The Dirty Secrets of George Bush Video

Félix Ismael Rodríguez Mendigutia (born 1941 in Havana, Cuba) is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer famous for his involvement in the Bay of Pigs Invasion, in the interrogation and execution of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, and his ties to George H. W. Bush during the Iran-Contra Affair. He is Cuban of Spanish Basque ancestry.

Major General Richard V. Secord, Retired, was a United States Air Force officer convicted for his involvement with the Iran-Contra scandal. He was born in LaRue, Ohio in 1932. He graduated from West Point in 1955 and was then commissioned in the USAF. He was President of Stanford Technology Trading Group Intl., also known as the "Enterprise," a company involved with arms sales to Iran during the Reagan presidency.

Since 2002, retired General Secord has held the position of CEO and Chairman of the Board at Computerized Thermal Imaging.

The IranContra affair (Persian: ماجرای مک‌فارلین, Spanish: caso Irán-contras) was a political scandal in the United States which came to light in November 1986, during the Reagan administration, in which senior US figures agreed to facilitate the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo, to secure the release of hostages and to fund Nicaraguan contras.

It began as an operation to improve U.S.-Iranian relations, wherein Israel would ship weapons to a relatively moderate, politically influential group of Iranians; the U.S. would then resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of six U.S. hostages, who were being held by the Lebanese Shia Islamist group Hezbollah, who were unknowingly connected to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. The plan eventually deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages scheme, in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of the American hostages. Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua. While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause, no evidence has been found showing that he authorized this plan.

After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages. The investigation was compounded when large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials. On March 4, 1987, Reagan returned to the airwaves in a nationally televised address, taking full responsibility for any actions that he was unaware of, and admitting that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."

Several investigations ensued, including those by the United States Congress and the three-man, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither found any evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs. In the end, fourteen administration officials were charged with crimes, and eleven convicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. They were all pardoned in the final days of the George H. W. Bush presidency, who had been vice-president at the time of the affair.

James Danforth "Dan" Quayle (born February 4, 1947) was the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving under George H. W. Bush (1989-1993). He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from the state of Indiana.

Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole (born July 22, 1923) is an attorney and retired United States Senator from Kansas from 19691996, serving part of that time as United States Senate Majority Leader, where he set a record as the longest-serving Republican leader. He was his party's 1996 presidential nominee but lost the election to incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton. He was the Republican vice presidential nominee in the 1976 U.S. Presidential election, but lost the election to Walter Mondale, who ran on the Jimmy Carter ticket. Dole is special counsel at the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Alston & Bird.

In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed Dole as a co-chair of the commission to investigate problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, along with Donna Shalala, a former member of the Clinton cabinet. Dole is married to former U.S. cabinet member and former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Hanford Dole of North Carolina.