Analysis : Impatience With Legal Restrictions : Iran Deal Attributed to Security Staff’s Zeal

The startling secret operations that became the Iran- contras scandal sprang from a combination of attitudes among members of President Reagan’s national security team, knowledgeable sources say--a combination of ideological zeal and impatience with legal restrictions that interfered with working the President’s will.

And the lack of restraint those attitudes fostered among senior officials was magnified by the President’s own disengagement from even such important details of his own Administration as the arms-and-hostages negotiations with Tehran, according to sources both inside and outside the government.

Results-Oriented

“There is an appearance that key people in the Administration are more results-oriented than they are oriented to staying within the law,” said one senior official, adding that “the appearance is growing and, if that attitude is ever actually attributed to the President in any way, he’s in big trouble. He’s got to stress playing by the rules.”

To be sure, the long-term strategic importance of better U.S. relations with Iran and the emotion-charged problem of American hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon would have posed serious challenges for any Administration.

And the on-again, off-again attitude of Congress toward U.S. support for the anti-Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua was deeply frustrating to an Administration that believes halting Marxism in Central America is vital to national security.

Nonetheless, knowledgeable sources say, the decision to deal with these problems through a series of high-risk clandestine activities that bent the spirit if not the letter of existing laws was rooted in Reagan’s personal disengagement, coupled with the mind-set that developed within the Administration after his landslide reelection in 1984.

It was these factors that led officials to approve secret arms shipments to Iran at a time when the Administration was publicly pressuring other nations to honor a U.S. embargo on such trade, to divert profits from these shipments to secret Swiss bank accounts for the benefit of the Nicaraguan contras in the face of a congressional ban on military aid for the guerrillas and to promote the creation and financing of a clandestine air supply system for the contras that would have been all but impossible to operate without U.S. government sanction.

“What we know from studying previous presidents is that when you get a two-term President after a big election win, a combination of fatigue and arrogance sets in” that can lead to serious lapses in judgment, said Norman Ornstein, a government specialist at the American Enterprise Institute here, in assessing what led White House and other Administration officials into such ventures.

“A smashing mandate gives an inflated sense of where you are,” he said, describing the impact of a Reagan-like landslide on government officials.

‘Uniquely Flawed’

Similarly, Larry J. Sabato, professor of government at the University of Virginia, said the Reagan Administration is “uniquely flawed” because of a combination of factors not found in previous administrations:

Key positions held by ideologues, overconfidence because of a landslide election and high ratings in the polls and a President out of touch with the details of government.

“This Administration is the most ideological in modern American history and therefore more zealots have been appointed to major positions than has been the case in other administrations,” Sabato said.

“We also never have had a President so disengaged from the details of government. So the zealots who were in place had more authority and more leeway than presidential staffs have had in most administrations,” he said.

The final factor was the 1984 election returns: “Presidential aides, if not presidents, tend to misinterpret landslides, believing they have more authority and power than they do. . . . That is when the arrogance tends to take deep root,” Sabato said.

A former senior aide to Reagan who maintains close ties to the Administration agreed: “They have counted on one fact above all others in good times and bad times--the President’s popularity. And when things have not gone well at the White House, they have said: ‘But look at the President’s popularity--he’s the most popular one in modern times.’ And then they have swept under the carpet any criticism or problems.”

Access to President

During the last two years, this former aide said, the White House has “turned inward,” with Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan controlling all access to the President and failing to consult with outside Reagan supporters.

Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute also placed heavy responsibility on Chief of Staff Regan: “He systematically purged the White House of anybody with any independent standing or political judgment and there was no flow back to the President of people who were out there in the real world--not inside the unreal world of the White House--who would say this is nuts.”

Ultimately, though, responsibility for the way the White House has operated in the last two years rests with Reagan himself, Ornstein said.

“It’s one thing to have a style, as President (Dwight D.) Eisenhower had, where you delegate an enormous amount to the chief of staff who manages the White House but you play a very significant role in picking your chief of staff. It’s very different when you get down to the next level, where you don’t play a major role in picking your chief of staff,” he said.

Ornstein noted that Regan, who served as Treasury secretary during the Administration’s first term, became head of the White House staff after proposing a straight job-swap with then-Chief of Staff James A. Baker III. The President is understood to have acceded to the wishes of the two aides without lengthy deliberations.

Ornstein, Sabato and others noted that previous presidents have held strong ideological views and appointed like-minded staffs but said they generally had kept zealous aides in check by taking an active part in policy-making and operations.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was considered to have a highly ideological Administration, the University of Virginia’s Sabato said, but “Roosevelt was very, very much engaged, very much involved in the formation of policy. So clearly he was in charge and the people under him were responsible to him.”

James David Barber, a Duke University political science professor and author of several books, including “The Presidential Character,” said Reagan is one of a number of presidents who “dislike conflicts up close and are ready to go with what people around them say is the right thing to do.”

Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), a close friend of the President who appeared on television’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, noted that Reagan has never paid much attention to detail. And he said:

“Under this Administration, you have a President who freely delegates, and that has served him well generally. This may be one of those areas and one of those times when perhaps it hasn’t served him all that well.”

Especially with regard to the contras, Reagan not only has delegated heavily but has encouraged those who sought to get around the congressional ban on U.S. military assistance to the contras. Not only did White House aides work actively to encourage so-called private aid--including contributions from at least one foreign government--but the President dismissed questions raised about such efforts by saying in October that “we’re in a free country where private citizens have a great many freedoms.”

Spreading Controversy

Struggling to extricate himself from the spreading controversy, the President, however, struck a different note in his weekly radio address Saturday. “We live in a country that requires we operate within rules and laws, all of us,” he said.

“Just cause and deep concern and noble ends can never be reason enough to justify improper actions or excessive means,” he declared. And, while continuing to defend his policies, Reagan for the first time acknowledged that mistakes had been made in implementing them.

Clearly, that has been a hard point for the Administration to arrive at.