THIS ISN'T WATERGATE-BUT THE MORAL IS THE SAME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403040005-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 1, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403040005-9
WASHINGTON POST
1 March 1987
This Isn't
Watergate-
But the Moral
Is the Same
T- By David Ignaa ius and Michael Getler
E KNOW THE SCENARIO by heart: The
president wins reelection in a landslide. As he
begins his second term, the president seems
invincible. Some overzealous aides, led by an autocratic
chief of staff, plot strategems to deal with the presi-
dent's perceived enemies at home and abroad. As the
plans become more elaborate and dubious, the White
House becomes obsessed with keeping them secret.
The secrets begin to leak out, as they inevitably do ii
a democracy, and the president's men try to cover then;'
up. But the truth emerges anyway, in bits and pieces, ins
a way that is disastrous to the president's credibility,.
He fires a few aides who were most closely involved in;
the scandal. Then he fires his chief of staff. The gossip''
in Washington shifts to whether the president himself
intends to resign.
The Iran affair isn't Watergate, of course. There
isn't the same kind of clear criminality, and Ronald Rea-
gan isn't Richard Nixon. But this past week, in the af-
termath of the Tower Commission report, the two.'
scandals seemed eerily alike. There was the same fas-
cination and dread, the same sense of tawdry spectacle,
the same sadness at watching a group of self-important
White House aides put the rest of the nation through
the wringer and turn a seemingly successful presidency
from triumph to tragedy with astonishing speed.
And it could; get worse. By the time the Iran affair
runs its course many months from now, it may prove to
be even more debilitating than Watergate. That's be-
cause there are so few people left in the administration
who aren't tarnished in some way.
Watergate had its villains, to be sure, but it also had
heroes, Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshauj-
chose to resign rather than fire Special Prosecutor Ar-
chibald Cox. Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger
shielded national security policy from the tempest. And
Gerald Ford was waiting in the wings to calm the natioq
u:? .
----
afte
re
r
istration? Unfortunately, there are none. The Towe4
report notes that even though Secretary of Stat4
George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberq
ger disagreed strongly with the Iran arms-for-hostage;
deal, "they simply distanced themselves from the pol.
icy," rather than resigning in protest.
Indeed, when an American cargo plane carrying Eu-
gene Hasenfus was shot down in Nicaragua last Octo-
ber-an event that began to lift the curtain on the ex-
tent of secret foreign policy-figures such as Shultz
and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams fairly
boasted that such private air forces were none of their
business and need not be looked into because there was,
nothing illegal about them. In other words, a private
foreign policy was fine.
Beyond Shultz and Weinberger, the administration is
largely in ruins. Donald Regan, the chief of staff, is out.
Michael Deaver, one of the president's closest advisers
during the first term, is on the verge of in-
dictment. William Casey, the CIA director,
has resigned because of a brain tumor. Rob-
ertlGicFarlane, the former national security
adviser, has tried to commit suicide. Edwin
Meese, the attorney general, faces questions
about whether he conducted a prompt and
thorough investigation of the Iran affair. Of
the president's senior advisers, only the
Treasury Secretary, James Baker, seems un-
touched by the fallout. The arrival of former
senator Howard Baker as the new chief of
staff will help, but probably less than the
White House hopes.
The tragedy for the Reagan administra-
tion is that no one remembered the
lessons of Watergate that had been so
painfully learned by the nation and another
administration less than 15 years ago.
Watergate demonstrated that there are
clear limits to executive authority, and in par-
ticular to the ability of a president to conduct
covert operations on questionable national-
security grounds. You can't act secretly for
very long in a democracy, even if you're as
energetic as Oliver North. You can't put tape
over a door at the Watergate apartment com-
plex in 1972 and expect that it won't be dis-
covered.
Similarly, you can't create a private air
force-with six planes, dozens of support
people and a private air strip in Costa Rica-
to drop weapons into a country that we are
not at war with and expect that nobody will
find out about it. And you can't sell millions of
dollars of weapons in secret to an avowed en-
emy of the United States and expect to get
away with it. Reversing the political laws of
gravity in that way was beyond the powers
even of Ronald Reagan.
The Tower Commission report opened a
curtain on what can only be described as the
fantasy world inhabited by some of the mil-
itary men who served the president on the
National Security Council staff: Marine Lt.
Col. North, Vice Adm. John Poindexter, and
McFarlane, a former Marine lieutenant col-
onel. It offered the nation a disturbing por-
trait of these men, plotting together in se-
cret, seemingly oblivious to the values their
own president had espoused, and to the laws
and traditions of the nation they had pledged
to serve.
A
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403040005-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403040005-9
Thanks to the Tower report, we can all ut the most significant truth embedded
look over Oliver North's shoulder and read in the Tower report ma be that the ' ing the ongoing discussions ... could lead to
his self-dramatizing message traffic in the may eaTction a ainst the ho
Iran affair was Ronald Reagan's policy, ea ans timism-seems t have carried
NSC computer system. We learn-that North The Reagan administration decided to trade the day. He was "disappointed" extraordinary tales to the Iranians about arms for hostages, despite strong opposition hostages at that De-
arms cember meeting that all the hostages weren't
how Reagan went off for a whole 'weekend from the secretaries of state and defense, be- yet free, "but always looking for the bright
and prayed in deciding whether to authorize cause the president wanted it that way. Each side or the possibility that it could be sal-
North to say to Tehran: "We accept the Is- time his senior advisers thought they had vaged," according to McFarlane. Regan re-
lamic Revolution of Iran as a fact." Another squelched the policy, the president revived it., called the president's concern that "we were
North story had Reagan saying he wanted an Indeed, the Tower report suggests that for going to spend another Christmas with hos-
end to the Iran-Iraq war on terms acceptable Ronald Reagan, freeing the hostages became tages there, and he is looking powerless and
to Iran and that it was the Iraqi president a personal goal-something that he favored inept as President because he's unable to do
who was causing the problem. Reagan later so deeply and passionately that the views of anything to get the hostages out."
told the Tower Commission such descrip- his advisers became irrelevant. The same Micawberesque spirit-a con-
tions were "absolute fiction." The discussion of the president's role has viction that "something will turn up"-pre-
North emerges in these computer mes- focused almost entirely on whether he did or vailed in January 1986 when Reagan decided,
sages as both vain and a workaholic, a man so didn't orally approve the first delivery of U.S. over protests from Shultz, to ship arms di-
exhausted by his dedication to causes that he weapons to Iran by Israel. "I don't remem- rectly to Iran. Shultz told the Tower Com-
seemed to have no time left for thinking. He ber-period; the president told the Tower mission: "I recall no specific decision being
talks about his fatigue in so many of these Commission. Fair enough. But there is con- made in my presence, though I was well
messages that, when read together, they' siderable evidence that Reagan approved- aware of the President's preferred course,
sound almost like a cry for help. indeed, urged-subsequent shipments of and his strong desire to establish better re-
"Warm, but fatigued regards," is the way arms to Iran because of his commitment to lations with Iran and to save the hostages'
North signs off a Feb. 27, 1986 note to freeing the hostages. Because of growing doubts about Ghor-
McFarlane. "Am going home-if I remember The hostages were the sort of foreign-pol- banifar, there was a new effort to kill the pro-
the way," writes North_.taMCFarIane_on An-_ icy problem, involving individual Americans gram in March 1986. But accordingtoa
ril 7, 1986. "I am not complaining, and you in danger abroad, that directly engaged Rea- statement by the CIA's chief of operations 11 know that I love the work but we have to lift gan. The Tower report, citing McFarlane, for the Near East. North kept _it alive be_
some of this onto theZ`~l~ so that T can get- says "the President inquired almost daily cause of the President's personal and emo-
more than 2-3 hours of seep at rught," North about the welfare of the hostages." And the tional interest in getting the hostages
writes to Poindexter on May 16, 1986. president is said to have asked Poindexter at out.... - -
"What we most need is to get the CIA re-en- each morning's intelligence briefing: "John, As in Watergate, the president seemed
gaged in this effort so that it can be better anything new on the hostages?" driven by political anxieties which, in retro-
managed than it now is by one slightly con- As with Watergate, the nightmare of the spect, make little sense. The CIA's Near
fused Marine LtCol .... At this point, I'm Iran affair was that once the arms dealing Fast dite~tor described the mood__.to _thg
not sure who on our side knows what. Help," started in August 1985, it developed its own Tower Commission: "... the real thing-that
wrote North to Poindexter on une1' T9SS. momentum. As early as December 1985, was riving this was -tliat there was in early
The cable traffic would be funny, if it North wrote to Poindexter: "We are .. , too 86, late '85, a lot of pressure from th-gltos-
weren't so sad. What it reveals most clearly far along with the Iranians to risk turning tage families . . . and there were a lot of
is that North-who ironically used the name back now." Shultz and Weinberger strongly things being said about the US. Government
"Project Democracy" to describe his private disagreed, but their arguments didn't seem fear doing anything .... And there is a lot of
(and perhaps illegal) network of airplanes, to influence Reagan. Instead, North and fear about aren't t any "smoking g~tg~~pe
ships, money, cars, warehouses, communi- Poindexter continued to push ahead on the There port any agaand the ver
cations equipment and a 6,500 foot run- advice of a cluster of Iranian, Israeli and Sau- Tower report about Reagan and the dies
way-didn't
way-didn't really seem to have a good un- lion of funds to the contras. But there is
about how democracy run- di Arabian intermediaries and arms mer- some evidence that he knew, at least in gen-
derstanding More democracy is ac chants who seem more suitable as characters eral, about North's private fund-raising ef-
tieed in in the above UnitNoted ed Sdn lesseem More i upostartantand in a class-B movie. forts for the Nicaraguan counter-'t to it, either. Each time the Iran program seemed about revolutionaries. In a May 16, 1986 memo to
Oliver North is undoubtedly a smart and to collapse of its own weight, the president Poindexter, North said: "I have no idea what
tireless Oliver is kid led wanton yand helped rescue it. For example, a consensus Don Regan does or does not know re my pri-
side in a fight. What the Tower Commission seemed to have emerged among the presi- vale U.S. operation but the President obvi-
shows is what can happen when such persons dent's top advisers at a meeting on Dec. 7, rusty knows why he has been meeting with
are without supervision by officials with a 1985 that the arms-for-hostages dealing several select people to thank them for their
firm understanding of how this country must should be stopped. When McFarlane deliv- 'support for Democracy' in CentAM."
work. What both Watergate and the Iran- ered this message the next day in London to The most refreshing comment in the Tow-
contra affair also demonstrated in the end, Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian interme- er report may he a remark from Assistant
fortunately, is that questionable behavior that diary warned that if . the weapons trading Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, who
seeks to circumvent established American in- stopped, "one or more of the hostages would said he told North in November 1985, as the
stitutions is likely to get uncovered before be executed." Iran fiasco was beginning: "I don't think my
even worse damage is done. President Reagan, egged on by North, ap- boss knows anything about this. I doubt that
As with Watergate, the riddle at the cen- parently was moved by this threat. At a _ Secretary of State Shultz knows anything
ter of the Iran scandal is what the president meeting-on Dec. 10, according to a memo about [this]. I think your ass is way out on a
knew about the misdeeds of his subordinates. written by CIA Director Casey, "The_.Pres- limb and you best get all the elephants to-
Most of the initial accounts of the Tower re- ident argued mildly for letting theperation gether to discuss the issue."
port portrayed President Reagan as an al- go ahead .... He was. afraid thaLterminat.
most pathetic figure-aloof, inattentive, un-
able to remember dates and details, manip- David Ignatius is an associate editor of The
ulated by his subordinates, a "remote and Washington Put. Michael Getter is assistant managing
confused man," as one newspaper put it. editor for foreign news
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403040005-9