REAGAN TO MAKE SECOND 'DAMAGE-CONTROL' TV APPEARANCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504860010-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 7, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: November 17, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504860010-1
WASHINGTON TIMES
Reagan to second
`damage-control' TV appearance
By Jeremiah O'Leary
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
President Reagan, his Teflon
shield nicked by revelations of se-
cret U.S. arms shipments to Iran,
will face a national television audi-
ence again this week in an effort to
bolster his credibility and that of his
senior advisers.
The Iran affair, which Mr. Reagan
first addressed publicly in a tele-
vised speech last Thursday, has pre-
NEWS
ANALYSIS
occupied the ad-
ministration for
weeks.
Administra-
tion officials say
it is too early to tell whether the
president's Iran strategy will pay off
or prove to be an embarrassing blun-.
der.
But there is certainty that Mr.
Reagan and his senior advisers will
be put under intense scrutiny, begin-
ning in a Wednesday evening press
conference. over the decision to sell
arms to Iran - a nation the United
States still accuses of fostering ter-
rorism.
The solidly Democratic Congress
is unlikely to lend a sympathetic ear
when the White House sends a re-
presentative to the House and Sen-
ate intelligence committees to de-
fend the Iranian venture.
Mr. Reagan is expected to claim
executive privilege and protect Na-
tional Security Adviser John Poin-
dexter and other National Security
Council aides from testifying under
oath.
CIA Direc1pj Wj, jam Casey. who
must answer to Congress, is likely to
fa -Ft t e greatest heat.
Looking further down the road
there is speculation that the Iranian
negotiations could result in
the res-
ignation of some Reagan adminis-.
tration officials who o sseedthe
president's .polio-- decision and
played no Part in carrying out what
became an NSC-CIA operation.
On the political front, the Iranian
affair has done damage to the pres-
idential aspirations of Vice Pres-
ident George Bush and other Repub-
lican candidates in the 1988 election.
Mr. Bush in particular has the choice
of disassociating himself from Mr.
Reagan's policy decision or of being
forced to defend it.
Unless unfolding events prove
that Mr. Reagan's overtures to
Iranian moderates were successful
in ending the 6-year-old Iran-Iraq
war and state-sponsored terrorism
in Tehran, the Democrats are likely
to try to keep the issue alive to blud-
geon the Republicans for the next
two years.
The international implications of
Mr. Reagan's gamble are enormous.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz,
who stops just short of saying that
he opposed the policy decision and
acknowledges that he had only frag-
mentary knowledge of it, is in an
almost untenable position.
Although Mr. Reagan has ac-
knowledged the Iranian contacts,
Mr. Shultz must continue to declare
to other nations that the United
States does not negotiate with ter-
rorists and maintains an arms em-
bargo on both sides in the Iran-Iraq
war.
It is impossible to know the extent
of damage to American relations
with its Arab friends who fear the
Iranians more, if possible, than they
fear Israel.
On the domestic front, White
House Chief of Staff Donald Regan
told reporters last week that con-
gressional leaders were not in-
formed of the Iranian contacts be-
cause Attorney General Edwin
Meese III assured the White House
there was no need to notify them.
Mr. Poindexter said the adminis-
tration knew there was a risk that
the operation would be exposed. "If
you are unwilling to take risks, you
seldom make any progress on some
of these very difficult issues. We
knew there would be questions
raised as to whether this was a good
idea or not but on balance the pres-
ident decided to go ahead with it."
He said the four-day mission to
Iran by former National Security
Adviser Robert C. McFarlane was
racing the clock on the entire set of
issues including the fate of the hos-
tages, the Iran-Iraq war and the pos-
sibility that the 86-year-old Ayatol-
lah Ruhollah Khomeini would pass
from the scene.
The president and his men have
said the United States did nothing to
benefit Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad.
the captors of the American hos-
tages. They say the shipment of the
equivalent of one planeload of mili-
tary spare parts and anti-aircraft
weaponry was a "judgment call," de-
signed to assure "our interlocutors"
in Iran they were really dealing with
the president himself.
The chief argument of those who
oppose Mr. Reagan's initiative is that
it created the impression that all ter-
rorists have to do to obtain arms
from the United States is seize more
American hostages.
Unanswered questions abound.
None of the pronouncements of Mr.
Reagan or his aides, now engaged in
a massive "damage control" opera-
tion with the media, have stated who
convinced the president to approve
the deal.
No official will discuss whether
the United States condoned Israeli
arms shipments to Iran. No official
has publicly named the Iranian mod-
erates with whom Mr. McFarlane
met. The only explanation of why the
Joint Chiefs of Staff were left out of
the decision is that it involved an
intelligence operation, not a military
one.
Mr. Reagan has been a popular
chief executive and few would deny
that he also has been a very lucky
one.
He may still pull the Iranian affair
out of the fire. But in 1980, it was
Iran that sank President Carter's po-
litical future. It is Iran that now has
Mr. Reagan in a near-desperate de-
fense of his gamble.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504860010-1