In a career spanning more than four decades, Mr. Chardy covered the Middle East as the Herald’s Jerusalem-based bureau chief from 1989 to 1990. and was part of three other Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at the paper, including coverage of a Cuban boy, Elián González, who was returned to the island in 2000 after a raid by immigration agents in Miami and a legal battle lasting several months which became a legal battle. test of US asylum rules.
Charged with monitoring Latin American affairs in Washington in 1982, Mr. Chardy built a reputation as a fierce chronicler of American politics in a region plagued by proxy battles during the Cold War. In Nicaragua, where left-wing Sandinista guerrillas seized power in 1979, money and support from Washington flowed to anti-Sandinista rebels known as the contras.
Congress subsequently limited countermilitary aid and then imposed a suspension in late 1984. Hints of possible covert solutions began to reach Mr. Chardy, whose last name was Chardi but who had was misspelled by an editor in his native Mexico and adopted as his signature. Mr. Chardy began tapping his sources in Washington and with the rebels.
In 1985, he reported that a then-little-known National Security Council adviser, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, had promised the contras that President Ronald Reagan would never abandon them. Around the same time, a Beirut newspaper, al-Shiraa, published stories about behind-the-scenes US arms sales to Iran – then engaged in a war with Iraq – for the release of hostages detained by Iranian-allied groups in Lebanon.
Mr. Chardy’s sources told him that North was involved in arms shipments arriving in Iran. “The moment I saw Oliver North’s name mentioned in connection with arms sales, I said to myself, ‘This is going to lead to the Contras,'” he wrote in a book essay from 1991, “Winning Pulitzers”, by Karen Rothmyer.
Mr. Chardy and the Herald team began hatching an audacious and illegal U.S. plan: to secretly sell missiles and other weapons to Iran through indirect sources, in violation of a trade embargo. weapons, and channel most of the revenue from these sales to contras.
On October 28, 1986, Mr. Chardy’s byline appeared in a front-page article in the Herald. “With President Reagan’s blessing,” Mr. Chardy wrote, “U.S. officials over the past three years have woven a global support network stretching from South Korea to Saudi Arabia that has maintained the Nicaraguan rebels alive after Congress curbed then banned aid to the Contras, administration says. and rebel leaders.
The article sparked a scramble among the Washington press for more details. Then a bombshell: Attorney General Edwin Meese III announced in November 1986 that $28 million from arms sales to Iran had ended up in the hands of the Contras. Soon, North was fired from the NSC.
A November 27, 1986, article by Mr. Chardy, citing sources in Congress and with the contras, claimed that Reagan had previously authorized North to “find other sources of financial aid for the Nicaraguan rebels after Congress decided to prohibit CIA aid to them. »
On December 11, 1986, an article by Mr. Chardy and his Herald colleague, Sam Dillon, described a Boeing 707 cargo plane carrying weapons to the Middle East bound for Iran and returning to Central America “laden with Soviet-made weapons for Nicaraguan rebels. .”
Mr. Chardy’s reporting revealed ties to other shadowy officials involved in aiding the contras, including Robert Owen, an NSC consultant who was North’s intermediary with the rebels.
A February 1987 report from the Tower Commission – an investigative committee created by Reagan and headed by a former Texas senator, John Tower (R) – accused Reagan of loose oversight that allowed the secret program to contra to operate under North and others, using middlemen for Iranian arms sales, such as Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
In a nationally televised speech on March 4, 1987, Reagan acknowledged knowledge of the arms-for-hostages deals, but denied knowledge of diversions of money to the contras before Meese’s revelations. . The following month, the Miami Herald received a Pulitzer for national reporting. (The New York Times also received a national Pulitzer for its coverage of the 1986 space shuttle Challenger explosion.)
The consequences of Iran-contra are still not over. Joint hearings of the House and Senate select committees opened in May 1987, yielding new revelations about Iran-contra during three months of live-streamed questioning.
In his testimony in early July 1987, North admitted to lying to Congress during an earlier interrogation about the Iran-contra network and said that he had diverted funds to the rebels with the knowledge of his superiors, including the adviser to the national security, Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter. Fawn Hall, North’s secretary, was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony about the document shredding and other acts.
“You also admitted to altering some of the documents in which you clearly described your role,” George Van Cleve, deputy counsel for the House Republicans, asked North.
“Can you assure this committee that you are not lying here to protect your commander in chief? » Van Cleve asked later in the testimony.
“I don’t lie to protect anyone, Master. I came here to tell the truth,” North replied. “I told you I was going to tell you: the good, the bad and the ugly. Some things have been ugly for me.
North was convicted in 1989 of obstructing an investigation and destroying evidence. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 1991. Poindexter was convicted of conspiracy, perjury and other charges, but he was also cleared on appeal. Dozens of other officials have been accused of opposing Iran, including Deputy Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, but almost all were pardoned in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush, who had served as Reagan’s vice president .
Alfonso Nieto Chardi was born on April 14, 1951 in Mexico City. His father was an accountant and his mother took care of the house.
He learned English by taking classes and listening to the radio. He served in the army for six months, then worked as a proofreader and translator at the English-language newspaper Mexico City News, where an editor once gave Chardy his name. He credited student protests in Mexico in 1968 and the Mexico City Olympics that year for sparking his interest in journalism as he watched foreign journalists flock to the Mexican capital.
He joined the Associated Press in Mexico City in 1974 and later served as AP correspondent in Buenos Aires and Bogotá. He later freelanced in Central America, including for United Press International, and traveled to Nicaragua amid celebrations following the overthrow of President Anastasio Somoza by Sandinista forces.
Mr. Chardy joined the Miami Herald in 1980, first covering the Mariel boat lift from Cuba, when more than 120,000 people fled by sea seeking to reach Florida. He was part of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for public service in covering Hurricane Andrew in 1992; in 1999 for investigative reporting on voter fraud that helped overturn a Miami mayoral election; and in 2001 for the latest news in the Elián González case.
He retired in 2017 after several years with the Herald’s Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald. He lived in Key Biscayne with his wife, a journalist whom he married in 1994. Other survivors include five nephews and two nieces.
In recounting the Contras’ reporting on Iran, Mr. Chardy said the Contras were essential to filling in the gaps.
“They denounced Oliver North. They denounced Rob Owen,” he wrote. “They denounced all the main characters.”
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