White House at Odds With Weinberger, Speakes Says

Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes said today the White House is “a little bit at odds” with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger over Weinberger’s assertion that President Reagan got bad advice about Iran.

In comments Wednesday in Paris to French reporters, the defense secretary said the President’s advisers were wrong in telling him that there were moderate elements in Iran with whom Washington could negotiate. Weinberger said it appeared that there is no one to talk with in Tehran except “fanatical lunatics.”

“Obviously the President is on the record and so are the rest of us that there were moderate factions in Iran that we were dealing with,” Speakes said, “so we are a little bit at odds with the secretary on that one.”

“The secretary said the President got bad advice,” the spokesman added. “Well, the President made the decision, the President has taken responsibility for the decision he made, and it’s his, advice or no advice, good advice, bad advice or mediocre advice.

“So I don’t know what else to argue with Weinberger about,” Speakes said.

Earlier, Speakes had said he had not read Weinberger’s remarks and added, “I’d like to see his full text before I cut him off at the knees.”

Weinberger told the reporters in France that what Reagan was trying to do “was to open an agreement and an arrangement with people whom he had been advised were of a far different character than the people he was quite properly denouncing as being fanatical lunatics in Iran.

“I think unfortunately some of that advice has not turned out to have been accurate or correct,” he added.

With investigations into the Iran affair now in progress, Weinberger said, “We will find out whether or not the President was not only being given bad advice but was being deceived along with the American people.”