simply he hated commies. Like he really hated them. So he funded paramilitaries in Nicaragua called the Contras through the CIA in the hopes that they would defeat the commie government run by the socialist group the Sandinistas. Separately, the US imposed an embargo on Iran due to their support of the group Hezbollah, a US designated terrorist group that had taken 25Americans hostage in 1984. To save those hostages, Reagan's National Security council guys, including Lt. Oliver north, secretly decided to trade weapons in exchange for some cash and the release of said hostages. Pretty dodgy. Especially considering that there was once again a literal embargo against Iran.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that we, we, we applied a status to Iran that was these guys we absolutely shouldn't be selling missiles to. Yeah, like that was their, that was their legal status.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah. You could, you could sum this, this up as hey, we're never ever gonna sell missiles to Iran. But also Iran. Do you guys want some missiles? But like, yeah, sure. Iran was also at war with Iraq and they needed weapons for this war.

[Robert Evans]

Oh yeah.

[Ed Helms]

And they had in fact secretly reached out to the US to ask if they could buy some weapons off us. And the answer of course should have been no, we are not dealing with you. There's an embargo going on. But Ali north and his bosses at the National Security Council saw an opportunity here. They wanted a win for Reagan, that is they wanted to free some hostages and avoid another Carter esque snafu. So they decided to go ahead and make a deal with the Iranians. They would secretly sell weapons to the Iranians on the condition that American hostages in Lebanon were, would be released.

[Robert Evans]

That's. Yeah. And people, we don't talk enough about the Iran Iraq war. Just so that people know this is like a World War II kind of conflict in terms of you've got these mass human wave charges, particularly that like Iran is doing. Cause they lack so much else in terms of military infrastructure and these huge tank battles that very much are like something out of the Second World War and hideous casualty numbers. And the U.S. by the way, we are heavily involved in both sides. We kind of helped push Saddam in the early stages of the war. We provided like, targeting assistance and whatnot for him. And obviously we're about to do that for Iran. This is such a messy time in history for us in such a horrible war that doesn't get covered enough.

[Ed Helms]

Amen. I find it interesting in a situation like this, there's clearly political motivation to sort of protect Reagan from another from the fallout of a hostage situation. But then of course, there's the very human concern for these hostages and the predicament that they're in.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Ed Helms]

And again, this is sort of getting back to one of my earlier questions, but, like, is it possible to parse the motives here? Is this more about the political machinations and sort of protect. Protecting Reagan's political reelection possibilities, or is it we gotta get these Americans home? And again, it's some of both.

[Robert Evans]

Some of both. It's gonna depend.

[Ed Helms]

The more cynical side of me is like, maybe it's more about the political.

[Robert Evans]

I think at the level of like Ali north and certainly like people in the Reagan White House, it's mostly politics. But you have a lot of people involved at different levels, including folks who like, know some of the people who have been taken hostage, of course. And so there's absolutely fol who are involved in this too, whose primary or at least a major concern is like, well, but my buddies captive too.

[Ed Helms]

And I do think the American military has an incredible track record of just going after our own and like fighting this recent. It's pretty important for morale. What's that?

[Robert Evans]

It's important for morale, right?

[Ed Helms]

Well, sure, yeah, you're right. But yeah, this extraction from Iran that just happened a month or two ago was an incredible, incredible story and does speak to it, I think is a pretty beautiful ethos in American general disposition. But certainly our military disposition of like, we leave no one behind, we go back and get people.

[Robert Evans]

It's this. It's interesting cause like, you also have around this time these conspiracy theories about like, soldiers left behind in Vietnam that really certainly by 79 was not accurate. Like there weren't huge numbers of Americans like in captivity in Vietnam. Like, they would have had nothing to bear benefit from just keeping those guys. But because there is this attitude this deeply, especially among former servicemen, that like, we don't leave people behind. The belief that there were all these guys still trapped in Vietnam is in this period of time, a huge political football. Right. Like, it's a thing that is like, massively important to a lot of people just because, like, even though it's not Accurate that those guys are there because the idea that people were left behind was so offensive to so many people.

[Ed Helms]

Right, right. All right, well, let's jump a couple of years later to the fall of 1986, and we're actually now we're gonna go back to Nicaragua. So in October of that year, a US military plane was shot down in Nicaragua. The lone survivor of this plane being shot down admitted to the Sandinistas that he was delivering weapons to the Contras for the CIA.

[Robert Evans]

Oops.

[Ed Helms]

Then a month later, a Lebanese magazine, Al Shira, got a scoo scoop that the US had been secretly selling missiles to Iran for the release of American hostages. And by the way, only three hostages had actually been released. So the efficacy of this whole scheme is like, what is very much in question.

[Robert Evans]

What did I never do? You know, the ratio of like, missiles to guys we were getting. I actually don't know. Off the top of my head, I

[Ed Helms]

don't think it was good because I'm assuming they, they said a lot of

[Robert Evans]

missiles, a lot of missiles.

[Ed Helms]

Anyway, this is quite a one, two punch, right? This downed pilot confessing to the Sandinistas that the CIA is helping the Contras. And then of course, this article coming out in a Lebanese magazine, basically exposing that. That scandal. So in response, Reagan did what he was best at. He got on TV and on November 13, he addressed America from the White House. And we actually have a little audio clip to play from that press conference here. Now, my fellow Americans, there's an old saying that nothing spreads so quickly as a rumor. So I thought it was time to speak with you directly, to tell you firsthand about our dealings with Iran. Just a little taste of it. But I'll tell you later in the video, Reagan says he wasn't doing any backdoor trades with Iran. He says we did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages. I had to work in my Reagan voice.

[Robert Evans]

No, that was a good Reagan voice,

[Ed Helms]

thank you very much. But he does say explicitly we did not trade weapons or anything else.

[Robert Evans]

Couldn't have been clearer, couldn't have been clear.

[Ed Helms]

Couldn't have been clear. More clear, of course.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

Well, it turns out, straight up lying doesn't put an end to things. And soon it will be revealed that these scandals actually had a lot to do with each other. Once all of this starts leaking, Reagan's Attorney General, a man by the name of Edwin Meese, steps in to figure out just what the heck is going on here. So a couple of weeks after this, after this presidential address. On November 25, 1986, Mies goes on TV to address the nation. And here's where things get a little wild. Mies confirms that, yes, the US had actually been selling weapons secretly to Iran, and yes, the US had been backing the Contras in Nicaragua. But then he drops the real bombshell. These were not separate operations. They were the same operation. What? Yes, because Edwin Meese had found what is known as the Diversion memo in Oliver North's office. Now, this memo showed that that money from those secret arms sales to Iran wasn't just sitting around. It was being funneled off the books to fund the Contras. So suddenly, what looked like two different scandals snaps into focus as one tangled scheme. Attorney General Meese also had another very important point to make at this press conference, and that was that President Reagan did not know about any of this.

[Robert Evans]

No, of course not.

[Ed Helms]

He was completely in the dark, totally innocent of any wrong doing. So Mies press conference is kind of like a confession and a cleanup all at the exact same time.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's a remarkable line to try to cross of like, well, we have to admit to breaking the law that the President said that we absolutely didn't do. And also these two things that we said weren't connected are connected. But the President didn't know. But also he's still a good President. He just didn't know.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, does a scandal that goes from two bad things to one incredibly complicated big bad thing make it better or it's more efficient, more impressive? Yeah, it's kind of like this feels like the usual suspects moment where you're just like, oh, yes, Kobayashi, I get it. He is Keyser Soze. And we all feel kind of smart and dumb at the same time.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. What we expect from a President, it feels a lot like it's different declined over the last couple of decades rapidly, but also like the. I guess it's just shocking to me the degree to which a lot of people, including people who really liked Reagan, were willing to convince themselves. Well, he can't. Even though there's literally no way this could have happened without Reagan's sign off. He must not have really known, like, the amount of slack that he was given for this has always really surprised me. I've never understood it.

[Ed Helms]

Well, we will believe what we want to believe. Right. Like we're just so much of what we think is our rational analysis is just motivated reasoning. And I think that's a prime example of it. Do you remember what Saturday Night Live was doing at this time? They had a brilliant ongoing series of sketches in which Phil Hartman played Reagan. And they really played with this dichotomy of him being perceived as just this sort of like, you know, real friendly, just kind of cowboy who was nice to everybody, but a little bit kind of maybe clueless, but that's okay because he was doing the right thing. His heart was in the right place. And so they'd have these scenes with Phil Hartman, you know, like doing a photo op with a Girl Scout troop or something cute. And then he'd kind of usher them out of the Oval Office. And then he'd be like, get in here, everybody. And he'd pull in all the. Everyone and sit them down and pull down a map of Iran or whatever and be like, okay, this is what we're gonna do. And he'd just barking orders at everybod, just sort of highlighting that extreme dichotomy of the performance of a kind of like a guy who, hey, he got sort of taken for a ride on this whole Iran trophy thing.

[Robert Evans]

His memory's not great, but his heart's in the right place. And then this blood soaked madman. Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Helms]

Go back and watch these old Phil Hartman Reagan sketches. They're incredible and they're very sort of emblematic of this moment. So Edwin Mies's press conference turned out to be one of those classic moments of trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it. He sent Congress completely spinning out. They're like, wait, wait, wait. What? This was one giant conspiracy. All right, we gotta get to the bottom of this.

[Robert Evans]

This is way worse.

[Kal Penn]

Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

Also worth noting that Mies and Reagan were old pals. So it's pretty crazy to think that an Attorney General appointed by a president could do a thorough job of investigating his boss, Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

Naturally, everyone in Washington immediately spun into investigative overdrive. The House launched an investigation. The Senate launched an investigation. Reagan, not to be outdone, also appointed a commission led by ex senator John Tower to investigate. And just for good measure, he brought in independent special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to investigate and bring charges. Now, Robert, when everyone is investigating everyone else this hard, is that due diligence or just like a kind of Shakespearean level of thou dost protest too much?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's like ass covering on a grand scale especially. I mean, I guess it's. I'm sure. Cause like, you do want some of those investigations seem like they're appropriate, right? Like Congress investigating the President. Seems like it's something that Congress ought to be doing. The President having his own investigation into like, what his guys were doing is a lot of like, we're gonna make sure the foxes really get a good line on what's happening in this hen house. You know, like that. That strikes me as fucky, just the sheer volume.

[Ed Helms]

I mean, it starts to feel like layers upon layers of nothing to see here. Right, Right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

We're all investigating so hard that you can no longer see through the mess.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And it's also like, you don't need to look. Nobody else needs to be looking. We're gonna keep an eye on this. Don't worry. The truth will come out for sure. We've got it.

[Ed Helms]

We got this.

[Bethenny Frankel]

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[Kal Penn]

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[Kal Penn]

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[Ed Helms]

All right, so a few months later, In February of 1987, the Tower Commission released their report confirming what the diversion memo said and stating that the National Security Council needed reforms after acting far too independently of Congress.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Ed Helms]

The level of criminal law breaking in the NSC had become so undeniable that Reagan gave his follow up to his earlier statement. And I'll forego my Reagan imitation this time just to get this language across, he said. A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not amazing.

[Robert Evans]

Amazing sentence.

[Ed Helms]

How incredible is that language?

[Robert Evans]

I mean, you've been in more than a few writers rooms, Ed. Can you imagine how long it took to break that line? Cause Reagan wasn't Writing that himself. Like there was a room full of guys up until like four in the morning being like, how do we put all this in a sentence? Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

This is not just a word salad. This is like a word salad bar. It is a full on buffet of words scrambled up into some what's supposed to be delicious, but it's still kind of leaving a terrible taste in your mouth. I just want to go back to this. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but it's not. Still tell me this thing that I said to you that I know is a lie, but the facts and the evidence. In other words, he's externalizing this. He's not saying, like my own analysis is of what I said is revealing that I lied to you. He's saying that these other things, these facts and this evidence are telling me that what I told you before, it's not true.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. Officer, I know you found that half empty 40 in the center console of my car, but. But my heart tells me I haven't been drinking tonight, you know, and my

[Ed Helms]

best intentions tell me that that doesn't even exist. That 40's not even there, sloshing around in the backseat.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, and I obeyed the speed limit at all times. I wasn't going 60 in a 15. Exactly.

[Ed Helms]

Or as drunk people often do, they're going like 25 in a 60.

[Robert Evans]

Right? One of the two.

[Ed Helms]

All right. In July of this year, Oliver north and other members involved in the Iran Contra affair testified before Congress in live televised hearings as part of both the Senate and House led investigations. What came out led to wave after wave of indictments from Lawrence Walsh against Oliver North, John Poindexter and others who had clearly been involved. One of the most insane reveals was that while Mies had claimed to be investigating the NSC's activities, he had actually given Oliver north and John Poindexter a heads up that he would be coming by. And this gave Oliver north enough time to host a, quote, paper shredding party and destroy or alter thousands of pages of documents before Mies and his team could collect them. Now, that is the actual language they had. A shredding party. What does calling it a shredding party do to the way we hear something like that? Because it's very different from destroying evidence. It is a shredding party.

[Robert Evans]

I think it sounds worse. Cause that just sounds like you're deliberately, like you are thumbing your nose at any idea of accountability. Right. As opposed to like, well, we had a crime party then I'D be like, well, yeah, you did commit some crimes, but at least you're saying it right.

[Ed Helms]

I think it. But I do think in this way that language is powerful and it sort of sets a tone that this was sort of a casual thing and not that big a deal. But it was such a big deal.

[Robert Evans]

It's a really big deal.

[Ed Helms]

North's shredding spree didn't erase the scandal, of course, but it erased enough of the paper trail to keep the full story just out of reach. The diversion memo exposed the basic scheme, but anything that might have clearly implicated higher ups, like for example, Ronald Reagan, well, that stuff was gone. So all of this came out in the congressional investigations. North and Poindexter got their comeuppances and justice was served. Right, right.

[Robert Evans]

In the same way that, like, if the Mafia appoints a fall guy to take the pin for like a crime, then, like, was justice served? Well, yeah, that guy did. Right. But there's other guys that aren't getting.

[Ed Helms]

Well, here's the best part, because it's even like the accountability is even worse than you think. I mean, that's part of the. Yeah, that's part of the beauty of snafu is that accountability is just this ephemeral concept. It doesn't actually apply to anything. You remember, there are multiple simultaneous investigations going on here. In a way, they unintentionally undermined each other, which all became sort of its own snafu. So despite the fact that Walsh brought charges against Oliver north and Poindexter and other members of the National Security Council, Congress had already offered north and Poindexter immunity from charges in exchange for their testimony. So that meant that 11 individuals were found guilty in either carrying out the plot or in trying to slow down the investigations, but not Oliver north or Poindexter or whether or not they were found guilty. They were. They got off completely scot free due to their immunity. Make this make sense to me.

[Robert Evans]

Seems fair to me. I mean, the sense is that, like, the people running the government really wanted to do this and they didn't want their friends to get in trouble for breaking the law. Right. Like, that's the sense. I mean, it's not so different than the way things work now. It's the problem with investing people with power like this and then having the accountability also be them. Right. Like, ideally, I get what the founding fathers were trying to do with the separation of powers. And there's a, you know, there's a lot of wisdom in there. It worked out in some Ways for a while. But maybe we need like another separate power. Like a guy who like, doesn't have any other power, but if the president's like, fucking up, he can like, spritz him with like, you know, little pepper water. Right. Like you would with like a, like a misbehaving cat or something like that.

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[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Like the guy whose job is to like, hold the President to account. Some dude who can. Who's like an appointed law enforcement type thing, representing the people whose job is to make sure that shit like this doesn't happen, but will never do that. Right. Because nobody in power would want that to happen. I don't know.

[Ed Helms]

I'm not a legal theorist, but I would love to kind of hear from a legal expert some of the theory behind offering immunity to people for their testimony. It seems like a fair trade. But then you open yourself up to these situations where the person you just offered immunity to might have committed such a more horrendous crime than you ever even realized. And maybe you got some evidence to help you in this other area. But yeah, and in this case, it's 11 people lower on the totem pole that got raked across the polls.

[Robert Evans]

They got fucked over it.

[Ed Helms]

And was that worth it? Was that a worthy trade off to get those people busted if the ringleaders are getting off?

[Robert Evans]

I think it's a reasonable concept offering immunity in a situation where, for example, you're going after an organized crime ring and you have some guys that you've caught doing street level dealing or pimping or whatever, and they're kind of like street level criminals who are willing to roll on their bosses. So you offer them immunity to the lower crime so you can get the bigger. This is kind of the opposite where you're exonerating, basically, or you're giving immunity to the guys nearer to the top in order to fuck the people at the bottom who didn't really make much of it, who weren't like the power players. Right.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah. It seems like you want to be real savvy about who you're offering immunity to. Like, if you like, I would have. And I don't know, not knowing what those 11 people were specifically, you know, charged with. I still, my feeling is I feel like I would have rather given all of them immunity than to. In order to bust Oliver north and Poindexter. Right. Than the other way around.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It would almost be like if years from now we get criminal prosecutions as a result of the Doge stuff that was happening, and they give immunity to Big Balls, or whoever his name was that was stealing people's data in order to bust a security guard who improperly didn't lock up one night. It's like, well, that doesn't seem right.

[Ed Helms]

Exactly. There's a crazy case where a guy was accused of murder and someone who was there was given immunity to testify. And once he was given immunity, he claimed to have committed the murder, which was pretty demonstrably untrue, but it enabled the actual murderer to get off the hook.

[Robert Evans]

That's really funny.

[Ed Helms]

Isn't that wild?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[Ed Helms]

These are sort of unwieldy things when we unleash them out there.

[Bethenny Frankel]

Since he got out, bad things keep happening.

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[Kal Penn]

Hey, everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the of Irsay, the Audible and iheart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary, massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.

[Ray Porter]

I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and start starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections, and it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that. That deeply, emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.

[Kal Penn]

Listen to Hearsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Helms]

So even after this whole media circus ended, new evidence was still leading to new revelations and new trials. Well into the 1990s during George H.W. bush's presidency, they revealed that many of the National Security Council members who testified before the congressional committees and had committed perjury by lying and making false statements in their testimony, attempting to cover up what had really happened. I mean, damn, you can't trust anybody. So, in fact, some previously hidden notes revealed that Bush himself was involved in the scheme as vice president. He, of course, was Reagan's vice president. But in one of his last acts as President, George H.W. bush pardoned everyone involved before further trials could reveal anything more incriminating.

[Robert Evans]

Probably nothing to look into there.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, nothing you can do. Accountability. Not just. Not a thing.

[Robert Evans]

No. And I don't think that was the purpose of presidential pardons when they started being a thing. But that certainly seems to be what we've zeroed in on, is the biggest, best reason to have presidential pardons is to keep your cronies from getting in trouble.

[Ed Helms]

Amen. Now, it's really interesting I haven't dug into this aspect enough, but there are a lot of people who still to this day think Ollie north was a hero and that some of these things that they were undertaking were for the best reasons, and that they were effectively, obviously, they were breaking the law and they were violating congressional mandates and so forth, but they were doing so with the right motives and the right intentions. And that really all of their law breaking could be categorized as just cutting through the red tape to get something done.

[Robert Evans]

I was raised to believe that, yeah, it was very much how my family taught me about it. When I first heard about Iran Contra, it was described to me as unfortunate, and some people botched some aspects of it, but it was the only option available to them. And when you're the President, you have to make tough decisions, like illegally trading missiles to a country we're not supposed to trade missiles to. But it was very much like Oliver north was a hero in my house as a kid. Right? Like, that was exactly how I was raised to think about this.

[Ed Helms]

Of course, it's so fascinating, really. It really is. Just kind of depends on where you're standing, the way that we look at these things. That is the tangled knot of the Iran Contra affair. Any larger takeaways? Robert Evans?

[Robert Evans]

I mean, I think my takeaway from Iran Contra is my same, honestly, very similar to my takeaway with Watergate and to a number of presidential scandals that we've had over the last 50 or so years, which is that when you repeatedly make it clear that there aren't consequences for law breaking at this level in American politics, that if the President says it or does it, it can't be a crime. And if the President orders people to do it, or if people are working towards what the President told them he wanted and they commit crimes, then that's okay. And that there's accepted ways to smooth over that and ensure that people don't face punishment for what they did. That's why we're where we are today. All this just begats greater and greater levels of corruption and greater senses of impunity by these actors who already just kind of by default by the fact that they're working in the West Wing, they're working for the President, have a degree of legal immunity, right. That is conferred to them just by the fact that that's how we do things in our system of government. And when you take away any chance at any level of law breaking getting them in trouble, it leads inevitably to further reaches and to further crimes and to worse crimes. And I think if we learn any lesson from this, and if we learn any lesson from the last eight years, 12 years, fuck, almost by 2028, it'll have been 12 years. Right. The lesson that we ought to learn is that you can't just let people get away with crimes and corruption because they got elected. That's like a really bad way to run a country. I think that's my stance as a left wing radical.

[Ed Helms]

Well, yeah. And there has to be a sort of an understanding or a commitment to the idea that these laws are oftentimes inconvenient and annoying and frustrating for those in power. But we need to follow him anyway because it will gradually keep eroding. And I think we're in a deeply eroded place, obviously now. I mean, Iran Contra would never be considered a scandal in this moment. Right. We're in a moment where Trump is taking these sweeping foreign policy actions, both economically and militarily, without so much as a nod to Congress. And really, like, I think Iran Contra can be boiled down to a sort of Congress versus Executive branch standoff. That's really the sort of core of that. And what made it sort of. What made it a scandal at the time is that Congress did set limits and Congress was actually saying, you can't do these things.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, this is too far.

[Ed Helms]

And there was an expectation that the executive branch had to follow the law. We're not there anymore. We're so far past that. And we're in a place where, like you said, because this president has been elected, he should be able to do whatever the heck he wants. And Congress, I'm so amazed at this Congress right now who's completely abdicated their oversight and their. Especially with regards to war powers in Iran. Because even if you agree with Trump, even if you love all of the decisions he's making, if you're Mike Johnson, you still need to assert Congress's role in this process. And he just refuses to do so. It's like he's literally just smiling and saying, yeah, keep kicking me in the face. I love it. I love it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I mean, we could go all day trying to psychoanalyze what's going on with Mike Johnson, but I think more than anything, it's this sense and the imperial presidency. People trace back the history of that, and certainly Reagan has his role in the evolution of this understanding of the presidency as a much stronger executive than previous generations would have necessarily understood it to have been. But when you get in this situation where the president is the voice of the party and also the voice of the American people because he was elected, and if he was elected means that he's got a blank check to do whatever, it provides an out to guys like Johnson, where they're like, well, I'm not gonna go against the American people. And I think that there's tremendous cowardice at the highest levels of power in this country. But I also just think that it's in nobody's best interest at that level of power to actually fight for a separation of powers, to fight for a reduction in the power of the imperial presidency and to fight for what's best, best for American citizens. Because very much what's best for American citizens is not what's best for the people who are, like, close to the White House and hasn't been for a long time.

[Ed Helms]

Well said. Well said. Robert Evans, thank you so much for jumping into this snafu with me. It has been an absolute delight and I just love to hear how your brain works and breaks this stuff down. So thank you so much.

[Robert Evans]

It was lovely to talk with you, Ed. Thank you so much. And yeah, happy to come on anytime. And we'll have you back on Bastards in the.

[Ed Helms]

All right, sounds good. Take care. Oh, hey, one more quick thing. This week, the UK paperback edition of my book Snafu is now on sale. You can find it at any UK book retailer. And I think that qualifies as jolly good. Right then. I'm sorry, that was not necessary. I do not have a good British accent. It's not maybe. It maybe is like a, a touch better than Dick Van Dyke, but barely. I mean, it's not. Sorry. Let's move on. If you're in the United States, you can still pick up a copy of the hardcover of my book. And listen, it makes a great Father's Day gift, if I do say so myself. In fact, it just makes a great gift anytime. If you want to say, like, hey, I like you, I think you're cool, or hey, I think you're really smart and, and you could probably dig some of these really smart stories. Or hey, you're a big Ed Helms fan. Maybe you would like this book that he wrote. Anyway, whatever the reason, there's so many great reasons to give people gifts and just tell them, show them that you care about them. And this book is perfect for that. So I'll drop some links in the show notes for easy purchasing and thank you so much. Snow Snafu is a production of iHeart podcasts and snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post production and creative support from Good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video edited editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gossen and the Collected Works Legal review from Dan Welch, Megan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horne, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book the Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com thanks for listening and see you next week.

[Bethenny Frankel]

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