Ten Political Scandals That Rocked the US in the Half Century Since Watergate
Koreagate and Billygate
Democrat President Jimmy Carter ran into trouble right after taking over from Republican Nixon's vice-president Gerald Ford. Korean businessman and Washington lobbyist Tongsun Park was charged in 1976 with bribing US Congressmen between $100,000 and $200,000 each for political favours — allegedly including reversing Nixon's decision to withdraw US forces from the country.
Park was working for Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) director Kim Hyong-uk who was acting on orders from Chung Il-kwon, prime minister to South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee. The lobbyist avoided prosecution by turning state's witness. Democrat California representative Richard T. Hanna pled guilty and served a year in prison, but fellow-accused Otto Passman, a Louisiana congressman, was acquitted.
The Iran-Contra Affair
Faced with a series of Congress votes to limit US funding for the notorious Nicaraguan Contras fighting the democratically-elected Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega, Ronald Reagan's administration sought covert means to arm the guerrillas regardless of how many atrocities they were accused of.
Then-National Security Council member Colonel Oliver North was given the task of smuggling TOW anti-tank and HAWK surface-to-air missiles to the US' declared enemy Iran, then under an arms embargo. The money raised was used to buy arms for the Contras.
The scandal was exposed in 1986, and North was eventually convicted in 1989 of taking an "illegal gratuity" and obstruction charges. His three-year sentence was suspended. Others indicted over the affair included Reagan's defence secretary Caspar Weinberger. Among those convicted was Elliot Abrams, later appointed US envoy to Venezuela by Donald Trump.
But the accused were pardoned in 1993 by outgoing president George H W Bush, who was VP to Reagan at the time of the arms deals.
Two inquiries declared that Reagan had not known about the arms sales to Iran, despite Weinberger's written notes showing he knew of missile sales to "moderate elements" in Iran and potential deals to have hostages released. North was later elected president of the National Rifle Association from 2018 to 2019.
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinksy
Bush senior's successor Bill Clinton couldn't keep it in his pants for long after occupying the White House. His two terms in office were overshadowed by the salacious story of his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, who performed oral sex on him in the Oval Office.
Clinton managed to escape impeachment proceedings from the investigation by independent counsel Ken Starr, originally set up to probe the Whitewater real-estate scandal in which the president and his wife Hillary were implicated. Clinton ended his presidency by granting hundreds of pardons, including to his younger half-brother Roger for cocaine dealing and fraudster Marc Rich.
Memogate
George Bush junior is most notorious for ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq on the basis of flimsy intelligence claims that president Saddam Hussein was hoarding chemical and biological weapons. But the US Congress made itself part of the crime by backing the war.
More embarrassing was the claim that Bush was a 'chickenhawk' who avoided being drafted to fight in the Vietnam war by serving in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1974. Records show Bush took time out from the territorial air force in 1972 to work for the failed Senate election campaign of Winton M. Blount in Alabama after losing his flight authorisation for failing to attend a physical examination.
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