Source:Bob Parker– World News Tonight, from longtime ABC News anchor Peter Jennings. RIP
“ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings July 13, 1987 Part 1”
From Bob Parker
The Iran Contra affair was definitely the story of the summer of 1987. I was eleven then and had just finished the fifth grade, going off to outdoor ed summer camp and my first ever basketball camp. As well as vacationing with my family in West Virginia. So it was a fun summer for me. And when I wasn’t doing those things I got to see a little of the Iran Contra hearings, probably on PBS since we didn’t have cable yet, with my mother.
Really that whole year up until the summer of 87, which isn’t a title of a song, at least that I know of, the new Democratic Congress that now had both the House and Senate with a large Democratic majority in the House, the Reagan Administration was on the defensive. Because of Iran Contra and Americans as well as Congress perhaps both Democrats and Republicans believing that the Reagan Administration at the very least did some things that they didn’t inform Congress about. Or committed some illegal violations of national security law.
When the Iran Contra investigation was put under the national spotlight ( so to speak ) and you got to see this joint Congressional Committee investigating Iran Contra on national TV, then you got to see Representatives and Senators from the House and Senate at their best and worst, essentially trying to make names for themselves and look good politically at the expense of President Ronald Reagan, who was still fairly popular politically, even if his administration wasn’t. And what you got see at least during week one of this Congressional Committee were Democratic Representatives and Senators making asses out of themselves. Trying to make Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North look like the bad guy. When he instead he came out looking like a national hero.
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