Adrenaline Flows in Washington as Iran Arms Deal Unfolds

Jayne Ikard, a long-time Washington socialite and town observer, knew the Iranian arms deal had completely consumed the town when the gossip about it seeped into the city’s one apolitical zone, the weight-lifting room at the YMCA.

“You go there to do your quiet pumping of iron, and the next thing you know, these people who are into physical fitness and very me-oriented pause around the equipment and discuss the situation at the White House,” said Ikard. “That is very unusual.”

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America and the chief lobbyist for the Hollywood film industry, agreed that this has become a city obsessed. “No question this has become lunchtime, dinnertime and cocktail-party conversation,” he said. “It reminds me of people who go to see Evel Knievel jump the Snake River Canyon. You go because you think he might fall in. It’s the intrigue, the mesmerizing fascination of watching two trains collide.”

Pummeled With Questions

Scandals have bruised every administration in the last 20 years, though some far more than others. As press secretary to President Jimmy Carter, Jody Powell was pummeled with press questions about the unfolding bank overdraft scandal of budget director Bert Lance, in much the same way he, now a columnist, throws out questions about the arms deal.

Having seen Washington scandal from both sides, Powell said, “The big difference is, if you’re on the inside (of the White House), you wake up every morning and you hate to read the newspapers. If you’re on the outside you wake up every morning and you can’t wait to read the newspapers.

“The adrenaline flows no matter which side you’re on. Having been on the receiving end I can’t help but have a little sympathy.

“The town certainly goes into a frenzy. You never realize what a company town it is until something like this happens. The garbage men are talking about it, the people at other tables at restaurants are talking about it, stewardesses are asking you about it when you get on a plane. It dominates conversation in a way that has no parallel anywhere else.”

Powell said no one will know whether this frenzy has been unfair until all the facts are known. The search for the facts is dominating everything. Even the First Lady’s press tour of the White House Christmas decorations evolved into a mini-press conference this week. A reporter asked Nancy Reagan whether it was true that President Reagan had angrily told her to get off his back about firing Chief of Staff Donald Regan, as had been reported in one newspaper.

“No,” she replied, standing in front of a two-foot gingerbread house.

Are they fighting at all?

“No,” she said.

Do they ever fight?

“We disagree sometimes,” she said, as Ed McMahon, dressed as Santa Claus, stood helplessly by her side, perhaps thinking that Johnny Carson is a more polite questioner. “Everybody disagrees sometimes.”

Do they disagree about Regan?

“No, now this is Christmas,” she said.

Christmas or not, from the weight room to the White House, the arms deal--the Hollywood-like scenario of the U.S. secretly selling arms to Iran through Israel and having enormous profits go through Swiss banks to the Nicaraguan contras --is all anyone can talk about.

‘Fascinated by It’

“People with intellectual curiosity are fascinated by it,” said Christopher Matthews, House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s press secretary.

Ikard put it another way.

“Washingtonians are always happiest when they’re talking about something they know nothing about and cannot be proven incorrect,” she explained.

Scandals come and go in Washington, but while they’re here they overwhelm the inhabitants, who, after all, live in a company town. Government is the industry. Most Washingtonians either are in it, advise it, lobby it or report about it, and when its wheels start to fall off, everyone must pay attention, lest his life be the one that skids off the fast track. When it’s all over, the villains of today become the best-selling authors of tomorrow, and everyone is happy.

But for now, Washington is running hard in a gossip Olympics, fueled mostly by questions.

What did the President not know, and when did he not know it?

Will anybody go to jail?

Will Lt. Col. Oliver J. North, the deal’s apparent organizer who has invoked the Fifth Amendment, eventually tell all--and when?

And there is also the heartfelt question only Washingtonians might think to ask, “How can I benefit from this?”

Press Corps Scramble

One group that needn’t bother to ask that question is the city’s approximately 10,000 reporters. This is the stuff from which scoops--and even Pulitzer Prizes--germinate and the press corps is scrambling day and night, aided largely by coffee, aspirin and Visine.

“We don’t have meals,” said UPI reporter Helen Thomas, who has covered the White House since the Kennedy Administration. “We eat out of the (vending) machine. Candy bars and peanuts,” she said.

“Every journalist feels he has a chance to make a name for himself on this,” said a White House aide who often deals with the press. “The people at the second-tier newspapers can use this to move up to the first tier.”

While White House aides are said to be in despair, one of them described the reporters’ mood as “excited.”

“That’s fair,” said CBS reporter Bill Plante, president of the White House Correspondents Assn. Plante said the public may not share reporters’ zeal to “get to the bottom of something extremely complicated.” He cited a letter from Paul Beale of Emmitsburg, Md., that typified viewers’ dismay. Wrote Beale: “We wish we had a button on our TV that we could press and have your camera bounce billiard balls off your head when you start irresponsible babbling.”

Writers and television anchor people are not the only ones with bags under their eyes.

Photographer Jean-Louis Atlan of the Sygma News Agency, which provides photos to Newsweek and other publications around the world, spent 12 hours in the chilly rain outside North’s house, protecting his camera equipment with plastic bags. He did not get a photo. He never saw him.

Because North’s home is in Great Falls, Va., Atlan had to rise at 4:30 a.m. to get there by 6 a.m. Despite his lack of success, he was back at 6 a.m. the next day, which happened to be Thanksgiving.

North felt so sorry for the stakeout crew that he came out and posed for pictures four hours later.

“North said to us, ‘You can have a shot and leave and have a good Thanksgiving,’ ” said Atlan.

In the long hours of waiting, the stakeout crew became familiar with the members of North’s family (his daughter waves as she leaves in a pickup truck), his dog (who seemed to register his opinion by trotting up to the press, squatting and leaving a remembrance) and even his laundry.

“This is the third time I’ve been here and I haven’t seen him yet,” said Newsweek photographer Wally McNamee outside North’s house early one morning. “This place tells you a lot about Oliver North. It’s in disarray. He’s a busy guy who can’t afford help. The fence needs work, and that pile of stuff (clothes heaped at the end of a clothesline) has been there since last Tuesday.”

The Norths have an intercom box, through which Mrs. North told a reporter, “The reporters have not bothered me. We have a fence.” Asked if she were concerned about what the future holds, she said, “No, I’m really not. What I’m concerned about is taking my children to the doctor for their earaches.”

Around the Capitol, members of Congress flock to press conferences and hearings to examine the problem, and maybe make names for themselves along the way. (Did you really know who Sam Ervin was before Watergate?)

In a very unusual personal criticism of a colleague, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) lashed out at Sen. Ernest (Fritz) Hollings (D-S.C) for raising certain questions about the President’s conduct during the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation.

‘Zealous Pursuit of Headlines’

“Our citizens do not want to see us run roughshod over people’s rights in a zealous pursuit of headlines and political gamesmanship,” fumed Thurmond.

“What’s interesting to watch is the scurrying on the Senate side among members who literally kill each other to get on these Senate select committees,” said Mark Goodin, Thurmond’s press secretary, who probably did not literally mean that they literally kill each other.

“A lot is done under the guise of, ‘We want to get to the bottom of this,’ ” said Goodin. “There is a cacophony of voices trying to get to the bottom of this.

“But it shouldn’t surprise anybody that there are individual motives here. People want publicity. They want headlines. They want media coverage. The more outrageous the statements, the more they get scoffed up by the news shows.”

Goodin said that not all members act this way, but that certainly some do, though he declined to name them.

“The public knows a political cheap shot when they see it,” said Goodin. “None of these guys are fooling anybody.”

Launched From Obscurity

One member of Congress who has been launched from obscurity by the ordeal is Rep. Dante Fascell (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which is also probing the matter.

People around the country who had never heard of Fascell before are now watching him on the televised hearings and jamming his office phone lines, “some saying he’s too soft, some saying he’s crucifying the witnesses, one very upset because he lit up his pipe and was poisoning the room, and some people call to give their philosophy of life,” said Fascell’s beleaguered press secretary, Barbara Burris.

Elsewhere in the city, government power seekers keep a close watch on the human toll, and every time another high official looks ready to fall, a few dozen people wonder if they will rise to take his place.

“This town reeks of that kind of thinking,” said Valenti. “This situation is a haven for those who have fallen from power and regard the day of their resurrection as a shining moment to be contemplated.”

But personal gain is not the only strong thread in the tapestry of Washington thought these days. There is concern expressed for the human toll that comes with any scandal; there is anguish that the image of American democracy is again being tarnished.

And, finally, there is hope that good can come out of the current revelations.

“I’ve always in both business and politics felt like you learn by whatever mistakes are made,” Valenti said. “I often repeat the saying that he who does not read history is doomed to repeat it.

“John Kennedy learned from the Bay of Pigs, Lyndon Johnson learned from Vietnam and Richard Nixon learned from Watergate. There is no question there will be lessons learned as long as people have hospitable memories.”