A COUNTRY UNDER COVER : On Teaching North: Far Too Many Grays

I taught Ollie North at the U.S. Naval War College, just before he went to the White House staff. Even then he was very sure and very smart. He also had the qualities of style, gallantry and confident patriotism that characterized so many top-flight professional military officers. I could tell that I, the old fud of an ambassador, was not getting through. I was presenting too many ambiguities, too many shades of gray. I was too skeptical, had seen too many foreign-policy failures and had too little faith that resolute action, ideological commitment and the willingness to smash constraints could turn the world around.

My vision of the “evil empire” was not clear enough for Ollie North. Perhaps mine is the regret all teachers feel. I had my chance and did not teach my student much--or at least not enough. But we live in a free country, and no teacher can impose his view on a student. The best he can do is open the door and encourage the student to walk through.

Lt. Col. Oliver L. North was a can-do National Security Council staffer who tried to accomplish things his President wanted. His problem was that he went too far, too far for an appropriate White House role--and too far, perhaps, for the law. At the heart of the current crisis is a reluctance in the White House to accept the constraints on policy that Congress--for better or worse--has imposed by law.

In a related episode, a few days ago came reports that Ambassador John H. Kelly had bypassed Secretary of State George P. Shultz in sending “back channel” messages from Beirut to the White House through Central Intelligence Agency facilities. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), commented: “I don’t think I have ever heard of that happening before--totally bypassing an American secretary of state.”

But it has happened before. In 1970, the CIA’s Track II operation in Chile--looking for a preventive coup against Salvador Allende’s leadership--was carried on behind the backs of the secretaries of state and defense and also the U.S. ambassador in Santiago. When this situation came to light in 1974, Congress passed Public Law 93-475 to require that “any department or agency (read the CIA) having officers or employees in a country shall keep the . . . ambassador . . . fully and currently informed of its activities and operations.” Neither the CIA leadership nor Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger much liked this requirement; they effectively blocked implementation of the legislation for about a year, until the Senate finally prodded the White House into issuance of instructions that put the law into practical effect.

Repeated efforts and recommendations have been made over the years to nail down the ambassador’s right to inspect CIA message traffic to and from his post. The CIA has always resisted, as have habitual users of back-channel traffic, including most national security advisers. Last week, State Department spokesman Charles E. Redman revealed that President Reagan, in 1981, sent a message to all diplomatic envoys, directing them to take orders only from himself or the secretary of state--no back-channel communications unless approved by the President or secretary. If followed, that directive would have prevented Shultz’s problem with his ambassador in Beirut. Legislation would be an even better way to prevent back-channel messages and it would further strengthen an ambassador’s ability to act as the President’s representative, which is what he is supposed to be.

What else might be done to end the disarray in NSC-State Department relationships? The President should instantly fire any secretary of state he doesn’t trust or cannot work with. That was what Harry S. Truman did to James F. Byrnes, and it did not prevent reelection in 1948 nor mar Truman’s place in our national history.

Next, the President should make clear that the NSC adviser is his intimate staff officer but not his public spokesman. Every President, particularly when beleaguered, has been tempted to send his NSC adviser off on the talk-show and speechmaking circuit, and most have succumbed to the temptation. As the old saying goes, nothing propinques like propinquity, and a harassed President turns to his own people. I have seen the phenomenon at close range, when serving as a senior NSC staffer during Lyndon B. Johnson’s beleaguered days. An NSC adviser working the PR circuit does not have the time or energy to coordinate the foreign-affairs agencies, advise the President thoughtfully and anticipate policy needs and options. A sense of his role and mission as a staff officer was what made Gen. Brent Scowcroft so widely admired as a national security adviser, perhaps our most successful one in recent times--and the least known by the U.S. public.

History has shown that a good national security adviser--or staffer--also does not get involved in operations. It did not help Jimmy Carter, or the American interest in the long run, for Zbigniew Brzezinski to roam the continents, posturing with an automatic weapon on the Khyber Pass, ridiculing the Soviets at the Great Wall of China and negotiating personally and unprofitably with a hapless pre-Khomeini Iranian leader in North Africa. Even in the case of Kissinger’s apparent success, a carefully chosen expert envoy might have opened the door to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 China trip at least as effectively as the national security adviser.

If North had regarded himself as a staff officer, and had let the State Department, the Defense Department and the CIA do their miscellaneous operational tasks--both clean tasks and dirty ones if the President felt them necessary--the Administration would have been better served. This is now obvious, but the central issue is the role of the NSC staff as coordinator and overseer of those departments with operational responsibility.

The Soviets confront problems similar to ours, and have come to a division of functions that we seem to have lost. The departments attach to the party’s Central Committee, to support Politburo policy and oversight functions; the Cabinet ministries conduct operations. For years, Boris N. Ponomarev--whose name most Americans never heard--was the head of the International Department of the party and staff officer for the general secretary, while Andrei A.Gromyko did the executive and operational work in foreign affairs as well as the public and representational chores. Dobrynin has now replaced Ponomarev, and his own visible profile is diminishing, while his influence as Gorbachev’s senior foreign-affairs staff officer is growing. The United States could adopt equivalent self-discipline; the President would only have to want it so.

I have one last thought. The idea has been kicking around for years to move the offices of the secretaries of state and defense back to the old building next to the west wing of the White House. To borrow a phrase from the Yellow Pages, let their flunkies do the walking.

Somehow, the distance between the secretary of state and the President has to be reduced. Then, the President has to understand, accept and enforce the division of responsibilities between the NSC staff and the Cabinet department, to restore orderly and effective conduct of our foreign affairs.