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On Thursday, November 13, 1986, Ronald Reagan opened his maroon leather-bound diary and jotted down a few thoughts about his day.

He was in the middle of a firestorm, he wrote, caused by the ridiculous falsehoods the media has been spawning.

The firestorm had been ignited by two separate scandals.

First, there was Eugene Hassanfuss, the former Marine whose plane had been shot down over Nicaragua by a Sandinista soldier.

It has all the makings of a major new uproar.

The U.S. may have violated a ban on A to the Contra's.

The Hassanfus crash seemed to confirm that the Reagan administration was yet again evading the law that

prohibited the U.S. government from funding the contra rebels.

The White House has had full knowledge of this contra cargo plane operation for more than a year.

Then, about a month later, the White House was hit with a seemingly unrelated story about

arms trafficking in a different foreign country.

According to an article in a Lebanese magazine, the U.S. was selling missiles to Iran.

Subsequent reports alleged that the arrangement was part of an arms-for-hostages swap.

Iran has helped the United States free hostages from Lebanon, and the U.S. is helping Iran in its war with Iraq.

In his diary, Reagan referred to the controversy as the Iran incident.

That was a lot more innocuous than what people outside the administration were calling it.

The very dangerous precedent...

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