TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86.17

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+              █;                                          ╚November 24, 1986

NATION

Unraveling Fiasco


His credibility under fire, Reagan admits to sending arms to Iran


For once, Ronald Reagan did not want to give a speech. For nearly
two weeks, the Administration had tried to bottle up stories about
U.S. dealings with -- and arms shipments to -- Iran. When two top
aides got into a sharp dispute in his presence, Reagan sided with
National Security Adviser John Poindexter, who counseled continued
secrecy. But the story refused to die, and so the President
belatedly followed White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan's advice
that he at least brief congressional leaders. The blistering
criticism continued, and a press conference on Wednesday by Said
Rajaie-Khorassani, Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations, finally
convinced Reagan that he should take his case public. Even then
he was reluctant. Hours before his TV report to the nation on
Thursday, an angry President told reporters that he would deliver
it only because "I've never heard such dissemination of
misinformation since I've been here."

The real government problem facing the President, however, was that
the shocking stories that so upset him were not, in fact,
misinformation. They were basically true. The Administration,
acting on his orders, had secretly shipped military equipment to
Iran even as it was waging an international crusade for a strict
arms embargo against that country for promoting terrorism. Worse
yet, the shipments which broke the spirit and perhaps the letter of
the U.S. law, had become entangled with murky efforts to barter for
the release of American hostages, even as the U.S. was proclaiming
that it would never deal with terrorist kidnapers.

The unraveling Iranian fiasco is the latest in a string of
controversies that have called into question the Administration's
credibility and competence in foreign affairs. They threaten to
dissipate six years of aggressive effort by Reagan to strengthen
America's standing in the world. Among the other setbacks to
credibility:  the disingenuous explanations of the shady
connections between the White House and the private network run by
former CIA personnel supplying aid to the contras fighting in
Nicaragua, the campaign of "disinformation" against Libya proposed
by the National Security Council, and Reagan's befuddled and
dubious accounts of what he proposed during his dangeroulsy
fanciful discussions of total nuclear disarmament with Soviet
Leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik.

Of all these challenges to the Administration's vaunted spin-
control talents, the latest furor threatens to do the most damage.
It flies in the fact of deep public aversion to Iran, to dealing
with supporters of terrorism and to using arms shipments as
a bargaining tool for the release of hostages. Not surprisingly,
the twelve-minute talk Reagan finally gave was perhaps the most
defensive of his presidency, with only occasional touches to his
usual confident eloquence.

Said the President, in an opening comment he penned himself:  "Now
you're going to hear the facts from a White House source, and you
know my name."  His key points:

--  Yes, "for 18 months now, we have had under way a secret
diplomatic initiative to Iran."  Purpose:  "to open a dialogue"
with a strategically vital nation, some of whose leaders seemed
willing to moderate its bitter anti-Americanism.

--  Yes again, "during the course of our secret negotiations, I
authorized transfer of small amounts of defensive weapons and spare
parts for defense systems to Iran."

--  No, absolutely no, the "U.S. has not swapped boatloads or
planeloads of American weapons for the return of American hostages"
held in Lebanon by Muslim extremists loyal to Iran. Although U.S.
negotiators did press Iran to use its influence to free the
hostages, the arms shipments were not "ransom."  They were merely
intended to "send a signal" that the U.S. was serious about
improving relations with Iran.

Even before the President went on camera, however, it was apparent
that he was going to tell something less than the full story.
Administration officials, led by Poindexter and Regan, fanned out
to brief the press on what the President was about to say.
Attempting to answer journalists' questions, they quickly got
tangled in contradictions and indulged in some strange logic
chopping.

Were the arms transfers really as modest as Reagan indicated?
Only, it seems, if weapons shipped by Israel with U.S. aprpoval,
which the President never mentioned, are left out of the equation.
One briefer confirmed that the U.S. had "condoned" at least one
large shipment of weapons from an unnamed country, obviously
Israel, in September 1985; that happens to be the month when
Lebanese extremists released an American hostage, the Rev. Benjamin
Weir. Israeli sources have described other sizable shipments. In
some cases Israel sent Iran spare parts for American-made jet
fighters out ot its own stockpiles; the U.S. then shipped new parts
to Israel as replacements.

Don't the shipments violate an embargo on arms to Iran first
proclaimed by Jimmy Carter and continued by Reagan?  Replied one
Administration briefer, later identified by the New York Daily News
as Poindexter:  "We have never said that we weren't shipping arms
to Iran."  That hardly squared with this public statement made by
Poindexter as recently as Nov. 4:  "As long as Iran advocates the
use of terrorism, the U.S. arms embargo will continue."  In fact,
Reagan on Jan. 17 signed a special waiver of his Executive Order
continuing the embargo, but he did not notify Congress of that fact
until Thursday -- ten months later -- and did not mention it in his
speech. The waiver did not repeal a series of laws that prohibit
arms transfers to Iran, but Administration officials contend that
these statutes permit exceptions for shipments the President deems
to be in the national interest.

What about Operation "Staunch," a U.S. attempt to organize a
worldwide embargo against arms sales to Iraq and Iran?  One
Administration official came up with this rationalization:  "The
object of Staunch is to end the [Iran-Iraq] war without winners or
losers. To do that, we have to develop the moderate elements
within Iran."  In order "to give them more clout," he said, the
U.S. had to send arms. Is Washington now telling the rest of the
world that it must not make large shipments of weapons to Iran but
that the U.S. can send small quantities if they are deemed to be
in its national interest?  Said the briefer:  "That's right."

How can the Administration claim major progress in getting hostages
released?  True enough, Muslim zealots in Lebanon have set free
three Americans -- Weir, Lawrence Jenco and David Jocobsen -- in
the past 14 months, but three other Americans have been kidnaped
in Beirut since September. The Administration's answer is that two
sets of Muslims are involved. The group that released Weir, Jenco
and Jacobsen is influenced by Iranian moderates with whom the U.S.
is in contact; the latest three hostages were kidnaped by a second
Lebanese group allied to Mehdi Hashemi, a Tehran extremist who is
now in disgrace (he has been arrested and accused of treason).
Might Hashemi and his friends concluded that if they seized
American hostages, they too could pry arms out of the U.S., just
like their rivals in Tehran?  Admits one NSC official:  "That's the
most likely explanation" for the latest kidnapings.

That brings up the most troubling of all questions raised by the
secret Iranian policy. Granted, Reagan and his aides were right
in trying to re-establish contact with so strategically important
a nation as Iran and to gain some influence there. Yet how could
they have failed to foresee that by agreeing to arms shipments they
would be trapped into what looked -- to the Iranians and the rest
of the world -- like a crude guns-for-hostages swap?  And did the
Americans really keep the questions of arms and hostages as
separate in their own minds as Reagan now insists?

Briefing reporters on Friday, Chief of Staff Regan muddied those
questions considerably. He told journalists, "We had tried many,
many channels to get the hostages back, and they all failed. So
we tried this one. [The Iranians] wanted us to send some defensive
weapons as evidence of our good faith. We demanded they stop
terrorism and show us evidence of their good faith. And we got
three [hostages] back."  Laughter made Regan realize that he seemed
to be describing precisely the type of trade the President had so
vehemently disavowed. But Regan plowed ahead, asking angrily,
"What's a human life worth?"  That, he said, was "what the
President was thinking about; he brings the hostage question up in
90% of the briefings he has given."

The appearance, right or wrong, of an arms-for-hostages swap drew
furious criticism last week. Even former Hostages Weir and Jenco
protested that their freedom should not have been purchased in that
manner. Reagan's previous TV appearances have often rallied strong
public support for hotly controversial policies but last week's
speech appeared to be far less persuasive. Among 510 peopled
polled by ABC News immediately after his sppech, 56% thought,
despite the President's denials, that there had indeed been a
direct arms-for-hostages deal. Moreover, 72% disapproved of the
arms transfers even if the motive was only to improve relations
with Iran. In Tehran, Iranian President Seyed Ali Khamene'i called
Reagan's account of the negotiatons "mere lies" and said there
would be no "leniency and compromise" with the U.S.

Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, whose 1964 presidential
campaign introduced Reagan to national politics, called the sending
of arms to Iran "one of the major mistakes the United States has
ever made in foreign policy."  He added that the operation might
have been legal, "but it's not moral ... to give anything to get
a hostage."  Later he said bluntly, "Reagan has gotten his butt in
a crack."

The sharpest criticism from Capitol Hill was that Reagan had failed
to inform Congress of what he was up to. That criticism can only
intensify now that the White House has admitted the CIA
participated fully in the Iran operation. The CIA is required by
law to tell congressional intelligence committees wha0t it is doing,
but last January Reagan ordered Director William Casey, in writing,
to keep quiet. Simultaneously, the President signed a document
conceding that he had to inform Congress "in timely fashion" about
his waiver of the arms embargo, but he determined to wait. Many
Congressmen insist that notification after ten months is less than
timely.

Even with Congress in recess, several committees are about to begin
investigations. The House Intellience Committee intends to begin
hearings this week on all aspects of the affair; House Democratic
Leader Jim Wright of Texas advised Chairman Lee Hamilton to issue
"subpoenas where subpoenas are called for."  Next week a House
Foreign Affairs sub-committee will conduct hearings, probably
behind closed doors, on whether the arms shipments violated any
federal laws. Senate investigations will undoubtedly develop bite
in January, when Democrats take over the committee chairmanships.

There will be no lack of matters to probe. Reports mounted last
week that arms shipments to Iran, probably with U.S. knowledge, had
been far greater than Reagan let on. In Bonn, Iranian exiles
opposed to the regime of Ayatullah Khomeini charged that a TWA
cargo plane had flown 23 tons of "sophisticated American parts for
the Iranian air force" into Tehran's Mehrabad Airport on July 4.
That was shortly before the Lebanense extremists allied to Iran
released Father Jenco. Israeli sources with usually reliable
information made the startling assertion that shipments to Iran
were still under way two weeks ago, even after the worldwide
controversy exploded. They said a freighter picked up a load of
arms at the Israeli port of Eilat and delivered it to Bandar Abbas
in Iran sometime between Nov. 2 and Nov. 7. In addition, Israelis
noted that shipments made by Israel, with U.S. knowledge, began as
early as 1982.

The disclosures undercut the impact of the Administration's
announcement on Friday of some largely symbolic sanctions against
Syria for its sponsorship of terrorism. Among the measures:  a ban
on the sale of aircraft and parts to Syria and a reduction of the
U.S. embassy staff in Damascus. A British court recently found
evidence that Syria had been involved in a plot to blow up an El
Al jetliner flying out of London. Britain, however, could not get
its partners in the European Community to go along with anything
except a light slap on the wrist. What's more, France publicly
thanked Syria for its help in securing the freedom of two French
hostages who were released in Lebanon on Monday. The developments
demonstrated that organizing international action against
terrorism, always difficult, has become even harder now that the
U.S., the principal promoter of a tough line, is widely suspected
of makings its own deals with hostage takers.

The controversy over arms for Iran is focusing a harsh spotlight on
the mysterious and expanding role of the National Security Council
staff. The NSC is made up of top Government officials, including
the Secretaries of State and Defense and the head of the CIA; it
is served by a staff headed by the National Security Adviser. In
recent years, Presidents have entrusted the staff with secret
diplomatic missions. Perhaps the most dramatic example was the
negotiations by Henry Kissinger in 1971 that started the process
of a rapprochement between the U.S. and China. Reagan last week
cited Kissinger's mission as the model of what he was trying to
accomplish in Iran:  forge ties with a strategically vital but once
angrily hostile nation.

If the expanded role of the NSC staff had stopped with secret
diplomacy, there would be little controversy. It makes sense to
have confidential contacts with Iranian officials who might someday
help the U.S. re-establish its influence, and few would question
assigning former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and his
successor, Poindexter, to handle the job. But under the Reagan
Administration, the adviser and his staff have gone further by
conducting free-wheeling covert operations, often without Sate or
Defense Department approval -- though always acting for the
President.

The fatal blunder in the case of Iran was to ship arms and to have
those shipments organized by NSC "cowboys" headed by Marine Lieut.
Colonel Oliver North. Both Secretary of State George Shultz and
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger were opposed, and told the
President so. As a result, they played almost no role in carrying
out the policy. Nor was this the first questionable NSC operation:
North apparently organized the secret private network that sent
arms to the contras at a time when Congress had forbidden direct
U.S. military aid.

Reliance on the NSC staff for covert operations has advantages.
Its activities, unlike those of the CIA, need not be reported to
Congress. But that, critics charge, is precisely the problem.
Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, says the President and his aides "have
gotten pretty excited about running their own CIA, State
Department, Defense Department out of the White House without
anybody looking over their shoulder."

To be sure, the plight of the hostages presented Reagan with an
excruciating dilemma. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, on
a visit to New York City last week, summarized it to TIME editors
this way:  "I think that every democracry is occasionally facing a
contradiction in values. On one hand, you are decided to fight
terrorism. On the other hand, you must remain concerned for the
lives and safety of individual people ... What is the balance?"

But the warning signal should have gone up when the Iranians
started asking for arms. The White House argues that the Iranians
involved were taking great personal risks dealing with a nation
that the Ayatullah Khomeini regularly denounces at the Great Satan.
The Iranians had to be assured that the emissaries they met were
acting with Reagan's authority, and so they demanded arms transfers
that only the President could authorize. Perhaps so. But it is
also possible that what they were really doing was subjecting the
U.S. to a crude form of blackmail.

In any case, it should have been obvious that the arms shipments
could not be kept secret forever and that once they were known, the
U.S. would appear to be violating its own strictures against paying
ransom to kidnapers and their supporters. That impression is now
out, raising potentially disastrous questions about the
Administration's credibility and competence. The underlying cause
is the same one that has led to other foreign policy failures:  the
President's predilection for seat-of-the-pants diplomacy. To
prevent any further unraveling of his foreign policy, the President
needs to rein in the NSC staff, put pros front and center again, and
signal that amateur hour in the White House Situation Room is over.

By George J. Church. Reported by David Beckwith and Johanna
McGeary/Washington, with other bureaus.