Lessons for the President

...Not only did the President override the repeatedly expressed vehement opposition of Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar W Weinberger to arms for Iran, but he allowed them to be kept in the dark about the fact that he had made a contrary decision...

...For example, on November 10,1986, faced with the unraveling of the Iranian arms deal, Reagan opened an Oval Office meeting by saying it was important to withhold many details from the public out of concern for the hostages and for long-range relations with Iran...

...Reagan showed signs of vagueness that occasionally left aides with contradictory impressions...

...Admiral Poindexter put it, less succinctly and more bureaucratically, as withholding information to guard against leaks, and he snapped that it was "a very unfair thing" when Republican Senator Paul S. Trible of Virginia quoted to him the canon on honesty of the Handbook for Midshipmen...

...Against whom...

...Supposedly grave decisions were made with disconcerting casualness...

...Not since the 1,200 pages of transcripts of Nixon Oval Office tapes in 1974 have the mechanics of governing been so exposed...

...The Senate and House special committees concluded, with some signs of relief, that there had been something wrong with the Presidency, but not with the President...

...The more things change...

...Nevertheless, Reagan apparently signed an arms-for-Iran "finding" on December 5, 1985 that he avowedly doesn't remember having signed...

...We appreciated that...

...But was it an attempt as well to wrest authority from the head of state, to flout his policies and frustrate his will...

...a revision a month later that was a draft, not intended for signature...

...Shultz was reported as saying that "it is ransom" and "we are paying a high price...

...The notes indicate that the President fell silent...

...Handwritten notes of participants in meetings with President Reagan reflected a man who would enunciate themes, sometimes expressed in slogans, and leave the details to be fleshed out into plans by White House associates...

...The often reiterated Reagan commitment to Cabinet government and delegation of authority was the myth that died the hardest death of all in the Iranian arms deal...

...Now, the NSC staff will also be put on a leash...

...A conspiracy in the White House...

...and 11 days later, a third version without reading the accompanying memorandum providing the justification for it...

...The consensus was that several things needed fixing: The President should write down his covert action decisions and share them with his principal advisers, who, in turn, should share their decisions with him...

...Or was it, as Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North suggested, a conspiracy to fulfill the President's wishes, as best they could be discerned...

...Ten days later, in an address to the nation, Ronald Reagan made his mea culpas without ever touching upon why so much "went astray...

...Officials at times found the President inattentive...

...Nothing was found to be amiss, except that a secretive, power-hungry misguided few among all of the President's men had formed themselves into a junta and taken control over some key elements of foreign policy for about two years...

...Next time it may be the Department of Agriculture...

...The American people, having entrusted their fate to the President, "don't want to know all the details," the Admiral said...

...I quote the concluding sentences: "You would never let subordinates doctor or shred your records without asking you...

...Reagan readily issued a directive closing the stable door his Administration had opened...

...None of President Reagan's former men showed any remorse for having lied to Congress, the nation and to each other...

...Falsehood has been enshrined by equating it with national interest...

...Weinberger managed to keep track through communications intercepts by his department's National Security Agency—in effect, through spying on his own government...

...Thus, National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane and White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, who met with the President in July 1985 for their first discussion of the Iranian "initiative," departed with opposite impressions of whether the President favored or opposed selling arms to Iran...

...The Ronald Reagan that emerged from this summer's testimony and a quarter-million pages of documents was markedly different, as might be expected, from the fierce and strident Richard M. Nixon— yet also different from the advertised Reagan, the decisive leader fashioning his grand design and delegating authority to trusted Cabinet officers...

...But there was no sign that he asked Admiral Poindexter, who was present, or anybody else to explain how this had happened...

...Remarkably, although few had gone back to research this, the recommendations were virtually the same as those made in 1976 by a special committee headed by Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho investigating the misdeeds of the Central Intelligence Agency...

...The Congressional committees that have just completed their televised interrogations comfort themselves with the thought that the Iranian and contra ventures, and the flow of money from the first to the second, represented an aberration...

...McFarlane, who testified that he briefed the President on every arms deal, said he was not sure how much was absorbed since the President had few, if any, comments or questions...

...Colonel North put it as "lies to save lives...

...Against Congress and the public, we know...

...He then turned the platform over to Admiral Poindexter, who gave an extensive briefing that revealed the existence of a 10month-old Presidential "finding" to Cabinet officers for the first time, and debated the issues with the officials present...

...The Reagan days make us yearn for the Nixon days, when things were 'perfectly clear.'" In wartime, it has been said, truth is the first casualty...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Lessons for the President The Congressional inquiry into the Iran-contra affair came to the end of its road (as far as public hearings were concerned) on August 2—unlike the Watergate investigation of 1973 that turned out to be only a way station to an impeachment proceeding...

...Daniel Schorr is currently the senior news analyst for National Public Radio...

...He had made it clear that he wanted to trade arms for a better Iranian attitude and release of hostages in Lebanon, and had left it to others to figure out how...

...There was much praise for a system that works when not derailed...

...Aberration, maybe, but in an Administration where it was easy for such an aberration to happen...

...I have noapologytomakeforwhatldid," declared Poindexter...

...it was only their "neat idea" of how to pursue his purposes...

...At the meeting on November 24 where Attorney General Edwin Meese told of discovering the diversion of funds, the President was described by various participants as "surprised," "shocked" and " angry...

...Lessons of a Presidency One consequence of the hearings was an unusual look inside the workings of the Presidency...

...Covert activity should not be conducted unless consistent with overt national policy...

...Congress should be informed in a fashion that is really timely...

...A take-charge President sometimes has to take charges...

...Apparently according to the Reagan Doctrine, crusades for democracy abroad cannot work unless they are kept secret from the democracy at home...

...In fact, that is why your tapes survived—give or take 18 minutes or so...

...In fact, it was because Congress put constraints on the CIA that the late Director William J. Casey devised an alternative mechanism in the staff of the National Security Council (NSC), believed to be safe behind its barrier of Executive privilege...

...Lessons for Democracy I was moved by all this to write an open letter to Richard Nixon—broadcast on National Public Radio and published in the New York Times—saying that he was much missed in Washington...

...If military men aided by arms merchant friends, who know checks and balances only as banking terms, decided to divert funds from one branch of the "enterprise" to the other, that was not meant to sabotage the President...

...It is now evident that truthcanalsobea casualty in peacetime —in the twilight-zone conflict of ideologies which, in the eyes of the Reaganites, has passed for peace...

...At the November 10 meeting, for instance, it appears from Regan's notes that the President did not react when Shultz directly challenged his claim that "terrorists have not profited" from the arms sales...

...The world of Poindexter is a dangerous, complex place where "disinformation" is a prime weapon and knowledge means vulnerability...

...No decision is more serious than an intelligence "finding," in which the President, in the national interest, authorizes a secret action that might otherwise be illegal...

...There was evidence, too, of surprising passivity that belied the Shultz-Weinberger testimony about a strong, vigorous leader...

...The President, after all, had made it clear that (the Boland Amendment to the contrary notwithstanding) he wanted the contras kept alive, "body and soul," and had left it to others to figure out how...