Oliver Stone: ‘Reagan Played Footsie With Saddam Hussein’ (Video)

Editor’s note: The following video is a clip from a 19-part series filmed at a Truthdig and KPFK co-sponsored event in Los Angeles recently. The discussion features Oliver Stone, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director, and Robert Scheer, Truthdig’s editor in chief. The two talk about “The Putin Interviews,” a new Showtime series by Stone, as well as the published transcript, for which Scheer wrote the foreword. We are publishing one video per day. This is the sixth installment.

The film director discusses the Iran-Contra affair and how Ronald Reagan’s political maneuverings in the Middle East helped him beat the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, in the 1980 presidential election. [Editor’s note: Stone has a slip of the tongue in the video and intended to say that Reagan urged Iran not to release the American hostages until he, Reagan, came into office as president.]

Watch the next clip in the series, in which Stone talks about the failings of American education, on Monday.

— Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata