Washington Notebook

...What this case is about, too, according to the Grand Jury, is abuse of public trust by North and Admiral John Poindexter in destroying records to cover their tracks...

...That may make a pardon smack more of blackmail than mercy...

...As Walsh reads the law, if you sell government property for a profit, that profit belongs to the U.S...

...The President gave signs of being unable to grasp what had happened...

...What the case is about, as the Grand Jury sees it, is, in the first place, larceny -theft of government property...

...It appeared, at this writing, that Meese would not quickly resign or be forced out by Reagan...

...What does one make of it when Notre Dame, in the fourth quarter, stymied at the 50-yard line, suddenly goes into a huddle with the opposing team and the two sides then march together off the field...

...That Nixon, under impeachment pressure, subsequently did resign apparently did not bring Bush forgiveness for what was perceived as disloyalty...

...By contrast, those with strong ideological convictions prefer to see themselves as targets of conspiracies against their causes and their leaders...

...not] gut fighter...

...In a telegram to Senator Robert Dole after his Illinois defeat, Nixon urged him to " hang in there...

...The Administration was left gasping at the way the contras, the clients if not the creation of the United States, had bolted off the reservation and opted for peace...

...Rather, they considered that their positions had become untenable and that they therefore were a burden to the functioning of government...

...The Reagan Doctrine The Meese crisis came on top of the March 23 Nicaraguan cease-fire agreement, which appeared to be a real shock to the President...

...This is not, of course, to equate the accusations against them...

...Now the Christian Democratic Party of Reagan's protégé, President José Napoleon Duarte, whose own campaign was supported with CIA funds, has suffered a stunning reversal at the hands of the Right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance founded by Major Roberto d'Aubisson, who had been linked in Congressional testimony with the death squad activity...

...It is not, as the Administration suggested, about accounting errors made in using profits from Iran arms sales to support another worthy cause, arming the contras...

...In a London newspaper column, Nixon wrote that Dole could still make it "a race to the post" by winning in California on June 6. In a 1983 television interview, Nixon came close to suggesting that President Reagan dump Bush from his re-election ticket in 1984 on the grounds that the Vice President was "not good on the attack...

...Was it for this that Reagan had so long battled with Congress for aid to the freedom fighters...

...But one remembers something called voluntary resignation with honor-the path taken by Attorney General Elliott Richardson (after the "Saturday night massacre" of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in October, 1973), Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance (after the abortive attempt to rescue the hostages in Teheran in 1980) and, in an earlier time, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden (after the aborted invasion of Suez in 1956...

...These men did not resign because they thought they had done wrong...

...In Honduras, the government seemed more embarrassed than relieved by the dispatch of some 3,000 troops of the 82nd Airborne Division to help resist a Nicaraguan "incursion" that everybody knew to be directed not against acquiring Honduran jungle but at striking the contras' "privileged sanctuary...

...government...

...The step has been made harder, however, by North's threat to seek subpoenas for the President and Vice President Bush...

...Answer: They have clung to office long after it has become clear that their resignations would remove a source of acute friction and make things easier for those around them...

...Death squads are reported on the rise in Guatemala, where the regime is a good friend of the Reagan Doctrine...

...If history is any guide, though, the decision will not be made on the merits of Meese's conduct, or because of the disruption in the Justice Department, but because, as seen by Reagan intimates, the President's friend has become too heavy a burden for the President to continue bearing...

...Perhaps when a nomination is about to be considered to fill one of the vacancies in the Justice Department, since that would threaten to explode the Meese controversy before a Senate confirmation hearing...

...For Ronald Reagan, loyalty to persons has always seemed more important than loyalty to government...

...It may also be that Soviet reluctance to increase aid pushed the Sandinistas toward accommodation...

...But on both sides there seemed to be a palpable weariness with a civil war that has taken 25,000 lives in six years and a recoiling at serving further as proxies in a superpower rivalry...

...For this that they had marked up prices on arms for Iran, lied to Congress and blundered into the Iran-contra affair...

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

...Or perhaps when Bush succeeds in getting his plea heard not to provide the Democrats with such lethal campaign ammunition against him...

...The Iran-Contra Case As for the Iran-contra affair, it takes some time to read the 101-page indictment Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh's Grand Jury handed up on March 16...

...For this that his people had scrounged from rich Americans and panhandled from Countries One to Five...

...The Nixon friend said the ex-President has reservations about whether Bush is strong enough to deal with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev...

...The Grand Jury rejects the premise that people dealing with security secrets must shred them, or tamper with them, in order to safeguard the national interest...

...With Meese himself too much in the toils of the law to toil much at the law, his No...

...It is not, as President Reagan would have you believe, about getting into trouble for not telling an untrustworthy Congress everything it would like to know...

...When might Meese, despite deep ties of friendship and ideology, get the word to go...

...It may be that Congress' denial of new military aid pushed the contras toward accommodation...

...The case is also about petty personal greed and attempted bribery-a security fence, an educational endowment, a fistful of travelers checks allegedly offered, allegedly taken because it's easy come, easy go when it's all done in secret...

...In Central America, showcase of the Reagan Doctrine, nothing seemed to be working...

...Consequently, resignation has usually come only when orchestrated by trusted White House aides and/or the First Lady with the primary aim of limiting perceived damage to the President himself...

...Treasury...

...where the White House wanted the Sandinistas to "say uncle," they instead said "Brother Nicaraguan...

...The Grand Jury believes that information was suppressed and manipulated with the primary aim of obstructing justice and other official inquiry...

...That is certainly not the way you win one for the Gipper...

...The prosecutor rejects the defense's premise that if you can arrange to buy TOW and Hawk missiles from the Pentagon, through the CIA, and sell them to Iran for a profit, the profit rightfully belongs to the "enterprise" which consummated the deal...

...So it was with Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, Secretary of Labor Raymond J. Donovan, Secretary of Interior James G. Watt, EPA Administrator Anne McGill Burford, and National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen...

...And, in Nicaragua-ah, Nicaragua, the President's magnificent obsession...

...If you put it elsewhere-be it in a contra bank account or your own pocket-you are, so the accusation reads, defrauding the U.S...

...In El Salvador the Administration had pressed in the early '80s for free elections, and Vice President Bush had traveled with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North to San Salvador to demand an end to death squads...

...It is not, as Colonel North would have you believe, about separation of powers and ho w worthy civil servants can go astray in the twilight zone between Executive policies and Congressional restraints...

...Whether we are dealing with error or corruption is a matter of importance to a jury...

...A friend of Richard M. Nixon recently explained to me why the ex-President seems so cool to Vice President George Bush...

...2, Deputy Attorney General Arnold I. Burns, and the head of the Criminal Division, Assistant Attorney General William F. Weld (whom Meese had overruled in November 1986, on launching a criminal investigation of the Iran-contra scandal) resigned in unconcealed frustration...

...In a "confidential" memorandum assessing candidates of both parties last December, Nixon said Bush "comes through as a weak individual on television...

...Thus they justify their obstinacy as a defense of principle...

...But finally you get to the core of what this case is about...

...But, more important, in the summer of 1974 Bush, then chairman of the Republican National Committee and unhappy at having to deal politically with Watergate, was the first intimate to suggest, during an Oval Office meeting, that President Nixon should consider resigning for the sake of the country...

...But it is important to President Reagan as well, for in saying he knows of no crimes that have been committed he is leaving the door open for a pardon, perhaps between the November election and his January departure from office...