The Good Soldier

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

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 woolly-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, as 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 Roberto 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 that "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 reporters. "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.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington