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Iran contra scandal tarnished credibility { June 6 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/06/06/CONTRA.TMPhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/06/06/CONTRA.TMP
Iran-Contra scandal tarnished credibility
But Americans forgave president after he admitted arms-for-hostages deal was a mistake
- Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 6, 2004
For Richard Nixon, the nadir was Watergate; for Bill Clinton, it was Monica Lewinsky. George W. Bush's lowest moment may have come before he even took office -- with a disputed election by the U.S. Supreme Court. For Ronald Reagan, the worst political moment of his eight years in the White House was Iran-Contra, the notorious arms-for-hostages scheme that nearly toppled his presidency.
Surprisingly, given the bad taste left in the nation's mouth by the Iran-Contra affair, particularly in the televised oiliness of its leading characters and the 14 criminal prosecutions mounted against most of them, Reagan not only survived but was essentially forgiven -- by the country and, in a way, by the special prosecutor who went after him.
"He was a very understandable, humane person, and his instincts for the country's good were right," retired federal Judge Lawrence Walsh, who served as the Iran-Contra special prosecutor, said in an interview. The problem, Walsh added, was that Reagan had been warned by his secretaries of defense and state that the secret operation was illegal and that he went ahead with it anyway.
"Iran-Contra," which unfolded in the mid-1980s, became the sobriquet for a complicated back-channel operation that went like this:
-- U.S. government officials violated an arms embargo by secretly selling weapons to Iran.
-- The arms were initially funneled through Israel. In return, Iran was supposed to help free American hostages held in Lebanon.
-- Then the officials used the profits from the arms sales to illegally help the Nicaraguan "Contra" -- for counterrevolutionary -- rebels who were fighting that country's duly elected Marxist government. At the time, Congress, through the Boland Amendment, had prohibited U.S. aid to the Contras.
After the story broke in November 1986, the Reagan administration did its best to cover it up, lying to Congress to such an extent that Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was charged with four counts of perjury and making false statements. He was saved from trial only by a last-minute 1992 Christmas Eve pardon from Reagan's successor, George Bush.
But Iran-Contra was much more than a simple case of sending weapons to Iran and money to Nicaragua. Unfolding news reports painted a colorful picture of retired generals, CIA contract guys and what the media loved to call "shadowy middlemen" running a stand-alone, off-the-shelf illegal guerrilla operation out of the White House -- and thus avoiding having to deal with a cumbersome and irksome Congress, with all its rules and niceties.
An earnestly unctuous Marine Corps lieutenant colonel named Oliver North became an icon of the American right wing when he testified blithely before Congress about how the scheme worked and how righteous it was. A blousy secretary named Fawn Hall, who worked for North, became nearly as famous as her office shredder.
Walsh and his Office of the Independent Counsel spent seven years and more than $37 million investigating Iran-Contra, and in the end, their big fish -- North and national security adviser John Poindexter -- had their convictions reversed on appeal. And a few other high officials, like Weinberger, were ultimately pardoned by President Bush (the elder).
For Reagan, Iran-Contra appeared an almost irredeemable personal wound.
"As the whole thing unraveled, what was significant was what it did to Reagan's credibility," said Lou Cannon, the veteran political writer and author of the biography "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime." "He had enormous credibility with the American people, even with people who completely disagreed with him. This was one of the rare cases where he didn't level with the American people. He came across as untruthful and evasive."
Reagan's admission in March 1987 that "it was a mistake" to trade weapons for hostages was what saved his reputation, according to Cannon.
Reagan said at the time, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
In the end, Walsh's 1,200-page report on the scandal, released in January 1994, criticized Reagan but found that the president had done nothing illegal.
Cannon said that in the long run, Iran-Contra will not be "particularly devastating to the Reagan legacy. Watergate destroyed Nixon. And the Lewinsky scandal, while it didn't destroy Clinton in terms of getting him removed from office, made him a much more incremental president."
In retrospect, Reagan did, in fact, turn out to be the "Teflon president." Even decades after he left office, much of Iran-Contra was relegated to the history books, while Reagan continued to top national popularity polls.
Judge Walsh, who was as much a nemesis to Reagan as special prosecutor Kenneth Starr was to Clinton, ultimately found a soft spot in his heart for the aging ex-president. He said that when he visited Reagan in Los Angeles in 1992 to take his statement in connection with the investigation, "his personal (health) condition was obvious. I was convinced he could no longer remember things to do with the investigation."
Walsh said that in conversation, Reagan "would grasp at things that he would try to remember. One was about being with (Mikhail) Gorbachev in Geneva. Another was about a conversation with Maggie Thatcher. He was obviously grabbing at things that had left a deeper imprint on his memory.
"He took me to the window and showed me all the buildings in Los Angeles, explained them to me. It was a very moving experience."
E-mail Michael Taylor at mtaylor@sfchronicle.com.
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