REAGAN CHANGES HIS STORY
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports on
the worsening difficulties of a President who contradicts himself
Washington RONALD Reagan believes that he and his autocratic chief of staff, Donald Regan, are both descended from the same Irish king. A genealogical report to the Presi- dent concluded that they are cousins, which may explain how Regan can publicly refer to the head of state as 'the other guy . . . the one who can't spell his name right'. It may also help explain why President Reagan has been so reluctant to fire the man who is crippling his administration, and who seems to be sacrificing the Presi- dent's reputation in order to save his own. Investigators have sunk their teeth into one question in particular: did Reagan give advance approval to the Israeli arms sales to Iran of September 1985, or did he just accept an Israeli fait accompli? Robert McFarlane, then national security adviser, has testified in Congress that Reagan told him over the telephone to go ahead with the Israeli operation. A month ago, Reagan seemed resigned to this version, despite the danger that he might have broken US law by failing to sign an intelligence finding first. He told the Tow- er Commission, a panel of worthies set up by the White House to look into the National Security Council, that he could not remember exactly what happened but thought McFarlane's story sounded right.
Snag. Don Regan had already told the Senate Intelligence Committee under oath that the President did not approve the Israeli shipment, which means the chief of staff could face conviction for perjury and, conceivably, a stint in prison. So according to a leaked report in the Los Angeles Times, the President went back to the Tower Commission on 11 February and recanted, saying that perhaps Don Regan was right after all.
It is possible that Don Regan is telling the truth, but there's hardly a soul in Washington who believes him. 'All of the evidence would indicate that the President did at least give a conditional OK to going ahead with the Israeli part of the Iran arms transfer in August of 1985,' says Senator David Durenberger, chairman of the In- telligence Committee during December's investigation, adding that McFarlane's can- did narrative was more convincing than Regan's guarded reliance on memos and scheduling sheets. In any case, McFarlane, a decent marine colonel whose greatest flaw is perhaps to be too trusting, has been the most open of the key figures in the affair, talking at length on television and to the press. He has slid from remorse to depression, to an overdose of Valium.
President Reagan's changing story has made a dreadful impression, making him look senile and a puppet of his chief of staff. For this Don Regan is now being vilified, and he has no allies near the President to defend him. Women, whom he once insulted by saying they prefer jewellery to justice, may be the occasion of his downfall. Both Nancy and Maureen Reagan want him out.
The cabinet is also adamant. The col- umnist David Broder wrote recently that the key secretaries, George Shultz at the State Department, Caspar Weinberger at the Pentagon, and James Baker at the Treasury, would all resign over the next few months unless Regan went. For two years the chief of staff has concentrated power, closely guarding access to the Presi- dent, running out aides who challenged him, and replacing them, say critics, with his own servants, known as 'the Mice'. Regan runs the White House as he once ran Merrill Lynch on Wall Street: tyranni- cally, screaming at staff, stifling debate, greedy for quick results, and impatient of obstacles, in this case Congress, the media and civil servants. On Wall Street it some- times meant making money on the edge of the law. In the White House it has meant governing by the same principles, letting the NSC become an 'action agency' for covert operations. Having boasted that nothing gets done at the White House without him, he has no defence against miscreant aides.
The President, who likes playing chair- man of the board to a chief executive officer who takes care of details, has at last accepted the inevitable. On Tuesday, the White House said the President would decide Regan's fate after the Tower Com- mission's much awaited report was released at the end of the week, apparently on the grounds that the report would blame the NSC for the sins of `Iragua', vindicating the chief of staff and letting him resign with honour. That may now seem a forlorn hope.
America's television networks, which one might have thought were members of the Tower Commission themselves, such is their fore-knowledge of its several hundred page report, claim that it accuses Regan of `doctoring' a White House chronology of Iragua. This so-called '011ie chronology', named after you know who, was never served to the public but is taken as evi- dence of at least intent to deceive.
Nor will Regan's exit have quite the salutary effect that was once expected. America has been hit by a blunderbuss over the last two weeks. There were plans to invade Libya. Last year's bombing raid was a failed assassination attempt on Gad- dafi after all. An inter-agency task force, led by 011ie of course, was empowered by the President to kidnap terrorists through- out the world and just now America. The new White House communications direc- tor was a Nazi — aged ten to ten and a half — and so forth. Much of it is what William Safire calls `storyitis', otherwise known as sensationalism. It can look awful, or sensi- ble, or trivial depending on the spin, and just now it looks awful.
But there may be a real horror tucked away in the Tower Report. In December, the tiny Lowell Sun scooped the grand press with a claim that 011ie had given some of the Iran profits to Republican slush funds. The Washington Post set a pack on the story but found nothing, which, it concluded derisively, meant that the story was therefore untrue. The last laugh may be on the Washington Post. The Tower Commission has had access to the computer archives of the NSC, which include chit-chat that 011ie and friends probably thought had been erased. These communications, Iragua's equivalent of the Watergate tapes, show not only that the NSC was working on a cover-up, but also, according to Cable News network, that North gave up to five million dollars of Contra money to 15 right-wing organisa- tions, some of which spend it on television advertisments insulting Democrats.
Even so, the worst suspicion, that the Tower Commission would find evidence that the CIA director, Bill Casey, was using the NSC as a shield to hide from congressional intelligence oversight, has not been confirmed, at least not in the early leaks from the Report. Moreover, little has come out that fingers the Presi- dent personally, instead of just telling us more about 011ie — except for one haunt- ing detail. Last year Reagan met, strange- ly, with a low-level CIA agent who was later exposed for helping the Contra supply operation in Costa Rica. Could it be that the President really was in cahoots with the Contras, and that 011ie North was his secret chief of staff all along? A ghastly thought.
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