Hey, everyone, just a quick note.

You're listening to the free feed of Masterplan, which means two things.

You're going to hear ads, and you'll have to wait longer for new episodes.

If you'd rather skip the ads and get the episodes faster, visit levernews.com slash upgrade to support our work.

There's a link in the show notes.

The Lever. Mr. Attorney General, welcome, sir.

Thank you. Will you please rise and take the old? It was the summer of 1987, a little more than eight months after the public first learned about the Iran-Contra scandal. Congress had launched

its investigation, and after weeks of explosive

testimony from White House officials like Oliver North, the mastermind behind the whole scheme,

it was time for Attorney General Ed Meese to sit in the hot seat. General Meese, all of us here

are eager to get to the truth. In nationally televised hearings, lawmakers grilled mees, trying to reconstruct what happened

inside the Reagan White House during those now infamous days in November when the administration

first realized something had gone very wrong.

You're in a unique position to help us.

You knew most of the people involved and you personally

interviewed them in the course of your fact-finding inquiry. As Attorney General, Ed Meese was the

nation's top law enforcement officer sworn to follow the law wherever the facts led. And as a former

prosecutor, Meese presumably knew how to gather evidence when investigating a crime.

But as members of Congress picked apart the minute-by-minute account of Mies's initial investigation,

his story raised almost as many questions as it answered.

Democratic Senator George Mitchell zeroed in on the inconsistencies.

I've struck by the fact that you met briefly with Mr. McFarland, and at that meeting, you were

...