Throughout a greater than four-decade profession, Mr. Chardy lined the Center East because the Herald’s Jerusalem-based bureau chief from 1989 to 1990 and was a part of three different Pulitzer-winning groups on the paper, together with protection of a Cuban boy, Elián González, who was returned to the island in 2000 after a raid by immigration brokers in Miami and a months-long courtroom battle that grew to become a take a look at of U.S. asylum guidelines.
Assigned to comply with Latin American affairs in Washington in 1982, Mr. Chardy constructed a popularity as a dogged chronicler of U.S. policymaking in a area locked in Chilly Struggle proxy battles. In Nicaragua, the place leftist Sandinista guerrillas seized energy in 1979, Washington’s cash and help had flowed to anti-Sandinista rebels generally known as contras.
Congress later restricted contra navy help after which imposed a maintain in late 1984. Hints of doable secret workarounds started to succeed in Mr. Chardy, whose final identify was Chardi however was as soon as misspelled by an editor in his native Mexico and adopted as his byline. Mr. Chardy started tapping his sources in Washington and with the rebels.
In 1985, he reported {that a} then little-known Nationwide Safety Council adviser, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, had promised the contras that President Ronald Reagan would by no means abandon them. About the identical time, a Beirut newspaper, al-Shiraa, broke tales about back-channel U.S. arms gross sales to Iran — then locked in a conflict with Iraq — for the discharge of hostages held by Iranian-allied teams in Lebanon.
Mr. Chardy’s sources advised him that North was concerned within the arms shipments that reached Iran. “The minute I noticed Oliver North’s identify raised in reference to the arms gross sales, I mentioned to myself, ‘That is going to result in the contras,’” he wrote in an essay in a 1991 guide, “Profitable Pulitzers,” by Karen Rothmyer.
Mr. Chardy and the Herald crew began to piece collectively an audacious U.S. scheme: secretly promoting missiles and different weapons to Iran by oblique sources, in violation of an arms embargo, and funneling many of the income from the gross sales to contras.
On Oct. 28, 1986, Mr. Chardy’s byline was on a Herald story that ran throughout the highest of the entrance web page. “With President Reagan’s blessing,” wrote Mr. Chardy, “U.S. officers knitted a worldwide help community stretching from South Korea to Saudi Arabia during the last three years that stored the Nicaraguan rebels alive after Congress curbed after which banned Contra help, in accordance with administration and insurgent officers.”
The piece opened a scramble among the many Washington press corps for extra particulars. Then a bombshell: Lawyer Common Edwin Meese III introduced in November 1986 that $28 million from the Iran arm gross sales ended up with the contras. Quickly, North was fired from the NSC.
A narrative by Mr. Chardy on Nov. 27, 1986, citing sources in Congress and with the contras, mentioned Reagan had beforehand licensed North “to search out different sources of monetary help for the Nicaraguan rebels after Congress moved to bar CIA help to them.”
On Dec. 11, 1986, a narrative by Mr. Chardy and Herald colleague Sam Dillon described a Boeing 707 cargo airplane that ferried weapons to the Center East sure for Iran and returned to Central America “laden with Soviet-made arms for the Nicaraguan rebels.”
Mr. Chardy’s reporting uncovered hyperlinks to different obscure officers concerned in aidingthe contras, together with Robert Owen, an NSC guide who was North’s go-between with the rebels.
A report in February 1987 by the Tower Fee — an investigative panel created by Reagan and led by a former senator from Texas, John Tower (R) — blamed Reagan for free oversight that allowed the key contra program to function underneath North and others, utilizing middlemen for the Iran weapons gross sales akin to Saudi arms seller Adnan Khashoggi.
In a nationally televised handle on March 4, 1987, Reagan acknowledged that he was conscious of the arms-for-hostages offers however denied understanding about cash diversions to the contras earlier than Meese’s disclosures. The following month, the Miami Herald was awarded a Pulitzer for nationwide reporting. (The New York Occasions additionally obtained a nationwide reporting Pulitzer for protection into the 1986 house shuttle Challenger explosion.)
The fallout from Iran-contra was nonetheless not over. Joint hearings by Home and Senate choose committees opened in Could 1987, bringing extra revelations about Iran-contra throughout three months of questioning that have been broadcast stay.
In testimony in early July 1987, North admitted he lied to Congress throughout earlier questioning concerning the Iran-contra community and mentioned he diverted funds to the rebels with the information of superiors together with the nationwide safety adviser, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter. Fawn Corridor, North’s secretary, was given immunity from prosecution in trade for her testimony about shredding paperwork and different acts.
“You’ve additionally admitted you altered a number of the paperwork wherein you clearly describe your function,” North was requested by George Van Cleve, the deputy counsel for Home Republicans.
“Are you able to guarantee this committee that you’re not right here now mendacity to guard your commander in chief?” Van Cleve requested later within the testimony.
“I’m not mendacity to guard anyone, Counsel. I got here right here to inform the reality,” North replied. “I advised you that I used to be going to inform it to you — the nice, the dangerous and the ugly. A few of it has been ugly for me.”
North was convicted in 1989 of obstructing an investigation and destroying proof. The conviction was overturned on attraction in 1991. Poindexter was convicted of conspiracy, perjury and different counts, however he was additionally cleared on attraction. Dozens of different officers confronted costs associated to Iran-contra, together with Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, however almost all have been pardoned in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, who had been Reagan’s vp.
Alfonso Nieto Chardi was born on April 14, 1951, in Mexico Metropolis. His father was an accountant, and his mom tended to the house.
He discovered English by programs and listening to the radio. He served within the military for six months after which labored as a proofreader and translator on the English-language Mexico Metropolis Information, the place an editor as soon as rendered his identify as Chardy. He credited the scholar protests in Mexico in 1968 and the Mexico Metropolis Olympics that yr for his curiosity in journalism as he watched international reporters pour into the Mexican capital.
He joined the Related Press in Mexico Metropolis in 1974 and later was an AP correspondent in Buenos Aires and Bogotá. He later freelanced in Central America, together with for United Press Worldwide, and was in Nicaragua amid celebrations after Sandinista forces overthrew the president, Anastasio Somoza.
Mr. Chardy joined the Miami Herald in 1980, first masking the Mariel boatlift from Cuba when greater than 120,0000 folks fled by sea looking for to succeed in Florida. He was a part of Pulitzer-winning groups in 1993 for public service within the protection of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew; in 1999 for investigative reporting into voter fraud that helped overturn a Miami mayoral election; and in 2001 for breaking information within the Elián González case.
He retired in 2017 after a number of years with the Herald’s Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald. He lived in Key Biscayne together with his spouse, a journalist whom he married in 1994. Different survivors embrace 5 nephews and two nieces.
In recounting the Iran-contra reporting, Mr. Chardy mentioned the contras have been indispensable in filling within the gaps.
“They uncovered Oliver North. They uncovered Rob Owen,” he wrote. “They uncovered all of the principal folks.”
