On this 21st day of November in 1986, National Security Council staff member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, begin shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to a rebel Nicaraguan group.

On November 25, North was fired but Hall continued to sneak documents to him by stuffing them in her skirt and boots.

The Iran-Contra scandal, as it came to be known, became an embarrassment and a sticky legal problem for the Reagan administration.

Only six years earlier, Iran had become an enemy of the United States after taking hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

At the time, Ronald Reagan had repeatedly insisted…