Fiasco

What comes to mind

when you hear the words Iran-Contra?

The hearing will please come to order.

You may remember a charismatic marine.

As you all know by now, my name is Oliver North,

lieutenant colonel, United States Marine Corps.

Or an outcry about missiles being sold to Iran.

Is it possible

that fired White House official Oliver North

could have diverted profits from Iran arms sales

to the Contras on his own?

Maybe you recall the funding of a covert war

in Central America.

It's a messy story

that spanned multiple continents,

and it all started in an office like this one.

It was this tapestry of intrigue.

Every day there was a surprise.

It was so outlandish.

The first I heard about it, I really couldn't believe it.

Perhaps because of its complexity,

Iran-Contra, unlike other presidential scandals,

barely left a mark on our collective memory.

Watergate was really easy-peasy

compared to this.

You didn't have to go to Iran.

You didn't have to go to Central America.

The Sultan of Brunei wasn't involved.

It was far more sophisticated, complex,

and frankly scarier... Far scarier than Watergate.

Why was it conducted with such secrecy,

and why were we all kept in the dark

for such a long period of time?

This was not low stakes.

This was high stakes on the world stage.

I think, if you break down

the whole scandal piece by piece,

a single clarifying theme comes into focus.

We did not... repeat... did not

trade weapons or anything else for hostages.

Iran-Contra is a story about hostages...

Those who take them, those who rescue them,

and those who become hostages themselves.

Any kind of hostage situation creates a huge dilemma.

It is a power game, and the hostage taker

largely controls the situation,

but it's also a challenge you can't walk away from.

You better make damn sure

that you have looked at every consequence,

looked at every possible nuance...

Because once you give in to a ransom,

there is no stop.

I'm Leon Neyfakh.

This is "Fiasco,"

the story of Iran-Contra.

While Iran-Contra is known as Ronald Reagan's scandal,

the stage was set years earlier

by a different president.

It's a long way from Plains, Georgia,

to Washington D.C.

The strength of a person can be measured

by the path he takes to travel there.

For Jimmy Carter, that road was one of hard work

and determination.

This was the 1976 presidential campaign.

I heard he was a peanut farmer.

Jimmy Carter entered the race

as a Washington outsider

seeking an end to the Nixonian era

in American politics.

Hey, I'll go to your church next Sunday, okay?

He was a man of faith.

He wanted to advance a human rights agenda

across the world.

He is a genuine moral beacon

capable of making people believe in something.

He was the real thing.

I just think he's a very neat man.

You got me, all right.

I picture him like one of us...

One of the working people, one of the common people.

Jimmy Carter comes in

promising to bring America back to its best self.

His number one campaign promise in 1976

was "I will not lie to you."

We want Jimmy!

We want Jimmy! We want Jimmy!

We want Jimmy!

There's a new mood in America.

We've been shaken by a tragic war abroad

and by scandals and broken promises at home.

Our people are searching for new voices

and new ideas and new leaders.

It was after our defeat in the Vietnam War.

It was after the Watergate scandal.

Jimmy Carter was elected as a man who was supposed

to be the antithesis of all those things.

It's now a time for healing.

We wanna have faith again.

We want to be proud again.

We just want the truth again.

It's time for the people to run the government

and not the other way around!

He set out to change things,

and he was a social engineer,

and one of the things that he wanted to do

was create peace.

Election night

from CBS News Election Headquarters

in New York.

Shortly before dawn, Jimmy Carter reached

the end of his improbable two-year, half-million-mile

political quest and won the presidency.

Remains to be seen whether his politics

of love and trust and sweeping promises

could capture a country which has had reason

to become mistrustful of politicians.

Not long into Carter's term, it became clear

that he couldn't just turn everything around

like his campaign ads had promised.

The country was being battered.

There is growing concern about the general health

of the American economy.

There were some really big problems,

and none of them had simple solutions.

It's a profound change that the American economy

is undergoing, a change with a name...

Deindustrialization.

1979 in particular,

average incomes begin to decline,

manufacturing jobs in the United States

begin to really start tailing off,

and people would say things like, you know,

"Well, my father certainly didn't have to put up

with this kind of crap."

And, you know, "My steel factory just closed,

and now here I am standing in line for gas."

The oil shortage of 1979

forced Americans to wake up before dawn

just to fill up their tanks.

I'm all out. Not a drop.

How about five dollars? That's it.

Anger and bewilderment are growing

as more and more Americans cope with gasoline lines

and empty pumps.

I have to be at work at00.

For millions of Americans,

this may be the worst weekend they've ever faced

for finding gasoline to give them

the automobile freedom they take as their due.

I'm in a line two hours here,

and I can't get gas.

This is baloney.

Carter doesn't get my vote next year.

In July of 1979, Carter did something

politicians hardly ever do.

He admitted to the voters that good times

were not around the corner, and that the order of the day

wasn't hope, but self-sacrifice.

It's clear that the true problems

of our nation are much deeper

than gasoline lines or energy shortages,

deeper even than inflation or recession.

It is a crisis of confidence.

We can see this crisis in the growing doubt

about the meaning of our own lives

and in the loss of a unity of purpose

for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future

is threatening to destroy

the social and the political fabric

of America.

His advice to the American people

in his famous "Crisis of Confidence" speech

was that we have to make do with less.

We've lived too well, and now we're paying the bill.

This is not a message of happiness or reassurance,

but it is the truth,

and it is a warning.

I still think he's a peanut farmer,

and he don't know how to run this country.

Believe it.

Carter's hard truths did not sit well

with everyone.

Do you feel that President Carter

has been a good leader?

No, I don't.

I can't put my finger on it,

but there's just something he doesn't have.

God has something much better for everyone.

Some Americans wanted a different answer.

And if they switched on their TV set

on Sunday morning...

Ready.

Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.

...there was one waiting for them

in the form of a TV preacher named Jerry Falwell.

Let's lead the way, and under God,

let's turn our country around.

The sense among Americans