O’Neill Calls Reagan Least Informed Chief

President Reagan is an ill-informed President whose luck has run out with the disclosure of the Iran- contra arms deal, retiring House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill says.

“Of all the eight Presidents I’ve known, on any issue, he knows less than any President I’ve ever met or has been in the White House,” O’Neill said in an interview broadcast Thursday by WCVB-TV.

“He’s been lucky. He’s been built by the media of America.”

The Massachusetts Democrat recalled he told Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.) before Reagan’s 1984 reelection that the President would stumble in his second term.

‘He’s Going to Stumble’

“He’s going to stumble because you know and I know that he hasn’t got the talent, he hasn’t got the ability, that he’s been lucky,” O’Neill said he had told Laxalt, a close friend of Reagan. “Somewhere along the line, he’s going to stumble, and the American people are going to find out how that White House really operates.”

“And now it’s coming to bear,” O’Neill said, referring to the furor over the secret sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan contra rebels.

“When I go to the meetings over there (at the White House),” O’Neill said, “he’s not informed. He reads from his 3-by-5 cards. We ask a question, he always refers the question. He doesn’t show any knowledge or talent on the subjects themselves.”

O’Neill said he considers former President Jimmy Carter “the most brilliant man I ever met, absolutely the most talented. He had the worst staff around him I ever saw. He could have accomplished so much.”