GUEST BLOG / By Michael Wines, Los Angeles Times,
Staff Writer, Aug. 13, 1987--President
Reagan, conceding “there’s nothing I can say that will make the situation
right,” Wednesday offered the bluntest apology he has made thus far for his
role in the Iran- contra scandal, then pledged to press ahead with a familiar
agenda of domestic and foreign policy goals during the rest of his term.
In an 18-minute speech billed
as a final comment on Congress’ summerlong inquiry into the affair, Reagan said
that Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar W.
Weinberger had been right in warning him that secret arms sales to Iran would
become a political debacle if made public.
He appeared also to rebuke a
central figure in the drama, former National Security Adviser John M.
Poindexter, for failing to tell him that $3.5 million in Iran arms profits were
diverted to Nicaragua’s rebels.
“The admiral testified he
wanted to protect me,” Reagan said. “Yet no President should ever be protected
from the truth. No operation is so secret that it must be kept from the
commander-in-chief.”
Although his words were more
contrite than in previous remarks on the scandal, the President went no further
Wednesday in accepting blame or responsibility for the scandal as a major
foreign policy blunder than he had in his last major statement March 4.
The President did not concede
that his approval of the Iranian arms sales was not merely a political misstep
but a strategic blunder--as both Shultz and Weinberger told him in 1985, before
arms shipments were begun and again in 1986.
Omits Criticism
And Reagan pointedly omitted
any direct criticism of Poindexter or his aide, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, for
proceeding with the diversion of money from the arms sales to the contras, the
disclosure of which last November plunged the White House into the worst
political crisis in a decade.
“Col. North and Adm.
Poindexter believed they were doing what I would’ve wanted done--keeping the
democratic resistance alive in Nicaragua,” Reagan said. “I believed then, and I
believe now, in preventing the Soviets from establishing a beachhead in Central
America.”
In the one-third of the
speech devoted to the scandal, Reagan called for the White House and Congress
to “regain trust in each other,” describing steps he has taken to prevent a
recurrence of abuses in the executive branch but declaring that closer cooperation
between the two arms of government on sensitive foreign-policy matters is the
best way to keep a tight rein over secret initiatives.
“In the end, this may be the
eventual blessing in disguise to come out of the Iran-contra mess,” he said.
Reagan’s speech came amid
signs that public trust in his presidency is undergoing at least partial
recovery after 10 months of damaging disclosures, although White House
spokesman Marlin Fitzwater conceded this week that the Iran-contra issue “will
be with us for the rest of the Administration.”
An ABC-Washington Post
opinion poll concluded that about half of the nation still believes that Reagan
is not telling the full truth about the scandal, compared to 69% in June, when
the House and Senate Iran-contra hearings were getting under way.
In an apparent effort to show
that he considers the affair behind him, Reagan devoted most of Wednesday’s
address to the sort of conservative agenda which he said got him elected in
1981 and to which he pledged to devote “my heart and my energies for the
remainder of my term.”
“There are now 17 months left
in this Administration, and I want them to be prosperous, productive ones,”
Reagan said. " . . . Up until the morning I leave this house, I intend to
do what you sent me here to do--lead the nation toward the goals we agreed on
when you elected me.”
His most ardent remarks,
however, were reserved for Central America, where he said Nicaraguans under the
Sandinista regime are “still burning for freedom” as neighboring U.S.-backed
nations institute democratic reforms.
‘Committed’ to Contras
He expressed hope that a
peace plan signed last week by five Central American leaders will lead to
democratic changes in Nicaragua but stressed that he is “totally committed” to
U.S.-backed contra forces opposing the Sandinistas.
White House officials had
promised that Reagan’s address would be devoid of any bitterness or anger over
the Iran-contra affair and the President himself showed none Wednesday evening,
though he said that occasionally he had been “mad as a hornet” over the affair.
The only remark in Reagan’s
speech that appeared to border on bitterness was near the conclusion, when the
President urged Congress to be “as thorough and energetic” in enacting his
conservative agenda “as it was in pursuing the recent investigation” into the
scandal.
Addressing his own
credibility troubles stemming from the scandal, Reagan said at the start of his
speech that he knew the months of revelations had been “confusing and painful”
for the nation and that many people still doubted that the truth had been
brought out.
Cooperated With Congress
He said, however, that he had
cooperated fully and willingly with Congress, supplying some 250,000 White
House documents and “parts of my own diaries” to investigators.
Reagan also declared that the
results of investigations made public so far had produced facts that “I don’t
like:”
--Shultz and Weinberger, he
said, had warned him before the Iran arms sales began that “the American people
would assume that this whole plan was an arms for hostages deal and nothing
more. Unfortunately, they were right.”
--Reagan’s own concerns for
hostages held by radicals in Lebanon--"Americans in chains, deprived of
their freedom and families so far from home"--swayed his judgment about
the arms sales, he said. “This was a mistake.”
--The President said he had
thought often about how to explain to the public what he had hoped the Iran
project would accomplish, without success. “The fact of the matter is that
there’s nothing I can say that will make the situation right,” he said, in what
was perhaps the most frank admission of the entire speech. “I was stubborn in
my pursuit of a policy that went astray.”
The President was less
contrite about North’s and Poindexter’s secret support of the Nicaraguan
rebels, although allegations stemming from their operations ultimately were
more politically damaging to the White House than the Iran project itself.
Denies Diversion Knowledge
He repeated that he knew the
contras were receiving aid from foreign countries and private citizens, and
added “in capital letters” that he did not know North was diverting Iran arms
profits to the rebels. “Indeed,” he said, “I didn’t know there were excess
funds” from the sales to divert.
The President disagreed with
Poindexter, who had assumed responsibility for the diversion in the
House-Senate hearings, saying that “the buck does not stop with Adm.
Poindexter, as he stated in his testimony; it stops with me. I am the one who
is ultimately accountable to the American people.”
However, Reagan did not say
in his address whether he approved of Poindexter’s and North’s secret funneling
of arms and money to the rebels.
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