The Breach

384 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 20 halftones, notes, bibl., index

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-8634-9
Published: March 2025
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-8633-2
Published: March 2025

Paperback Available March 2025, but pre-order your copy today!

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A president defying Congress. Disrespect for the law. Attacks on the press. Evasion in the courts. The privatization of war. Quid pro quos with foreign nations. The mounting dangers to American democracy have long been with us. But all these perils first emerged together during the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan-Bush era. This opaque foreign policy mess has receded from history, a minor speedbump at the triumphant end of the Cold War. With American democracy in increasing jeopardy from the inside, however, Iran-Contra must be reassessed as a major step down that dark path.

In this gripping blow-by-blow account of the 1980s efforts to trade arms with Iran illegally, fund rebels in Central America despite a congressional prohibition, and dodge political and legal consequences once the truth emerged, Alan McPherson argues for the salience of six democracy-degrading behaviors throughout the fiasco. At the time, many warned of the broad attack on democratic norms, yet no one paid a real price or learned a lesson. Those failures left the country more divided than ever before, and ill-equipped for more severe assaults to come.

About the Author

Alan McPherson is professor of history at Temple University and author of Ghosts of Sheridan Circle.
For more information about Alan McPherson, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"Under Donald Trump, I personally witnessed corruption that seriously undermined our national security and eroded our democratic norms. Alan McPherson’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how the biggest Reagan scandal laid the groundwork for Trump and his ilk."

—Lt. Col. (Ret.) Alexander Vindman, former Director for European Affairs for the US National Security Council and author of Here, Right Matters: An American Story

"One of the things that is most valuable about this study is the manner in which McPherson expertly weaves varied sources together: previous studies, academic work, the journalism of the period, and most impressively, the documentary evidence from the Iran-Contra scandal, which he is apparently the first person to make use of."

—Eric Alterman, author of The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama

"A clear, compelling narrative of the Iran-Contra scandal, the best that I have read. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the erosion of democracy in the United States."

—Andrew J. Kirkendall, author of Cold War Alliances: Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America