Ex, Lies and Videotape Confused by Iran-contra?

By MARGARET CARLSON

Sure, said Ronald Reagan, he believed in the Nicaraguan contras and wanted them to prosper. But he never instructed his aides to violate a congressional prohibition on giving them Government aid. He never knew that the profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been used to arm the anti-Sandinista guerrillas. His admonition to his staff, he insisted, was always, "We don't break the law."

Amiable and avuncular as ever, the former President, now 79, emerged from retirement to reprise his role as the chief of state who grasped the big picture but did not bother with the little one. During eight hours of videotaped testimony in a Los Angeles courtroom on Feb. 16 and 17 (a 293-page transcript was released last week), Reagan occasionally bantered with the Iran-contra special prosecutor and with lawyers for former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, who faces trial on five counts of obstructing a congressional investigation and making false statements to Congress. He gave no sign that he had resisted being called to testify as a defense witness for Poindexter.

But if Poindexter's lawyers had hoped that Reagan's testimony would help their cause, they must have been disappointed. They maintain that the former President had given Poindexter what they both believed were directions that circumvented the congressional ban on aid to the rebels. Reagan provided little support for that contention.

Instead he reverted to his earliest version of his conduct during the Iran- contra affair, insisting that he knew little or nothing about many key aspects of the fiasco. He provided a scrambled account of the origins of secret arms shipments to Iran that contradicted the testimony of other witnesses and evidence assembled by various investigations. He asserted, for example, that the idea had been broached by "a group of individuals, citizens of Iran," who wanted to lay the groundwork for better relations with the U.S. after the Ayatullah Khomeini died. Both the Tower commission and congressional investigating committees concluded that the deal had in fact been concocted by Israeli officials working with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian businessman with links to Khomeini's inner circle. The transactions were handled by National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, with Reagan's approval.

On specific meetings, memos, dates, names, Reagan's mind was pretty much a blank. General Vessey? "Oh dear, I could ask for help here. The name I know is very familiar." (It should be: he was Reagan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.) Adolfo Calero? Reagan could not recall the most famous of the contra leaders even after he was shown a picture of the two of them together at a White House gathering. He had somehow missed the fact that McFarlane pleaded guilty in 1988 to withholding information from Congress. Shown the section of the Tower commission report that demonstrates that at least in early 1987 he was able to recall that profits from Iran arms sales were used to buy weapons for the contras, he professed surprise. "This is the first time I have ever seen that."

Even on those matters he could recall, Reagan seemed to undermine Poindexter's defense. He had "no recollection" of seeing letters Poindexter sent to Congress in 1986 falsely certifying that the Administration was complying "with the spirit and the letter" of the Boland amendment banning military assistance to the contras. As for siphoning off profits from the arms sales, Reagan stated, "All I knew was that there was some money that came from someplace in another account, and that the appearance was that it might have been a part of the negotiated sale. And to this day, I don't have any $ information or knowledge that . . . there had been a diversion." Had he learned of any excess profit, Reagan declared, "I would have given it back" to Iran.

With reporting by Jerome Cramer/Washington