Amateurs Run Amok in Iran Deals : When You Go About Things Wrong, They Turn Out Wrong

Critics of diverse political hue and many different perspectives are united in proclaiming President Reagan’s secret diplomacy and arms deal with Iran a disaster. Some of the controversy is superficial, and will soon fade. It is of no lasting importance whether Robert C. McFarlane used a forged passport or carried to Iran a presentation Bible personally inscribed by the President. Nor does it matter what precise weapons, offensive or defensive, were supplied in the clandestine gun-running. Even the debate over whether the United States paid “ransom” in weapons for the release of hostages, in violation of emphatically declared principle, will subside or become hopelessly entangled in semantics.

The evidence is as yet too fragmentary for us to assess the severity of the wounds that have been inflicted by this debacle on relations with European allies and with conservative Arab states. We do not now know if more hostages will be seized because of the way in which the United States behaved in this instance. We cannot measure the future readiness of Congress and the people to trust the Administration to behave with any respect of law. But the verdict on all these accounts is likely to be bleak.

It is not too soon, however, to offer a reasonably confident judgment concerning the procedure revealed by this affair.

Substance and procedure are inseparable in the conduct of foreign policy. Sound procedure can sometimes retrieve substantive error. Unsound procedure infects all that it touches.

Theoretically it is the role and the responsibility of the President, as the final decision-maker in foreign policy, to grasp the connectedness of all things--to weigh risks against gains in every undertaking, to be sensitive simultaneously to military, diplomatic, economic, legal, moral and domestic political considerations without being dominated by any one of them. In practice no single person can attain such a grasp. That is why the President needs a National Security Council and staff, composed ideally of men and women learned in history, the American system and international affairs in all aspects.The President’s assistant for national security, who heads the staff, should be a person of intellectual authority and analytical power.

The President’s assistant and the staff of the National Security Council must combine the ability to make clear recommendations quickly and to calculate all the ramifications of every course of action.To do both of these things well is obviously as difficult as it is essential. The temptation is great to act in secret, with the smallest number of participants on any question. It is also dangerous, because the walls of secrecy lock knowledge in two directions.

In the Iranian affair the walls excluded the Joint Chiefs of Staff altogether, andthe professional intelligence community almost entirely. The secretaries of state and defense had a vague idea of what was going on, disapproved, and were cut out. The President apparently ordered the director of central intelligence to violate the legal obligation to report “significant” covert activity to congressional intelligence oversight committees. Secretary of State George P. Shultz privately and publicly opposed the transfer of arms to Iran, but had to confess that he does not speak for the Administration. Two other secretaries of state in this century found themselves in comparable positions. They did the honorable thing and resigned. They were William Jennings Bryan in 1915 and Cyrus R. Vance in 1980.

The blockade against knowledge flowing in the other direction, to the National Security Council staff and the President’s assistant, is even more serious. The problem is not new, but in the past it has been mitigated by the intellectual power and learning of assistants like McGeorge Bundy for John F. Kennedy, Henry A. Kissinger for Richard M. Nixon, and Zbigniew Brzezinski for Jimmy Carter. Whether one agrees with everything that the above trio did, one must see that they had a broad grasp of how issues are connected. The verdict of history on President Reagan is that he selected mediocrities as national-security assistants and changed them as often as managers on a losing baseball team. He seemed oblivious that anything was wrong.

In the present situation the NSC staff not only isolated itself and the President from a sense of how the Iranian affair was connected with other national interests, but it also undertook to launch and manage secret field operations. A director of those operations, the legendary Lt. Col. Oliver North, appears to be a specialist in covert deals and the evasion of legal obligation, whether in Nicaragua or Iran.

The NSC staff and the presidential assistant should be the President’s open and impartial mind for foreign policy. Nothing closes a mind faster than addiction to secrecy--especially secrecy wielded against the secretaries of the great departments charged with national security and foreign policy. Nothing destroys impartiality faster than being directly involved in operations against the judgments and even the knowledge of those secretaries and Congress.

The immediate victim of such procedure is the President. The ultimate victim is an effective foreign policy.