The U.S. took millions of dollars from the weapons sale (click title to entry - thank you) and routed them and guns to the right-wing "Contra"² guerrillas in Nicaragua. The Contras were the armed opponents of Nicaragua's Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction, following the July 1979 overthrow of strongman Anastasio Somoza Debayle and the ending of the Somoza family's 43-year reign.
...Republican committee member Dick Cheney, (click here) the White House's point man in containing the scandal, seizes on Casey's terminal illness to deflect questions about Casey's activities, telling one reporter, "I don't think it's fair for people to criticize the man based on speculation and innuendo, and to do it at a time when he is incapable of defending himself strikes me as in extremely poor taste." Interestingly, after Casey dies on May 6, 1987, the day after the hearings begin, Casey would become a convenient scapegoat for North and a convenient oubliette for the missing information that would have shed critical light on the scandal. Even though four CIA officials will eventually be charged with criminal offenses related to Iran-Contra, George H.W. Bush, Reagan's successor in the White House, will pardon three of them and block the prosecution of the fourth by refusing to declassify information needed for his defense....
...expanded in 1982 with the establishment of the Milken Family Foundation....(click here)
Companies that vanished: Drexel Burnham pays the price (click here)
...Milken was feared by the business establishment,
and he had a contempt for the law. So he did himself in -- eventually agreeing to pay $650 million in fines and plead nolo contendere to six felonies -- three counts of stock parking and three counts of stock manipulation. Milken went to jail from March 1991 until January 1993. Drexel hemorrhaged capital; fired 5,000 people; and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1990.
