Men of Zeal

...The "disclosure" provoked anti-American headlines in Managua's pro-Sandinista newspapers and (to his credit) a sharp rebuke from Senator Cohen...

...In 1803, President Jefferson doubled the size of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase and spent $15 million when only $2 million had been appropriated by Congress...

...Why, during the initiative itself, did we have to rely excessively on Israeli intelligence...

...Bear in mindthat both men would have been briefed on the Iran initiative if the President had chosen to inform Congress in advance...

...From the outset the investigation was awash in leaks...

...N of that they lack authorial ambition...

...The Henry Hyde represents Illinois's Sixth District in Congress and was a member of the House Iran-contra committee...

...And, yes, what about the hostages...

...It was expected to enjoy equally smooth sailing when it reached the House, but something happened on the way to the Forum...

...Nor do the Senator-authors show any inclination to explore how men like Oliver North, John Poindexter, Robert McFarlane, and even the alleged profiteer General Richard Secord might feel about the bloody war, in which they served, that was lost by politicians in Washington...

...In late September, Speaker of the House Jim Wright denounced with great fervor an alleged CIA covert activity in Nicaragua...

...Again, the Senator fails to offer any perspective...

...Mitchell's co-author, Senator William Cohen, also of Maine, had the good taste, being a Republican, not to appear at these press conferences, for which the rest of us Republicans are appropriately grateful...

...it's the sort of material that might have lifted the Senators' labors above the pedestrian...

...The Senators might have also contributed to a deeper understanding of Iran-contra had they examined North and Poindexter's sense of betrayal as Congress temporized and appeased its way through the five versions of the Boland Amendment, drafted to hamstring the Nicaraguan freedom fighters in their struggle to prevent their homeland from becoming a second Soviet beachhead in our hemisphere...

...Can anyone argue that the greater good was not served...

...According to the Senator, the "clear implication" of the Speaker's remarks was that Wright learned whatever he thinks he knows from someone on the House intelligence committee...

...What the authors fail to do is provide North's answer: "I will tell you honestly, counsel, that I have had many worse days than that...

...T here is yet another failure of con- 1 text in Men of Zeal...

...Does Senator Mitchell think Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt and Truman were wrong in pursuing these actions...

...Needless to say, these disclosures, and others, are causing these and other countries to have serious reservations about future cooperation with the United States...

...And more: they deserve our gratitude...

...However important and noble an objective . . . it cannot be achieved at the expense of the rule of law in our country...

...The book might usefully have contained an appendix cataloguing the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1989 41 cruel charges, hurled by the media and others throughout 1985 and 1986, accusing President Reagan of neglecting the hostages...

...Too bad that nothing like this is even attempted in Men of Zeal...

...We must never allow the end to justify the means where the law is concerned...

...to the Democrats this fall that even the diminutive Duke of Massachusetts took to brandishing the book at press conferences with at least one of its authors, Senator George Mitchell of Maine, standing at his side...

...That Men of Zeal was greeted so warmly by the Duke and his fellow Democrats comes as no surprise, since it is essentially a rehash of the majority report that followed the Iran-contra hearings in 1987 (in which Cohen and Mitchell were both major players...

...Indeed, the Senate and House Iran-contra committees both provided numerous examples of congressional loose lips...

...And there have been days since then that are worse in some respects...

...The Senators do try a little psychoanalysis on North, with just the right tone of detached patronization: "Oliver North," they find, "is a man of commitment, willing to act on his strong convictions...

...None of this excuses breaking the law...

...We on the minority side kept track of these, and in our minority report pointed out that they "included misleading the media on the nature of a witness's secret testimony several days before he appeared as a public witness, as well as revealing intelligence collection methods, the identities of undercover personnel, and the names of a number of countries which, in one way or another, were trying circumspectly to be helpful to the United States in a variety of foreign policy undertakings...

...Wright seemed to be publicly confirming information given to Congress on a confidential basis...

...Let them fail, and Congress will shout the loudest about the rule of law and the ends that never justify the means...

...but it provides an essential background for reaching understanding, if indeed understanding is what we seek...

...None of this gives the authors pause...

...The failure of Men of Zeal to take off, to soar, is above all caused by the authors' unwillingness to tackle any of the larger questions raised by Irancontra—for instance: What circumstances impelled the administration to seek an opening to Iran...

...They ridicule, for example, the minority's concerns about a report leaked to NBC by the former vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Pat Leahy of Vermont...

...or to explore for us the range and depth of the President's emotions as he learned of the torture and death of William Buckley, then the CIA station chief in Beirut, at the hands of the terrorists...

...book repeats all the approved establishmentarian pronouncements designed to gain favorable reviews from all the best people, concluding that the affair precipitated a grave constitutional crisis and predicting paralysis, national suicide, and so on and so forth should the misconduct of the Reagan Administration ever recur...

...Yet they overlook the fact that David Boren, chairman of the intelligence committee, and other committee members thought Leahy's leak serious enough to ask him to resign from the committee...

...If, on the other hand, Congress had been consulted and its authority sought, the legislative battles would have been endless...

...Nor do the authors mention that the previous chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, David Durenberger, was investigated and reprimanded by the Senate ethics committee for disclosure of classified information...

...Now there is much that is true in these sentences, but much of it requires qualification...

...The bill sailed through the Senate last spring, passing 71 to 19...

...Instead, they expend a full chapter plugging Senator Cohen's legislation (pending at the time of the book's publication) that would require the President to notify the two intelligence committees of any proposed covert activities within 48 hours...

...Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, increased the size of the Army and Navy, declared martial law, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and spent unappropriated funds, all without legal authority...

...We tend to judge all such presidential usurpations by whether they succeed...

...Yet the Senator's remarks contained nothing that we hadn't been hearing for days, and would continue to hear again and again: "The rule of law is critical in our society," Mitchell lectured...

...There are no gray areas in 011ie's mind . . . " Later they quote chief counsel Arthur Liman's famous question to North: "Colonel, is it fair to say that November 25, 1986, was one of the worst days in your life...

...Mitchell says he realized he needed to make a speech rather than ask a question, although House Republicans on the committee had noticed this tendency on Senator Mitchell's part for quite some time...

...The authors never mention one of the precipitating factors in this affair: the systematic leaking to news media of classified information...

...What would be the regional and global consequences of a Soviet-dominated Iran...

...Cohen and Mitchell argue that the information was unclassified and that, moreover, the White House had been "lobbying" the Senate intelligence committee to release the report...

...The Senators scorn the judgment of the committees' minority report, which said that Congress's inability to keep a secret contributed significantly to the President's decision to defer notice of the Iranian initiative...

...It would have been fascinating to read the Senators' analysis of North's mind-set as he tried to keep the contras a viable fighting force while waiting for a miracle: the return of lucid thinking in the United States Congress...

...This of course was the day Attorney General Edwin Meese publicly announced he had found evidence of a "diversion" of funds, beginning the inexorable exposure of all of North and Poindexter's efforts to keep supplies coming to the contras...

...For such men—men of zeal, if you wish—deserve our understanding...

...At one point we read of the innermost thoughts of Senator Mitchell, as he plans his tactics in questioning North, now that North, in Mitchell's words, "had become a national hero...

...or why they can't easily erase from their consciences the scene on the roof of our Saigon embassy fourteen years later when the final American helicopters lifted off, abandoning uncounted thousands of Vietnamese who had worked and fought beside us, so that our politicians could at last give peace a chance...

...or why such men can't forget what the politicians did to the Cuban freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961...

...For most of us, life is filled with gray areas and uncertainty, and we often suffer from self-doubt...

...Meanwhile, Leak City babbles on, and it would have been nice to have the Senators admit as much when they attempt to recount the stories of North and Poindexter and the other players of Iran-contra...

...And consider FDR's pre-Pearl Harbor arms deals with the British and Truman's Korean War initiative—these too were undertaken without legal authority...

...Most of those were days when young Marines died...

...Wright responded: "The fact that a matter is classifiedsecret—doesn't mean it is sacrosanct or immune from criticism...

...42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1989...

...As a published poet, perhaps Sentator Cohen could have had the sensitivity to describe the President's feelings during his soul-wrenching interviews with hostage families...

...The only good result of the Speaker's unfortunate and damaging allegations was that Senator Cohen's 48-hournotice bill was put in mothballs...

...Reported the New York Times: "What is unusual in today's developments is that Mr...

...Iran-contra was certainly not the first time presidential power had been exercised contrary to what some senators and congressmen thought the law to be...