ontra hearings tended to strengthen Reagan's hand rather than further weaken him. In the Watergate hearings, Nixon Administration officials had come off to the public as sinister or crooked, while Congressional questioners like Senator Sam Ervin became popular heroes. But in the IranContra hearings, it was Administration figures like Lt. Col. Oliver "Ollie" North who became the popular heroes. Most other key witnesses successfully made the claim that they "did not recall" crucial events, and the hearings faded away into an anticlimax.
Reagan himself was fading away by the summer of 1987, but his legacy --- in the person of George Bush --- prevailed in the 1988 election. Many questions had been raised about Bush's knowledge of Iran-Contra . . . and none were ever clearly answered. By 1991, the affair was largely forgotten by the general public. The investigation of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh (the former title of this position, "special prosecutor," having been euphemized) continued, but his convictions against Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter were thrown out by a Supreme Court consisting largely of Reagan-Bush appointees.
Yet Iran-Contra has cast a long and continuing shadow over American politics. Tension between the White House and the Congress has become virtually institutionalized, and Iran-Contra had its echoes in the contentious 1991 confirmation hearing of Robert Gates as CIA chief. Iran-Contra had another echo in the persistent, if never-confirmed speculation about an "October Surprise" by the 1980 Reagan campaign, in which arms were allegedly offered to Iran in turn for holding American hostages until after the 1980 election. These allegations involved several Iran-Contra figures, notably including William Casey, Reagan's 1980 campaign manager and head of the CIA during the Iran-Contra years.
In short, though it has faded for the moment from popular consciousness, the Iran-Contra affair rem...