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making operation 48 was conducted since Vietnam, Watergate and the congressional hearings in themid-1970s that exposed plots to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders, aswell as the U.S. role in the overthrow of democratically elected Marxist president Salvador AllendeGossens in Chile. “With the media and the public less tolerant of such activities,” wrote one veteranAmerican foreign correspondent, “the hearings made it more difficult for Washington to justify andwage secret wars.” 49 The subsequent lack of elite consensus about the boundaries for the legitimateexercise of American force overseas resulted in the actions of North et. al, being denounced, postfacto, by many Republicans/conservatives, while at the same time heralded by others who chaffedat Congressional restrictions in what they saw a undue interference in a twilight struggle with Sovietcommunism a stone’s throw from America’s borders.Key to understanding Iran-Contra in the context of related covert operations that were carried outsimultaneously on two continents comes from the lexicon of intelligence tradecraft. As the ChurchCommittee, otherwise known as the United States Senate Select Committee to Study GovernmentalOperations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Id.) in 1975,noted in offering an “authoritative definition” of “plausible deniability”:‘Plausible denial’ has shaped the processes for approving and evaluating covert actions. …‘Plausible denial’ can also lead to the use of euphemisms and circumlocution, which are designedto allow the President and other senior officials to deny knowledge of an operation should it bedisclosed. The converse may also occur; a President could communicate his desires for a sensitiveoperation in an indirect, circumlocutious manner. An additional possibility is that the President may,in fact, not be fully and accurately informed about a sensitive operation because he failed to receivethe ‘circumlocutious’ message. The evidence … reveals that serious problems of assessing intent andensuring both control and accountability may result from the use of ‘plausible denial.’ 50Reagan’s vivid personal interest in both the Nicaraguans he called “Freedom Fighters” and thoseAmericans held hostage in Lebanon were beyond doubt, as was his frustration with Congressionallimitations on what he could do in Central America. However, crucial evidence shredded by Northand an assistant and Reagan’s own faulty memory about key events make conclusive statementsabout how “plausible denial” worked in the case of Iran-Contra difficult. This is particularly trueconcerning the problems of assessing intent and ensuring control and accountability and it is thatgray area that served as the background to the role encumbered by North, both as a military man andas a conservative activist.Ironically, the activist role of National Security Council—originally created by Congress to serveas the president’s primary forum for resolution of military and foreign policy issues—and the placemilitary officers might play within the NSC in a conservative administration were not articles ofconsensus at the beginnings of the Reagan Administration. Richard Allen, a foreign affairs scholarwho became Reagan’s first National Security Advisor in 1981, had written a line into a Reaganspeech in October 1980 that signaled the cutting back of the post from the operational, policymakingrole its occupant had enjoyed since the Kissinger era: “When President, I will reduce the conflictbetween the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State, and the National Security Advisoronce again will become a staff person.” Concerning North, Allen told an interviewer in 2002, “IfI hadn’t left, he would have been gone. I would never keep a military man more than six or eightmonths. Never. … The military always has its own agenda. They’re the guys you want to fight the48A second, contemporaneous CIA- run operation, assisting Afghan rebels fight occupying Soviet troops, enjoyed widespread bipartisan Congressionalsupport, in large part because the USSR had invaded a sovereign nation. See George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of theLargest Covert Operation in History, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003. Polls showed that the Contras never enjoyed the majority support of the Americanpeople.49Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession, p. 2.50Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. An Interim Report of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study GovernmentOperations, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), p. 9.138Security and Defense Studies Review 2010 Fall-Winter Issue / Edicíón Otoño-Invierno 2010 / Edicão Outono-Inverno 2010 / Volume 11