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- d▓¡fô ¼««The Good Soldier
-
- May 25, 1987
-
- Unwittingly, McFarlane paints a picture of a hands-on President
-
- As the Iran-contra scandal spreads in ever wider circles, a
- disturbing image of Ronald Reagan is taking shape. Most accounts of
- Iranscam, notably the damning Tower commission report, depict the
- President as a wooly-minded, out-of-touch leader who permitted a band
- of overzealous aides to conduct secret and possibly illegal
- operations right under his nose. The White House has done little to
- dispute that characterization, and for good reason: an inattentive
- Reagan who knew little of the weapons sales to Iran and nothing about
- the illicit funneling of arms to the Nicaraguan rebels seemed better
- than a President who played an active role in the affair.
-
- But last week a different picture of Reagan began to emerge. The new
- portrait depicts the President as a hands-on boss who thoroughly
- involved himself in the contra crusade. In this version, Reagan
- ordered his staff to keep the rebels' cause alive after Congress
- banned U.S. support in 1984 and 1985. He carefully monitored the
- contras' fortunes, asking questions about troop strength, supplies,
- battlefield activities. He welcomed contributions from one foreign
- leader and lobbied another head of state to expedite an arms
- shipment.
-
- The revised picture of the President was drawn by Robert McFarlane
- last week during four days of sometimes anguished public testimony
- before the House and Senate Select Committees investigating Iranscam.
- McFarlane, who served as Reagan's National Security Adviser from
- October 1983 to December 1985, is perhaps the most poignant figure
- in the scandal. Last February, depressed about his role in the
- political melodrama, he attempted suicide by swallowing an overdose
- of Valium.
-
- Under the glare of television lights in the Rayburn Office Building,
- the dour former Marine described himself as a loyal public servant
- who became an architect of policies he did not always believe in.
- Yet time and again he defended the President while blaming himself
- for the questionable efforts to support the contras. "President
- Reagan's motives and direction to his subordinates throughout this
- enterprise has always been in keeping with the law and national
- values," McFarlane asserted. "I don't think he is at fault here,
- and if anybody is, I am."
-
- While McFarlane came across as a good soldier, his earnest admissions
- did not wash with Indiana Democrat Lee Hamilton, chairman of the
- House panel. "I appreciate your willingness to shoulder great
- responsibility," Hamilton told the witness. "But I cannot accept
- that answer...You cannot, it seems to me, accept responsibility for
- mistakes, ad admirable as that may be, and thereby absolve the
- President of responsibility." Outside the hearings, Democratic
- Senator George Mitchell of Maine was more colorful. "McFarlane's
- testimony of the President's personal involvement," he said, "does
- tend to indicate that the water is lapping at the walls of the sand
- castle."
-
- Indeed, McFarlane's account indicated that he molded contra policy to
- comply with the President's orders. The former National Security
- Adviser said that in 1983 Reagan approved a secret CIA plan for
- mining Nicaraguan harbors to prevent arms and supplies from reaching
- the Sandinista regime. When Congress learned of the operation in
- 1984, it passed the Boland amendment, cutting off U.S. assistance to
- the anti-Sandinista rebels. Yet the President, McFarlane testified,
- directed his aides to continue helping the contras "hold body and
- soul together." Said McFarlane: "We were to demonstrate, by our
- simple conviction and persuasion, that he intended to reverse the
- course of the Congress and get the funding renewed."
-
- Reagan was briefed "dozens" of times on the contras' on-the-ground
- progress and on the Administration's efforts to sustain the movement.
- McFarlane said. Occasionally, the President became directly involved
- in providing assistance: when Honduras blocked a shipment of arms to
- the contras in October 1985, McFarlane said, Reagan contacted
- Honduran President Robert Suazo Cordova and persuaded him to release
- the weapons.
-
- Reagan's activism in favor of the contras raised questions about his
- role in soliciting funds from third countries, an indirect form of
- support that Congress explicitly prohibited in October 1985. In a
- curious charade designed to avoid embarrassing nations that are
- friendly to the U.S., it was agreed that they would be cited only by
- a number. But it was clear the "Country 2" was Saudi Arabia, which
- had, at McFarlane's prompting, contributed $1 million a month to the
- contras since May 1984. In February 1985, the President held a
- meeting in the Oval Office with King Fahd. Just a few days after the
- visit, the Saudis told McFarlane they would double their monthly
- donation. When Reagan was informed, McFarlane testified, his
- reaction was one of "gratitude and satisfaction--not of surprise."
- In all, said McFarlane, the Saudis contributed $32 million to the
- contras in 1984 and 1985.
-
- Reagan last week admitted discussing contra funding with Fahd but
- stressed that he was not the one who raised the subject. "My diary
- shows that I never brought it up," he declared. "It shows that the
- King, before he left, told me that he was going to increase the aid."
-
- At week's end the President revised his argument, contending that
- even if he had solicited funds from Saudi Arabia, the law did not
- prohibit him from doing so. "There is nothing in the Boland
- amendment that could keep me from asking other people to help [the
- contras]," Reagan told a group of newsmagazine reports. "The only
- restriction on me was that I could not approve the sending of help
- myself out of our budget money."
-
- Reagan was forced to rebut another startling disclosure by McFarlane,
- in this case an apparent contradiction of Reagan's oft-stated policy
- of refusing to pay ransom to terrorists. McFarlane claimed that in
- 1985 the President authorized a plan to pay $2 million provided by
- Texas Billionaire H. Ross Perot for the release of two American
- hostages in Beirut. "I don't recall anything ever being suggested in
- the line of ransom," Reagan said last week. But, he added, he may
- have discussed paying foreign agents who could help win the release
- of American captives. Said Reagan: "I've never thought of that as
- ransom."
-
- While the testimony by McFarlane tainted the President, it was most
- incriminating to himself. Though he often tried to obscure his
- statements with circumlocutions, it became evident that McFarlane,
- who testified without immunity, was making himself more vulnerable to
- prosecution. Under questioning by House Counsel John Nields,
- McFarlane admitted misleading two congressional committees last
- summer when he testified that he did not know the full extent of
- Saudi Arabia's contributions to the contras. "I was trying to use
- some tortured language--inappropriately, I think," he said. "It
- wasn't a full account."
-
- He confessed that in the summer of 1985 he allowed his deputy, Lieut.
- Colonel Oliver North, to alter NSC documents to conceal from
- congressional investigators evidence of possible violations of the
- Boland amendment. Implicating himself in a possible cover-up,
- McFarlane told the panel that he had contributed to a false
- chronology of events prepared for use by the President and CIA
- Director William Casey. Moreover, McFarlane acknowledged that North
- told him last November that he was planning to throw a "shredding
- party" to get rid of documents outlining the diversion of Iranian
- arms-sales profits to the contras.
-
- Last week's hearings concluded with further evidence of
- Administration support for the contras when Robert Owen, 32, a former
- Senate aide who worked as a courier for North, described meeting with
- contras in several secret rendezvous and handing them envelopes full
- of cash, as well as maps and photographs prepared by the CIA or the
- Pentagon. Owen told of one incident in which North gave him $6,000
- or $7,000 worth of traveler's checks and instructed him to cash them
- and pass the money on to a rebel leader. Owen claimed that a White
- House administrative aide, Johnathan Miller, helped him cash the
- checks. A few hours after the testimony, Miller resigned.
-
- McFarlane and Owen stressed that the Administration's actions had a
- noble purpose: to rescue Nicaragua from a repressive Marxist cabal
- and thus prevent the spread of Communism to the U.S. mainland. To
- investigators on Capitol Hill, however, the issue was not the
- Administration's policy toward Nicaragua but its seeming contempt for
- Congress. "If the National Security Adviser of the President of the
- U.S. and other high officials do not provide complete and accurate
- answers to the Congress, what can we do?" Chairman Hamilton asked
- McFarlane last week. "How can our system of government work?" Just
- as central as the fate of Central America, Hamilton was saying, was
- the attitude of an Administration that thought it could conduct
- foreign policy in defiance of Congress.
-
- --By Jacob V. Lamar Jr.
- Reported by Michael Duffy/Washington