How do breaches of trust affect public perception?
In the middle of the 1980s, the Reagan Administration had two significant foreign policy problems. In Nicaragua, the US funded and sent military supplies to a rebel group called the Contras who were fighting the communist Sandinista government. In response to their human rights violations, Congress passed the Boland Amendment that banned aid to the Contras. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, an Iranian-backed terrorist group took U.S. hostages. The Reagan administration could not negotiate with terrorists to free the hostages and could no longer support the Contras. Oliver North was put in charge of both of these issues. He arranged for weapons to be sold to Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Money from those arms sales was then given to the Contras in Nicaragua, violating the Boland Amendment. These scandals came to light in 1986 when a Lebanese newspaper began writing stories about the Iranian weapons deals.
D2.His.4.9-12. Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.
Featured Sources
Source A: Iran-Contra Source Set, Library of Congress
Source B:Iran-Contra AI Headlines
Formative Performance Tasks
- PRODUCE: Work together to analyze interviews with U.S. officials about the Iran-Contra Scandal and produce trust-breaking elements from each interview.
- COLLABORATE: Collaborate to match sample headlines about the Iran-Contra Scandal with the interviews they describe.
- DELIBERATE: Deliberate on how U.S. citizens may have felt if they saw the headlines as the events were unfolding.
Instructional Snapshot
The teacher may start class by briefly describing the core issues of the Iran-Contra Scandal: that the U.S. funded the Contras in Nicaragua to fight communism and that in the Middle East, an Iranian-backed group held U.S. hostages. Congress passed the Boland Amendment which made it illegal to fund the Contras. Additionally, the US does not negotiate with terrorist groups. With this background information, in small groups, students analyze interviews with government officials about the Iran-Contra scandal. Students identify a piece of information from each interview that would break Americans’ trust in their government and record it on the analysis sheet. Students then work together to match each source to a headline that best summarizes the interview. After reminding students that the public was originally aware of the information in the interviews, the lesson culminates with students deliberating the question: If U.S. citizens had read these headlines as the events were unfolding, how might it have affected their perception of the government?
