As the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra scandal, Lawrence Walsh, who has died aged 102, spent six futile years tying together the massive disregard for the law within Ronald Reagan's US presidency. Walsh managed to precipitate 11 convictions, mostly for lesser offences dealing with the cover-up, but saw all of them either overturned on appeal or negated by presidential pardons issued by George Bush Sr.
Iran-Contra was a two-pronged operation designed to circumvent the Boland amendment, which had stopped the US government from providing any further support to the insurgency of the rightwing "Contras" against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. In 1985, Reagan approved the illegal sale of arms to Iran, via Israel, ostensibly in exchange for the release of hostages held in Lebanon by Hezbollah. The profits were then used to resupply the Contras. When a CIA plane was shot down in Nicaragua in October 1986, the operation began to unravel.