United States | News & Politics

Some background, as memes inevitably lack details:

During the Reagan administration an Islamist military group called Hezbollah took some Americans hostage in Lebanon. Oliver North was one of a group of Reagan staffers who came up with a plan to sell arms to Iran in exchange for help persuading Hezbollah to free these hostages. North's contribution to the scheme was to use money from the arms sale to fund the Contras - an unrelated US-backed group of rebels in Nicaragua (freedom-fighters or terrorists, depending on your POV). It was all negotiated in secret because the President didn't have the authority to conduct such deals.

When the plot leaked out there was a congressional investigation, in which many documents disappeared, and North was the fall guy. I remember him testifying at length on television, sitting stonefaced and ramrod straight in uniform, a caricature of the perfect soldier loyal to his chain of command. There were diagrams of the office showing the locations of desks, phones, the shredder, etc... An office underling named Fawn Hall was also interviewed extensively on TV because she had shredded/hidden documents and was also extremely hot.

North ended up doing prison time for his part in the whole thing. Hall pursued a brief modeling career, dated Rob Lowe, married the fomer manager of The Doors, and according to Wikipedia was last known to be working in a Hollywood bookstore.