Carter Says Reagan Seems to Be Trying to Hide Iran Facts

ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter says President Reagan appears to be trying to hide the facts of the Iranian-Nicaraguan arms connection from the American people.

In an interview, Carter said that, when Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III acknowledged that arms had been sold to Iran, all Reagan had to do was call in those who knew the details and tell them “he wanted all the facts, to go to your office and write down everything you were involved with.”

Reagan appears to want Congress to have to dig for the facts, meaning they will come out piecemeal, “and that could be more damaging,” Carter said Monday night in the interview at a fund-raising reception for Hamilton Jordan, his former chief of staff who was an unsuccessful candidate this year for the U.S. Senate.

Carter said also that he would not have excluded his secretary of state from a major foreign policy decision the way Secretary of State George P. Shultz apparently was excluded from deliberations on the Iran-Nicaragua affair.