SCANDAL TIME - CAN'T ANYBODY SHOOT STRAIGHT?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560001-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 19, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807560001-8
L.. i'..
WASHINGTON POST
19 December 1986
Charles Krauthammer
Scandal Time
Can 't anybody here shoot straight?
Scandal time is an odd time. After a slumber
of 30 years, liberals wake up to find the Fifth
Amendment something of an anachronism.
And conservatives, recent champions of law
and order, write in defense of lawbreaking, if
the motives are lofty enough.
Liberals, once so enamored of the Fifth
Amendment, now have discovered its inconve-
nience-just when Oliver North needs it. It
turns out, you see, that the privilege against
self-incrimination was created in the 16th centu-
ry to protect free speech and religious liberty
and, later, in the debates on the ratification of
the Constitution, was identified with protection
from torture and inquisition, and we're far past
that in our history, so who needs it now that
Lillian Hellman doesn't, and if Ollie North is
such a hero why won't he fry for his country?
Something like that.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are finding
the law itself an encumbrance. Pat Buchanan, a
man whose judgment is no match for his cour-
age, compares Ollie North to Billy Mitchell and
FDR. There are two issues here. Lawbreaking
by private citizens (called civil disobedience) is
fine, but only if they are willing to accept the
legitimacy of the law in general and show it by
going to jail. I don't think that is what Buchanan
has in mind for North.
Lawbreaking by public officials is another
thing altogether. There is no such thing as
civil disobedience by a president. Presidential
lawbreaking is either simple constitutional
misconduct or, if the offenses are grave
enough, high crimes and misdemeanors. One
might make an exception for lawbreaking by
government officials in extremis-like
Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus or
FDR's skirting Congress to support Churchill
during the Battle of Britain. But only in
extremis Nicaragua is important. But this is
neither 1861 nor 1940.
Another peculiarity of scandal time is that any
news, even good news, looks like bad news,
simply because it is news. Unofficial CIA spokes-
man Bob Woodward (also of The Post) re
prted
that, while the United States was sending arms
to Iran, it was help'% Ira 's air war by rovid-
ing Iraq wit detailed satellite intelligence about
Iranian military and economic targets.
cynical attempt to engineer a stalemate,*
said an unnamed government official, as if
cynicism about this Islamic replay of World War
I is not the beginning of wisdom. In fact, there is
not an interested country in the region (outside
of Iraq, which, having started the ghastly
slaughter, has little moral standing to complain
about it) that does not want to see Iran ex-
hausted by this war, so as to diminish if not its
penchant, then its capacity for doing mischief to
its neighbors. Clandestine help to Iraq is the
first sensible thing we have heard about Amen
can foreign policy in weeks.
But nay, the latest disclosure was wide
viewed as having further damaged the credit
ity of the Administration's claim to be neutral in
the war," intones The New York Times. Big
deal. One government is built on terror and
torture. The other uses in battle a weapon-
poison gas-even Hitler eschewed. Neutrality
between such regimes should not mean washing
one's hands. It should mean actively ensunng
mutual exhaustion, two losers. And since for at
least three years the only side capable of win-
ning has been Iran, neutrality now means helq,-
ing Iraq survive.
Why, then, did we sell arms to Iran? Ranson[
for the hostages, pure and simple. If only the
administration had not been too clever by half, I
the right hand had known what the left hand wan
doing, it might have offered a coherent explany
tion for its actions. Instead of the pseudo-Kissit"
gerian fantasy that tTie arms were the tool of a
grand Strategic omadc Initiative (the p 1-
dent has a fondness for the acronym) to Iran
Reagan should have said that when he earn of
'the-terrible torture eat o American tato e
and-CIA agent WilliamBuclaey, a eh determined
to o anything to save the-o-- er hostages m 4
similar fate. Anything turned out to be ship ing
arms. He let sentiment get the better o is
judgment. A hat does not make his decision any
less misguide F or disastrous for our antiter=
rorism policy. But at least thee. would
ve been plausible and the motive might havQ
earned him a measure of win achy.
Hostages. That is al this was a out. No tilt
to Iran. And to prove it . . . Mr. Woodwardk
would you step forward and repeat that again.
Our intelligence assistance to Iran more than
counterbalanced the military significance of
our shipment of arms to Iran.
Finally, a policy that makes sense. But-and
this is yet another characteristic of scandal
time-those caught up in the scandal are too
frazzled to see it. Instead of welcoming the Iraqi
revelation- an administration official tic ed fqr
cover, calling it merely "defensive" intelli ent~
assistance. He might get an argument from e
poor bastards under the surprise mid-August
Iraqi bombing raid of the Iranian oil terminal At
Sirri Island. ,
"Defensive." Like the 2.008 TOW missiles
shipped to Iran. Won't someone around here try
the truth? It is often plausible and always easier
to memorize.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807560001-8