NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/politics/bush/15066

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From: [e-mail] (Trout B. Rainbow III)
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Subject: Wire Stories on Iran-Contra 12/28/92
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I'm just passing on a posting of considerable import, for your reading pleasure.
Please copy and distribute as widely as possible.

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/* Written 12:01 am  Dec 29, 1992 by jnr in igc:carnet.irancon */
/* ---------- "Wire Stories on Iran-Contra 12/28/9" ---------- */
WP 12/27 xx Bush's Shameless Finale;Pardons Undermine Gov't

Bush's Shameless Finale; The Pardons Undermine Constitutional Intent

By Garry Wills

BEFORE, HE was leaving in defeat. Now, George Bush is leaving on the lam.

Ronald Reagan realized that a pardon of the coverup was bound to look like
a coverup of the coverup - that is why he resisted pleas to pardon Oliver
North and John Poindexter as he left office. But Bush has never been able
to resist the right wing. Because the zealots loved Reagan, he could keep
them in their place. Because they loathe Bush, Bush continued plying them
with favors destined to be insufficient no matter how exaggerated. He
leaves office as he came to it, doing the bidding of people who despise
him.

The president could no more resist the clamor for pardons than he could
keep Pat Buchanan off the podium at the Republican convention in Houston
last summer. Bush opened his political career in 1964 as a lackey to
Goldwaterites in Houston. He closes it licking boots that have kicked him.
Sometimes Buchanan has worn the boot. Sometimes Pat Robertson has
(Robertson called Bush's New World Order a scheme of Satan). Bush has
rarely been able to look high enough to see whose boot he is being intimate
with.

One of those kicking him toward the pardons was Vice President Dan Quayle.
The man Bush chose as a weakling he could lord it over reversed those roles
in the last campaign. Quayle, with his neoconservative handlers, became the
tough one. Those promoting pardon were finally whispering what Elliott
Abrams said openly, that Reagan had been "cowardly" in his dealings with
the special prosecutor. The Wall Street Journal asked if Bush, too, would
let Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel, "carry his associates to
the stake." So, in light from the charge that he is a wimp, Bush rushed to
confirm the charge.

The quick response was to suspect Bush of self-serving motives. But he
probably conceived them as selfless, as taking the guff himself to get
others off the hook. He is always at his most destructive when lending his
patrician gloss to thuggish underlings. He is not in it for personal gain,
he likes to tell himself. As he said of the men pardoned, "They did not
profit or seek to profit from this conduct." That is the fanatic's defense.
Only the zealot works overtime at undermining government, the way Ollie
North and Abrams did. Thieves keep saner hours.

The pardon is wrong but not silly. It is the argument for pardon that
slides toward silliness. The president says he is acting in the tradition
of postwar presidents who forgave offenses committed during war. From what
war is he pardoning offenses? The Cold War. But the Iran crisis arose from
the taking of our hostages - not an offense committed by communists. The
Cold War was indirectly connected with the subsequent diversion of money to
the contras in Honduras, but that is the part of the affair Bush claims not
to have known about, and it was not the focus of Caspar Weinberger's
trouble. It is true that some people invoke the Cold War to cover anything
done by the government. But Bush's use of it in this context verges on
parody of that old claim.

Besides, grants of amnesty after earlier wars were for crimes committed
against the government - from rebellion to draft-dodging to privateering.
But the Iran-contra offenses were committed by the government - by officers
of the United States executive. Bush's use of historical parallels is so
much smoke emitted to cover the real grounds for his actions.

Not that those grounds go unspoken in his pardon statement. The war at
issue is not the Cold War but the war of the executive against the
legislative branch - Elliott Abrams repeatedly calls it a war in his book,
"Undue Process," which attacks the Office of the Independent Counsel (the
so-called special prosecutor). Bush uses the battle slogans of that war in
the text of his pardon, from denunciation of "the criminalization of policy
differences" to the "enormous resources" expended on "exhaustive"
investigation.

Take this last thing first, as the least thing. Investigation and
prosecution are always expensive and time-consuming. The goal is not simply
conviction of individual criminals but exposure of the culture of crime,
education of the public, deterrence of other criminals. Whether one objects
to the expense depends on what the educating effect is. Right-wingers
shocked at Walsh's use of the money did not begrudge the millions spent
year after year in the congressional search for communists and their
sympathizers, or the FBI's long history of investigating domestic
dissidents. Besides, it takes some effrontery for the Republican
administration to complain of Walsh's long and costly effort, producing so
little result, when its minions have labored to obstruct, lengthen and
reverse the process - culminating in Bush's interruption of it by his
pardon.

The pardon is not aimed at mercy for the particular defendants, drawing
oblivion over their past deeds. It is aimed at the present struggle against
Congress and its right to pass special prosecutor laws. It is a political
use of the pardoning power. We cannot condemn all political uses - they
were foreseen from the outset. It was to restore politically peaceful
conditions that reprieves, pardons and amnesties were granted - even for
treason. But there was one area that the ratifiers of the Constitution
excepted from the president's pardoning power, and that had to do with
congressional-executive relations.

The exception is impeachment. No presidential pardon can reach impeachment
or conviction after impeachment. Why is this? The usual answer sometimes
misses the point. It is said that the president should not be able to
pardon himself. But the constitutional exception goes far beyond that. The
president cannot pardon a "civil officer" impeached and/or convicted. Well,
that too might be considered self-pardoning, since the officer is in the
president's own executive department. But a president cannot pardon an
impeached judge either. So the issue is not executive self-protection. It
is the right of Congress to oversee the performance of the other two
branches and to punish those who commit "high crimes or misdemeanors" in
either branch.

That is the principle that is denied by many critics of the special
prosecutor's office. People like Elliott Abrams and Terry Eastland present
a simplified view of separated powers in which the executive and the
legislature are supposed to be equally equipped antagonists, neither
prevailing over the other. That makes nonsense of the impeachment clause
and everything that follows from it. Congress can remove members of the
judiciary and the executive. Neither can do that to Congress as a whole or
to any member of it. And, since "who grants the end grants the means," a
Congress required to police and, if necessary, punish the behavior of the
other departments must have the right to scrutinize, review or investigate
that behavior - or to provide the requisite process for investigation. That
is what is at issue in the special prosecutor's office, and the president
has used his pardoning power to nullify, so far as in him lay, the law
setting up that office.

That is why Bush's pardon is unpardonable - not because it is
unconstitutional in itself, but because it is aimed at subverting a basic
constitutional principle, and one that trenches closely on the area
forbidden to pardons, the right of congressional oversight of other
branches. Impeachment itself is not an issue here - and that alone saves
the act from overt unconstitutionality. But the principle behind
impeachment is at stake, and a constitutional sensitivity, a sense of
constitutional restraint going beyond outright infraction of the document's
provisions, should have inhibited the president. The ratifiers made it
clear that they did not conceive the pardon power as an instrument to
protect other branches from Congress. But that is how Bush has used it.
None of his cited precedents apply to this, the crucial part of the pardon.
Even Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon - which he left unmentioned -
does not apply. Nixon was out of office, unimpeachable, beyond
congressional jurisdiction, when he was pardoned.

Those just pardoned by Bush were not facing impeachment either; but in
exempting them from indictment or prosecution, not by ordinary federal
attorneys but by Lawrence Walsh, Bush was attacking the very basis of
Walsh's office as a "criminalization of policy matters." This is a misuse
of the pardoning power, in defiance of the Congress that established
Walsh's office.

Luckily, as often happens when Bush panders to his party's right wing, the
whole matter can backfire. Congress will not readily drop the special
prosecutor law, which is up for renewal, now that it has been attacked so
irresponsibly. The less excusable the acts Bush stoops to, the more useless
he renders them. In this case, the party zealots, already in retreat, sent
him out to retrieve their fallen companions from the field of battle. But
Bush, in trying to carry off the wounded, has lain down among them.

Garry Wills is adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University. His
most recent book is "Lincoln at Gettysburg" (Simon & Schuster).

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>
WP   12/27 xx Walsh To Study Bush's Notes, Seek January Session

By George Lardner Jr. and Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writers

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh will seek to question President Bush
next month, according to informed sources, after reviewing the Bush notes
about the Iran-contra affair that were first made known to prosecutors 16
days ago.

Walsh's prosecutors already had opened an inquiry into the hitherto secret
notes when Bush announced his pardons Thursday of former defense secretary
Caspar W. Weinberger and five other men involved in the Iran-contra
scandal. In giving the pardons, the president declared that prosecution of
the six represented the "criminalization of policy differences" and that
all had acted out of "patriotism."

White House lawyers have assured Walsh's office that they are trying to
find all the notes relevant to Iran-contra, but Walsh has said there are
significant gaps in what has been produced so far. Eventually, the sources
said, Walsh is likely to issue a subpoena for the papers, described by
White House officials as typewritten transcripts of end-of-the-day
reflections that Bush started keeping in November 1986, the month the
scandal became public.

Walsh said yesterday that he was working at home in Oklahoma City on his
final report. He said he would not decide what to do about Bush's
"misconduct" - as Walsh has characterized it - until returning to
Washington on Jan. 10 but that nothing would be lost by waiting.
Questioning of Bush is not likely to occur until after he leaves office
Jan. 20.



White House officials said on the day of the pardon that they intended to
release, as one package, Bush's notes and the deposition Bush gave in
January 1988 to Walsh's investigators, if and when Walsh sends it to them.
They also said Weinberger would make public all of his notes. A White House
spokesman yesterday dismissed as hypothetical the question of how Bush
would react to an attempt by Walsh to question him.



Walsh's indignation over the belated disclosure of the notes, which he saw
as part of a consistent pattern by senior officials of the Reagan
administration, was heightened by the Christmas Eve pardon of Weinberger.

One of the charges against Weinberger was that he had concealed his own
detailed Iran-contra notes from Walsh's prosecutors and congressional
investigators. Walsh also had discovered over the last two years of his
six-year investigation that former secretary of state George P. Shultz or
aides working for him had withheld relevant notes. In addition, notes made
by former White House chief of staff Donald T. Regan were not turned over
to prosecutors until years after investigators first asked the Reagan White
House for them.

Walsh said he felt each official "was playing his own game" in holding back
his notes, but the cumulative effect of their actions was to protect
then-President Ronald Reagan from the threat of impeachment proceedings.

With all these notes and other information his investigators had
accumulated, Walsh said, the evidence would have shown that a November 1985
shipment by Israel of U.S.-made arms to Iran was "a deliberate violation of
the Arms Export Control Act" approved by Reagan himself.

The notes, he added, show that in November 1986, Reagan and his top aides
tried to conceal the violation, in part by saying they did not know it had
taken place until months later. Walsh said Bush's recently disclosed notes
have yet to be fully examined and it remains to be seen whether they fall
into the same pattern.

Walsh declined to comment on the content of the Bush notes turned over so
far, but another source said they reflected enough attention to Iran-contra
detail to record when Shultz turned over some of his notes to investigators
in 1987.

Walsh said in a telephone interview yesterday that given the past pattern
of deception, he thinks the pardon of Weinberger "is more devastating than
the Reagan coverup." Bush, Walsh said, has "stopped the trial of a
confederate. Whether criminal or not, it shows the ethics of the
administration in a way that I could not have demonstrated."

Bush, when he issued the pardons, said that they would not prevent "full
disclosure" because Iran-contra has been "investigated exhaustively" by the
Tower Board, a joint congressional committee and by Walsh. "In granting
these pardons today," he said, "I am doing what I believe honor, decency,
and fairness require."

Walsh's chief prosecutor for the Weinberger case, James J. Brosnahan, said
yesterday that he had been planning to call Regan, possibly Shultz, and
other top Reagan administration officials as prosecution witnesses for the
trial, which was set to begin Jan. 5.

Brosnahan added that he was in U.S. District Court on Wednesday at a
pretrial conference in the judge's chambers when Weinberger lawyer Robert
S. Bennett, perhaps in response to a question from the judge, said that he
might have to call Reagan and Bush as defense witnesses and was still
considering this.

"As I look back on this pardon," Brosnahan said, "it seems to me there is a
big question as to whether the defense made it clear that if this trial
went forward, they would call (Bush) as a witness. If it made that clear,
he would be issuing a pardon so he could avoid doing something he really
has never done. He has given depositions before, but he has never been
asked in public (under oath) what he knew and saw" about the Iran-contra
affair.

When it comes to Bush's notes, the key question for Walsh to determine is
why they were withheld until Dec. 11. Walsh's office and congressional
investigators say that their requests for documents to the White House as
far back as the spring of 1987 clearly specified relevant notes and
diaries. Bush's own handwritten diary notes - as opposed to the newly
revealed typewritten notes - were made available to Iran-contra
investigators after being screened for relevance by White House lawyers.

Bush said publicly on several occasions that he had produced all relevant
materials from his office. On Sept. 15,  he said in an NBC-TV interview,
"I've given every bit of evidence I have to these thousands of
investigators."

But on Dec. 11, as Iran-contra prosecutor John Q. Barrett was leaving his
office to accompany Brosnahan to the courthouse, Barrett got a call from a
lawyer for the White House who informed him about Bush's notes.

"John said I just got an incredible call - you won't believe it," Brosnahan
said. "He (the White House lawyer) said they were embarrassed, that there
were these notes from Bush, who was then vice president. And we were
welcome to go over and look at them. He said they should have been
produced, that they dealt with Iran-contra among other things."

Walsh said his office was suddenly obliged to review the notes for the
upcoming Weinberger trial and to tell Weinberger's lawyers of any
information in them that might help the defense.

"If there was something in there that was important to the defense," Walsh
said, "that increases the likelihood that Bush would be called as a witness
by the defense. Then he would be cross-examined by us."

Walsh said he did not know why the White House suddenly chose to disclose
the notes instead of remaining silent but speculated  it might have been
prompted by the fact that Bush is leaving office. "You have a
disintegrating staff," Walsh said. "Some people may be more willing than
others to cover. This is a group that was politically put together."

Walsh had planned to use the Weinberger trial to show the high-level
coverup that he believed began in the fall of 1986 when a plane secretly
controlled by the White House was shot down over Nicaragua while
resupplying contra rebels fighting the Marxist government there.

The coverup, according to investigators, took on added urgency a month
later when it became known that the White House was selling arms to Iran in
an effort to free U.S. hostages then being held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian
terrorists.

It became a public scandal Nov. 25, 1986 when then-Attorney General Edwin
Meese III announced that some of the profits from the arms sales to Iran
had been diverted to the contra cause.

At the time of his announcement, Meese said the president had not known
about the November 1985 shipment until after it took place. A Meese aide
earlier that month had described that shipment as potentially illegal in a
memo, and White House aides feared that it could become grist for potential
impeachment proceedings.

Weinberger was one of the top Reagan officials who denied any knowledge of
the 1985 shipment. The arms shipment ran afoul of the Arms Export Control
Act and, because the CIA assisted in it, it also ran contrary to a law
requiring a presidential "finding" authorizing covert CIA activities.

The former defense secretary was originally indicted last June on five
counts, one accusing him of obstruction of Congress and four of lying to
congressional investigators and Walsh's prosecutors.

The obstruction count, which focused on Weinberger's alleged concealment of
his notes, was dismissed on legal grounds last September. It was replaced
on Oct. 30, four days before the presidential election, by a false
statement count that included the text of several Weinberger notes.

One of the notes, jotted down by Weinberger after a Jan. 7, 1986, meeting
in the Oval Office, showed that the arms sales to Iran were explicitly
portrayed as a swap to free U.S. hostages and that Bush approved of the
transactions while Weinberger and Shultz did not.

The note contradicted Bush's statements that he did not consider the
transactions an "arms-for-hostages" deal and that he was unaware of the
Weinberger-Shultz opposition. The disclosure toward the end of the
presidential campaign  fueled accusations by some Republicans, including
Weinberger, that the case was politically inspired.

The controversial count was dismissed after the election, by U.S. District
Judge Thomas F. Hogan, but Weinberger's trial on the remaining four counts
appeared on track when the White House announced the pardons.

In addition to Weinberger, those pardoned were former CIA spy chief Clair
E. George, former White House national security adviser Robert C.
McFarlane, former assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams, former CIA
Central American Task Force chief Alan D. Fiers Jr. and former CIA European
Division chief Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge.

Like Weinberger, Clarridge was still awaiting trial on charges of lying to
Congress. George was convicted Dec. 9 on two felony counts of lying.
McFarlane, Fiers and Abrams had all pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges
of withholding information from Congress.

The president did not pardon three other men who either pleaded guilty or
were convicted in the scandal: retired Air Force major general Richard V.
Secord, a key middleman; Thomas G. Clines, a former CIA official involved
in arms purchases for the contras, and Albert Hakim, Secord's business
partner.

In his statement, Bush said he was pardoning government officials in part
because "they did not profit or seek to profit from their conduct."

An effort for executive clemency is expected to be made on Secord's behalf
on the grounds that he was recruited specifically to make a profit and
thereby generate money for the contras.

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>

UPn  12/26 2240  White House suggests possible Iran-contra deal

By HELEN THOMAS

UPI White House Reporter

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh will
reportedly seek to question President Bush next month after reviewing
Bush's notes on the Reagan administration's arms-for-hostages plot.

The Washington Post quoted sources Sunday who said Walsh is likely to issue
a subpoena for the notes, the existence of which came to Walsh's attention
earlier this month.

The White House said Saturday it would release the notes provided Walsh
first turn over to the president a copy of his 1988 videotaped testimony
before federal investigators.

But Walsh has said there are significant gaps in what has been provided so
far and earlier warned he would take "appropriate action" against what he
called the president's "misconduct."

The independent counsel told the newspaper that he would likely not
question Bush before he leaves office Jan. 20 and that he is currently
preparing his final report on the Iran-contra affair.

The issue erupted anew on Thursday when Bush pardoned former Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five other Iran-contra figures. Walsh
subsequently charged Bush himself perpetuated a coverup, both by
withholding his notes and by issuing the pardons.

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>

RTw  12/28 1926  WEINBERGER SAYS BUSH DID NOT GET FULL iRAN-HOSTAGES DATA

WASHINGTON, Dec 28, Reuter- Former U.S. Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger
said on Monday he did not believe President George Bush had received full
information about the Reagan administration's plan to swap arms for
American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.

Weinberger, who was pardoned by Bush last Thursday in the Iran-Contra case,
said in an interview with Cable News Network (CNN) that he and then-Vice
President Bush were at meetings on the plan to sell arms to Iran.

"We were not given information about it by proponents of the plan because
they knew that I opposed it," he said.

"I don't know what information he (Bush) was given...He certainly attended
meetings with me. He certainly knew that there was this proposal to sell
some arms to Iran and hope to get the hostages back...those facts are well
known," Weinberger said.

But Weinberger said he did not disagree with Bush's statements that he knew
about the arms sales plan but did not regard it as an arms-for-hostages
deal.

He said his own notes showed that in many of the meetings Bush was out of
the room taking telephone calls.

Bush has said that he was "out of the loop" on the arms-for-hostages plan.

Weinberger was to have stood trial on January 5 on charges of lying to
Congress. Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh has said the pardon
of Weinberger and five others completed a cover-up of the scandal.

Asked about a news report that Walsh planned to call him to testify to a
grand jury on Bush's role in the affair, Weinberger said such a move "would
not surprise me because Lawrence Walsh is otherwise out of business."

REUTER WS ADS JWO  <<>>

RTw  12/28 1911  PROBE OF 'IRAQGATE' TO RESUME - U.S. LAWMAKER

 WASHINGTON, Dec 23, Reuter - An influential U.S. congressman asked the
administration of President George Bush on Monday to preserve records on
its dealings with Iraq prior to the resumption of its "Iraqgate" probe next
month.

In a statement House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez said the
administration should halt "any current or anticipated destruction of
documents and records" that could be useful to his committee when the
Congress reconvenes next month.

He cited "press reports and other sources" that said the administration
might destroy computer records on U.S.-Iraq dealings.

An aide said the committee would focus in coming hearings on attempts by
Iraq to obtain nuclear triggering devices.

The committee has investigated Iraq's illicit attempts to acquire military
hardware in the late 1980s and its use of loans from the Atlanta, Georgia,
branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro to pay for its purchases.

As shorthand the issue has been called "Iraqgate." The Bush administration
has denied any improprieties in its actions.

REUTER CA ADS JWO  <<>>

APn  12/28 1827  Iran-Contra

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By PETE YOST

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh is considering
calling Caspar Weinberger before a federal grand jury to testify about
others in the scandal, including President Bush, according to sources close
to the investigation.

Walsh said Monday that he would return shortly to Washington, but refused
to say what his plans are. Yet the sources, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said that he is likely to call former Defense Secretary
Weinberger and ex-CIA official Duane Clarridge as witnesses before a grand
jury here.

Both men received Christmas Eve pardons from Bush for their conduct in
arms-for-hostages deal.

Before the pardon, neither man was called as a witness because they were
being investigated by the grand jury. They eventually were indicted and
were awaiting trial when they were pardoned.

"There's nothing more that I can tell him, and this is just a form of
harassment," Weinberger said of the prospect of being called before a grand
jury. But, in an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics," he added that it
doesn't surprise him "because otherwise Lawrence Walsh is out of business."


Bush also pardoned four other Iran-Contra figures and has since been
accused by critics of trying to hide his own role in the Reagan
administration's secret arms-for-hostages deal.

Walsh's spokeswoman, Mary Belcher, said she "will not comment on any
speculative grand jury action."

Clarridge has never appeared before Walsh's prosecutors and "I wouldn't be
surprised" if the former CIA official is called to testify, said William
McDaniel, Clarridge's lawyer.

Weinberger lawyer Robert Bennett said his client "has given all the
information there is to give" to Congress and Walsh's investigators.

Calling him as a witness would "just be further evidence of their
harassment of him," said Bennett.

The sources said prosecutors would question Weinberger extensively on his
handwritten notes from 1985 and 1986 -- with particular emphasis on
meetings that Bush attended. Prosecutors didn't uncover Weinberger's notes
until 1990, and this would be their first opportunity to question him about
them.

Iran-Contra prosecutors met with Weinberger last spring, but Weinberger and
his lawyers spent most of the time trying to persuade Walsh not to seek an
indictment against the former defense secretary.

After the pardons, Walsh said that Bush is a "subject" in the Iran-Contra
investigation because he failed to turn over his own notes to prosecutors.
A "subject" is someone whose activities are under scrutiny in a criminal
investigation.

The White House didn't notify Walsh until Dec. 11 that it had Bush's
typewritten notes -- which the then-vice president began dictating in
November 1986 as the Iran-Contra affair was erupting.

A grand jury appearance by Clarridge would renew questions about the CIA's
role in the affair, particularly a CIA-assisted shipment of Hawk missiles
to Iran in November 1985 that Weinberger was accused of lying about, said
the sources.

Clarridge is mentioned frequently in ex-White House aide Oliver North's
notebooks regarding the Iran arms sales and support for the Contras -- the
Nicaraguan guerrilla force that Congress had barred the CIA from assisting
militarily.

The sources said that Walsh also will decide whether to look into the
circumstances surrounding the Weinberger pardon.

Bush may have granted the pardon to avoid being called into court to
explain his own role in Iran-Contra, prosecutor James J. Brosnahan said
over the weekend.

Bennett called Brosnahan's suggestion "nonsense" and "sour grapes." He said
Monday that he had had no intention of calling Bush.

Weinberger's lawyers told U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan on Wednesday --
the day before the Iran-Contra pardons -- that they were thinking of
calling Bush and Ronald Reagan as defense witnesses at Weinberger's trial,
said Brosnahan.

Weinberger had faced a Jan. 5 trial on four counts of lying to Congress and
Iran-Contra prosecutors in the scandal.

Clarridge had faced a March 15 trial date on five counts of lying about his
knowledge of the arms-for-hostage deal with Iran.

<<>>

WP   12/28       Senate Panel May Review Weinberger Case, Pardons

By Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writer

A Senate subcommittee may examine the Iran-contra case against Caspar W.
Weinberger and President Bush's Christmas Eve pardon of the former defense
secretary, the subcommittee chairman said yesterday.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who heads the Governmental Affairs subcommittee
on oversight of government management, said in a telephone interview
yesterday that previously planned oversight hearings next year on the
workings of the independent counsel law and its reauthorization will
provide an "appropriate and likely" forum for taking testimony from
independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, Weinberger and perhaps Bush.

"We would obviously offer President Bush an opportunity to be heard," Levin
said during an appearance earlier on CBS's "Face the Nation." "But the key
here is Weinberger," he added.

Weinberger, Levin said, "was able to avoid testifying in court because the
president pulled the rug out from under the prosecutor with these pardons."


"Charges made against Walsh, that he's not run a fair prosecution," would
be examined, Levin said, and Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), who has been a
persistent critic of Walsh's six-year, $31 million investigation and who on
Saturday called for Walsh's resignation, would be given an opportunity to
present his case against Walsh.

Levin, however, called complaints against Walsh "a diversion from the heart
of this matter, which is whether or not Caspar Weinberger, in the case of
his indictment, withheld notes from the Congress and from the independent
counsel."

Levin said that "the right place to present this material is in court.
That's where it should have been presented - not in the media, not in a
congressional hearing, ideally, but in court. It's second-best to do it in
a congressional hearing, but we'll call, if necessary, whatever witnesses
will shed light upon these events, because these events were critical in
the '80s."

Bush's pardon of Weinberger "undermined our system of justice, which
requires that we have an independent person, not under the control of the
president, to look at people close to the president - his allies, his
friends, his cronies," Levin said.

But the question of what had motivated the president to pardon Weinberger
and five others indicted in the Iran-contra scandal continued to be a focus
of attention yesterday.

Bush, vacationing in Texas, declined yesterday to answer reporters'
questions about the pardons or the scandal, which involved the sale of arms
to Iran in exchange for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon by
pro-Iranian terrorists and the diversion of profits from those arms sales
to resupply the Nicaraguan contra rebels at a time when such aid was
prohibited by Congress.

Levin said that he believed Bush had two motives for granting the pardons.
"It was a gift to Weinberger, and others, some of whom have been convicted
of crimes and misdemeanors, some of whom have pleaded guilty, as a matter
of fact," he said.

Bush also "in effect protected himself," Levin said, because critical
Weinberger notes of meetings attended by Bush, who then was vice president,
"will now not be presented in court, and that protects (Bush) from a court
presentation, examination and cross-examination, under oath."

In addition to Weinberger, Bush pardoned former CIA spy chief Clair E.
George, former national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane, former
assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams, former CIA official Alan D.
Fiers and former CIA official Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge. Weinberger's
trial had been scheduled to begin Jan. 5; Clarridge's was set for March 10.
Both had pleaded not guilty. Abrams, Fiers and McFarlane had pleaded guilty
to misdemeanor charges of withholding information, and George was convicted
earlier this month of two counts of lying to Congress.

Weinberger, questioned on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley," defended
his own actions and Bush's decision to pardon him. The former defense
secretary said it was "totally wrong" to say he was pardoned to protect
Bush. "He didn't save himself from being called (to testify or be
questioned by Walsh) by pardoning me," Weinberger said. "He can be called
any time anybody wants."

Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, yesterday called the
presidential pardons "a noble and purely compassionate course of action."
On NBC's "Meet the Press," Scowcroft said Bush "had nothing to gain, and a
lot to lose - that is, because (the president could be) accused of coverup
and so on and so forth."

Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the House Iran-contra
investigating committee, said on the Brinkley show that he disagreed with
Bush's decision to pardon Weinberger because the charges were serious and
"the place you determine whether they are right or wrong is not on a
television show, but rather a court of law. . . . That's no longer possible
now."

Hamilton said what disturbed him most about the pardons was that in
granting them, Bush showed an "unwillingness to acknowledge that crimes
were committed, that misdeeds and misconduct took place, that Congress was
lied to, that Congress was misled."

Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), who was vice chairman of the Senate
Iran-contra investigating panel and wrote a letter to Walsh as part of an
attempt to head off the indictment of Weinberger, said yesterday the pardon
"was the right thing to do."

He called "appalling" the disclosure by Walsh after the pardons that Walsh
already was investigating why Bush had not earlier turned over his own
newly discovered notes dating back to November 1986.

Rudman did agree with Hamilton, however, that Bush was wrong not to
acknowledge that Iran-contra was more than just the criminalization of
policy differences between the Congress and the Reagan White House.

CIA Director Robert M. Gates, whose agency was caught up in Iran-contra,
yesterday called the affair "a tragedy" because it "not only broke the
trust between the executive and the Congress, but between agencies in the
executive and even within our own agency."

Against the background of three former CIA operatives being among those
pardoned by Bush, Gates said on CBS yesterday that he and his predecessor,
William H. Webster, "had spent now some five years trying to restore that
trust with the Congress, and even within the executive branch, and to an
extent within our own agency."

Among the sharpest critics of the Walsh operation yesterday was Scowcroft,
who was one of three members of a White House panel appointed by
then-President Ronald Reagan in late 1986 to investigate the Iran-contra
affair. In its February 1987 report, the president's special review board,
chaired by the late senator John G. Tower (R-Tex.), concluded that there
had been a breakdown of control over Reagan's National Security Council
staff and that Weinberger and then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz had
"simply distanced themselves from the program . . . and protected the
record as to their own positions on this issue."

Yesterday, Scowcroft dismissed Walsh's prosecutions based on allegations of
perjury and deceiving Congress. Scowcroft said the substantive issues in
the scandal involved finding out whether the White House violated a
congressional ban on shipments of arms to the contras or broke the law by
trading arms for hostages.

Levin said yesterday that his subcommittee would explore what he believed
was the heart of the Walsh indictment, "whether or not Caspar Weinberger,
in the case of his indictment, withheld notes from the Congress and from
the independent counsel as alleged in the indictment, and whether or not he
lied about having notes which were relevant to the critical point, which is
was there an arms-for-hostage deal."

In his television appearance yesterday, Weinberger defended himself against
that charge, saying he misunderstood what prosecutors were asking him in
October 1990 when they inquired about whether he kept notes.

"I had a different understanding of what they meant by notes," the
75-year-old Weinberger said. He said he believed "they were talking about
notes or minutes that you keep at a meeting, and I kept a few of those and
had given them all" to the Defense Department, which had turned them over
to investigators. Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>

APn  12/28 0151  Iran-Contra

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By WILLIAM M. WELCH

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Escalating a bitter war of words, newly pardoned Caspar
Weinberger is accusing the Iran-Contra special prosecutor of trying to
force him to falsely implicate Ronald Reagan in exchange for lenient
treatment.

"Yes, he was trying to coerce false testimony," Weinberger said Sunday in a
strong attack on special counsel Lawrence Walsh after Weinberger's
Christmas Eve pardon by President Bush.

Walsh, who has said he was turning his investigation's focus to Bush after
the pardon, disputed Weinberger's assertion.

"Walsh did not ask Caspar Weinberger to incriminate anyone," said Mary
Belcher, spokeswoman for Walsh. "False testimony is the last thing a
prosecutor wants. All he asked Weinberger for was the truth."

Just a day earlier, Walsh's assistant, James J. Brosnahan, suggested Bush
may have granted pardons to avoid being a witness at Weinberger's trial.

Bush, vacationing in Texas, declined Sunday to answer reporters' questions
on the Iran-Contra affair.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley," Weinberger acknowledged
errors and misstatements in his Iran-Contra testimony to Congress.

But he said he lacked criminal intent, and charged that Walsh had pursued
his indictment only after Weinberger refused to cooperate in the
prosecution of higher ups in the scandal over arms-for-hostages exchanges
with Iran during the Reagan administration.

"Cooperation meant giving them the testimony that they wanted that would
enable them to implicate President Reagan," Weinberger said.

"When they couldn't get that, then they went after me with five felony
counts, all of which they would have been perfectly willing to drop if I
had, quote, `cooperated' with them. And I wasn't going to cooperate with
them," he said.

Weinberger disputed the suggestion that Bush pardoned him to cover his own
tracks.

He acknowledged that his notes indicate Bush, then the vice president,
favored an exchange of 4,000 TOW missiles for hostages during a Jan. 7,
1986 meeting in the Oval Office. But he said the issue was not
arms-for-hostages because Reagan later asserted part of his motive was to
improve relations with Iran.

"The vice president at that time attended some of the meetings. He knew
these discussions were going on. He said so. But, again, whether or not it
was arms for hostages was basically a matter of opinion," Weinberger said.
"The president of the United States then, President Reagan, insisted that
he didn't think it was."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash., said a
White House official whom he did not identify had asked Foley several weeks
ago for his reaction to the potential pardon of Weinberger.

Jeffrey R. Biggs, Foley's press secretary, said the speaker responded that
he "didn't have a recommendation to make, but that ultimately if Mr.
Weinberger was pardoned he wouldn't criticize it."

"He was not advised at any time of the president's actual decision and was
taken totally by surprise by the decision to pardon anyone else," Biggs
said in a telephone interview.

Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., who was co-chairman of the Senate committee
that investigated Iran-Contra, called Weinberger's pardon "the right thing
to do."

Appearing on the Brinkley program, Rudman called Weinberger "one of the
heroes of Iran-Contra" for opposing, privately within the Reagan
administration, the sale of arms to Iran.

He accused Walsh of "vindictiveness beyond belief" for indicting Weinberger
over what he said were "very technical matters."

Both Rudman and Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., who was chairman of the House
Iran-Contra committee, called for full disclosure of relevant portions of
both Weinberger's notes and those of Bush, which Walsh first learned of
this month.

However, White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Friday that any
release of the Bush notes would be contingent on release of the Bush
deposition that Walsh holds.

Walsh said Saturday night that grand jury secrecy requirements bar him from
releasing to the White House Bush's deposition to Iran-Contra prosecutors
in January 1988. Walsh said that since Bush is a subject of the
investigation, he has no choice but to keep the deposition secret.

<<>>

UPn  12/28 0023  Criticism of pardons, special prosecutor mounts

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Criticism of both President Bush and Iran-Contra
independent counsel Lawrence Walsh mounted amid weekend reports Walsh wants
to question Bush about his involvement in the Reagan administration
arms-for-hostages plot.

The fallout from Bush's Christmas Eve pardons of former Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger and five others involved in the Iran-Contra affair
threatened to overshadow the remaining weeks of Bush's presidency.

Congressional leaders said Sunday Walsh's investigation could have been
conducted better, and Senate Republican leader Bob Dole called for Walsh to
step down. Republican Sen. Warren Rudman and Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton
both said President Bush has not recognized that laws were broken in the
scandal.

"What really disturbs me about the president's statement this week is
really not so much the pardons as his just unwillingness to acknowlege that
crimes were committed, that misdeeds and misconduct took place, that
Congress was lied to," said Hamilton, who chaired the House panel that
investigated the affair, on ABC-TV's "This Week with David Brinkley."

Although Rudman said he agreed, he said Bush was correct to pardon
Weinberger because the independent counsel had gone overboard.

"I think crimes were committed. But, quite frankly, I don't think the
special prosecutor did it in the proper way at all," said Rudman, who
appeared on the same program with Hamilton.

Rudman said congressional investigators wanted Walsh to prosecute former
national security aides Oliver North and John Poindexter before they
conducted televised hearings into the affair but Walsh followed his own
agenda instead.

The convictions of both North and Poindexter eventually were overturned
because their criminal trials could have been tainted by testimony given
under immunity during the Congressional hearings.

The Washington Post reported in Sunday's editions that Walsh hoped to
interview the president next month after reviewing Bush's notes. The
newspaper quoted sources who also said Walsh is likely to subpoena the
notes, the existence of which came to Walsh's attention earlier this month.


The White House said over the weekend it would make public the notes
provided Walsh first turn over to the president a copy of his 1988
videotaped testimony before federal investigators.

White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Saturday that Bush is
prepared to release all documents, but that the special prosecutor is
preventing him from doing so.

"Walsh is the only coverup in this investigation," Fitzwater said in an
interview with United Press International.

"We have begged" Walsh to release a transcript of Bush's videotaped
testimony during interrogation by Walsh's office in 1988 when he was vice
president, the press secretary said. "He won't do it."

But Walsh has said there are significant gaps in what has been provided so
far and earlier warned he would take "appropriate action" against what he
called the president's "misconduct."

"It's hard to find an adjective strong enough to characterize a president
who has such contempt for honesty," Walsh told Newsweek. "The pardons are
his constitutional prerogative...but the pardons are relevant to our
inquiry because they prevent further exposure of the coverup."

"The pardons in themselves perfect the coverup," Walsh said.

Weinberger said any suggestion that Bush's pardons were an effort to cover
up his own involvement in the scandal was "rot."

"He didn't save himself from being called (as a witness) by pardoning me.
He can be called any time anybody wants," said Weinberger.

The Iran-Contra affair involved the clandestine sale of U.S. arms to Iran
in exchange for American hostages. Proceeds were secretly diverted to
Nicaraguan rebels despite a congressional ban on U.S. aid to them.

Fitzwater said the president's videotaped testimony and personal notes will
show Bush had no involvement in the Iran-contra affair.

Late Saturday, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole called on Walsh to resign,
saying, "He's not a king, but he obviously believes he's wearing a crown."

"Lawrence Walsh is completely out of control. He's bitter, petty and
vindictive. So now he wants to turn his own six years of incompetence into
a personal vendetta against President Bush," Dole said in a statement.

In addition to Weinberger, Bush also pardoned former national security
adviser Robert McFarlane, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott
Abrams, and three former CIA officials -- Alan Fiers, Duane Clarridge and
Clair George.

All were accused of lying to Congress in an effort to cover up the affair.

National security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who was a member of the Tower
Commission which investigated the scandal for President Reagan, said the
pardons were "a noble and purely compassionate action" by Bush.

He said the special prosecutor "has been working for six years at
horrendous cost to the taxpayer" and with a "cavalier disregard" for
important documents, later explaining that Walsh had once left his
briefcase at an airport curbside.

Scowcroft, who was interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," also said Bush's
notes confirm the then-vice president was "not in the policy loop" when the
Iran-Contra decisions were made.



 Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>