Reagan's De Facto D?©tente

...It is generally believed that Poindexter and North will be pardoned by Reagan if indicted...

...The operative part of the speech, though, seemed to be the President's expectation of a summit before the end of the year to sign an agreement banning medium-range missiles...

...At an Oval Office meeting last December 16, the President, according to former Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, said he would not issue a pardon before an indictment (as President Gerald R. Ford had done in 1974 for ex-President Richard M. Nixon...

...Back at the CIA Maybe there will also be a pardon for nine employees of the Central Intelligence Agency who, in a perfect metaphor for the Iran-contra diversion, sold for their own profit some misprinted postage stamps...

...I write this in anticipation of the outcome of the meetings between Secretary of State George ? Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze that are just getting under way here (ah, the perils of a magazine's lead time...

...It was not easy, in the same speech, to strum the violins for a "cooperative approach" in world affairs and sound the trumpet anew for a crusade against Soviet totalitarianism...

...It now appears that if Reagan really did not know about the "neat idea" of using arms sale profits to fund the contras, he must have been pretty isolated...

...President Reagan gave a mixed signal in his August 26 speech in Los Angeles, blowing hot (arms control) and cold (totalitarianism) on the Soviet Union...

...The Soviets, stung by Stinger missiles fired at their aircraft from the shoulders of insurgents, seem increasingly anxious to negotiate their way out of their mess...

...There was one difference...

...Not only is it premature, but I'll be darned if I'm going to accuse them of a crime in advance," was the way Reagan was quoted in Regan's Congressional testimony...

...Reagan's August 12 address, billed in advance as his definitive response to the Iran-contra hearings, contained some curious gaps...

...To that end West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl gave up on retaining his aging 72 Pershing 1A missiles, as he long knew he would have to, but timed the announcement nicely to improve the climate for his own unprecedented welcome to Erich Honecker, the East German Communist Party chief, in Bonn—a bit of summitry in the center of Europe as a sort of counterpoint to the real thing...

...Filling in the Iran-Contra Holes On the schedule of Washington live media events, the Iran-contra hearings, which dominated the summer season, have been replaced by the fall's confirmation hearings for Judge Robert H. Bork, President Reagan's third and most controversial nomination to the Supreme Court...

...In Los Angeles, Reagan looked beyond arms control to working with the Soviet regime on bringing the Iran-Iraq war to an end, and to the dawn of "a truly new phase in East-West relations...

...The bridging of differences in the Persian Gulf offered a prime example of bridging the East-West gulf...

...In a notably tortured passage Reagan only said he had "at times" been "mad as a hornet," avoiding the suggestion that he had been mad at any particular person or over any particular event...

...It's a small world...

...The Pentagon, incidentally, but not the State Department, now speaks of the "Arabian Gulf...

...The President had said he would take up the question of a pardon in his August 12 speech, but he didn't...

...But, as if fearful of rocking some perilously-poised boat, he did not directly criticize Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter, who had publicly assumed responsibility for the transfer, nor did he say what his own decision would have been...

...power there was to check Soviet influence in the area...

...North was quoted, in testimony by his assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Earl, as having said at a meeting with officials from several government agencies, "Wait until it's learned that the Ayatollah is funding the contras...

...True believers could take whatever solace they might find in the reassertion of the Reagan Doctrine—support for antiCommunist insurgencies, as well as demands that the Communists ease up on Eastern Europe, dismantle the Berlin Wall, and get out of Afghanistan and Nicaragua...

...This announcement exerted pressure on the Sandinistas to pursue peace in Central America...

...The cold seemed to be directed at the conservatives in the grandstand at home...

...It may be only a coincidence that, almost simultaneously, the Soviets let it be known that they would cut back on oil shipments to the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua...

...Before proceeding with expected indictments of former White House aides, Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh is planning to interview the President...

...The fog of uncertainty surrounding that issue, far from having been dispelled, has continued to thicken...

...He put in capital letters, "I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE DIVERSION OF FUNDS...

...Unless Poindexter knows some reason unknown to the public why the President should be grateful to him, this is sheer chutzpah...

...Earl further said that North's testimony concerning his telephone conversation with President Reagan on November 25, when he was dismissed, differed significantly from what North told him...

...Having stated that the buck stopped with him, Poindexter cannot claim, as Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North does, the mitigation of having "assumed" Presidential authority for the diversion...

...He has applied for retirement from the Navy in the rank of vice admiral instead of rear admiral—thus, in effect, asking the President to promote him...

...Once they have been accused, the situation would of course be changed...

...Yet the Iran-contra affair, President Reagan's wishes to the contrary notwithstanding, remains with us...

...In their case they had bought the valuable stamps with the inverted candlestick from the local post office in the first place—but with money from the CIA's petty cash account...

...Instead, as a temporizing move, it was decided to send Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuéllar to the warring capitals of Teheran and Baghdad while a State Department official, Deputy Assistant Secretary Edward Djeredjian, was sent to Geneva to consult his Soviet opposite number on the next phase of concerted action...

...Appearing before the Senate and House special committees, North quoted the President as having said, "I just didn't know," presumably about the diversion...

...Nevertheless, it seemed Reagan's way of responding to his weakened domestic position and the current imperative in world affairs: that the superpowers have more serious problems outside the East-West orbit than they have with each other...

...Be that as it may, ideological anchors appear to be coming unstuck...

...Poindexter has been told that he is a prime target in the Independent Counsel's investigation...

...But both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev have been acting as though driven by expediency to rise above ideology as they ascend toward the summit...

...There is a scent in the early autumn air of a grand geopolitical deal—safety for each superpower in its own backyard...

...There will be a lot more than arms control to talk about when Reagan and Gorbachev meet to explore that "truly new phase in EastWest relations...

...On the agenda in Geneva this month—both between the United States and Soviet Union and, under UN auspices, between the Afghan and Pakistani governments —was the war in Afghanistan...

...They formed their own off-the-shelf, selfstanding enterprise to pursue their "neat idea," and got into trouble when the FBI traced the sale of the stamps back to the agency...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Reagans De Facto Détente Of the many surprises in the autumn of this Presidency, one of the greatest has been the emergence of a de facto Reagan detente policy...

...When it came time to drop the other shoe—sanctions against Iran—the Reagan Administration rescinded its September 4 deadline, mainly because the Soviet Union was not yet ready to act...

...One of the questions reportedly on his mind is, who was ultimately responsible for the diversion of money from the Iranian arms sale to the contras...

...It did not seem to matter that Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger continued to lead a dissonant Greek chorus trying to remind the President that the Soviets were the adversary, not the friend in the Gulf, and that the ostensible reason for the great display of U.S...

...One possible charge is fraudulent conversion of profit from the sale of government property—namely, Hawk antiaircraft missiles...

...As Earl recalls it, North told him the President said, "It was important that I not know...

...Unprecedented Soviet-American cooperation in the United Nations Security Council had produced the unanimous July 20 resolution calling for an Iran-Iraq ceasefire...

...It is curious, too, that Poindexter, far from acting contrite at having damaged the President, is seeking a reward...

...They had replaced the stamps with regular stamps, just as the CIA had paid the Pentagon the catalogue price for Hawk missiles...

...The President did not even go to the extent of an earlier White House statement that Poindexter had done him a "disservice...

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