What scandal facilited the sale of arms to Iran and occurred while John Poindexter was Deputy national Security Advisor?
Iran–Contra affair The Iran–Contra affair (Persian: ماجراي ایران-کنترا‎ ‎ , Spanish: "caso Irán-Contra" ), also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped, thereby, to fund the Contras in Nicaragua while at the same time negotiating the release of several U.S. hostages. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.
Joseph Mendenhall Joseph Abraham Mendenhall (born January 15, 1920) was a United States State Department official, known for his advisory work during the Kennedy administration on policy towards Vietnam and Laos. He is best known for his participation in the Krulak Mendenhall mission to South Vietnam in 1963 with General Victor Krulak. Their vastly divergent conclusions led U.S. President John F. Kennedy to ask if they had visited the same country. Mendenhall continued his work in the Indochina region after Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in wake of Kennedy's assassination.