I’m sure someone’s mentioned this story, but here’s an anecdote from Ambassador Jack F. Matlock about Iran-Contra , SDI, and arms control.

And let me say frankly that if we had not had the problem of what they call the Iran-Contra controversy – just after the Reykjavík meeting we were on the verge of accepting Gorbachev’s proposal that he made at Reykjavík – and if we had not lost our senior officials who backed that in the Iran-Contra dispute we very likely would have accepted Gorbachev’s proposal to keep SDI in laboratories for ten years That was my recommendation when I got back to Washington It was accepted by the national security advisor but he got caught up in the IranContra got dismissed

The interview is part of this series.