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.
Petticoat affair The Petticoat affair (also known as the Eaton affair) was an 1829–1831 U.S. scandal involving members of President Andrew Jackson's Cabinet and their wives. Led by Floride Calhoun, wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun, these women (the "petticoats") socially ostracized John Eaton, the Secretary of War, and his wife Peggy over disapproval of the circumstances surrounding their marriage and what they considered her failure to meet the moral standards of a cabinet wife. The affair shook up the Jackson administration and led to the resignation of all but one cabinet member. It facilitated Martin Van Buren's rise to the presidency and was, in part, responsible for Calhoun's transformation from a national political figure with presidential aspirations into a sectional leader of the slave-holding Southern states.