Poorly Served President

President Reagan approved the plan to provide arms to Iran on the basis of an “action memorandum” prepared by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North of the National Security Council staff and presented to him by his then-national-security adviser, John M. Poindexter, last Jan. 17. Incredibly, however, Reagan seems never to have read the memo that was intended to justify the action that he took, even though that action constituted a major and, as it turned out, explosive departure from American foreign policy. Instead, according to Poindexter’s handwritten note at the bottom of the memo, “President was briefed verbally from this paper.” Given Reagan’s well-known distaste for the details of governance, “briefed” no doubt literally describes the casual basis on which he committed himself to a whopping blunder.

Poindexter, by reading or paraphrasing only selected parts of the memo, was in a position to point Reagan’s decision in a pre-determined direction. Not that the memo in its entirety wasn’t intended to do that anyway. It is a loaded document that doesn’t even pretend to consider the untoward consequences of the action that it recommends. The well-publicized and apparently strong objections to sending arms to Iran that were raised by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, for example, are kissed off in a single bland sentence: “The secretaries do not recommend that you proceed with this plan.”

The plan itself is ascribed to an initiative by Israel aimed at giving “credibility” to “moderate” elements in Iran. By obtaining U.S. arms, it is suggested, these elements could be helped to come to power. Most significantly, in terms of satisfying the President’s often expressed greatest interest, American hostages held in Lebanon would be “immediately” released once the arms flow began. Indeed, “this approach through the government of Iran may well be our only way to achieve the release of the Americans held in Beirut.” Finally, providing arms would allow the United States “to coercively influence near-term events” in Iran.

The naivete underlying these assumptions is astounding. It is taken as a given that moderate Iranians who are just itching to move against their more radical colleagues hold high positions in the government; that arms--specifically, anti-tank missiles--could be channeled to the moderates alone and kept out of the hands of others; that so-called moderates had it in their power to free the Americans held in Lebanon, and that once the link was established the United States would have decisive leverage on future Iranian actions. This is the stuff of sheer fantasy, not of serious foreign-policy decision-making.

The White House released the document in an effort to support its claim that the President had embarked on a carefully considered plan to win friends and influence events in Iran. What it in fact shows is how slipshod, amateurish and self-deluding the process of making judgments was, and how ill-informed, poorly served and ultimately detached from that process the President was.

There is more. Poindexter’s handwritten note indicates that Vice President George Bush and Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan were present at the briefing session. Bush, who presumably gained some foreign-policy experience during previous service as ambassador to the United Nations and China and as director of Central Intelligence, is supposed to be in charge of the Administration’s crisis management. Regan has bragged that he sees every paper that is presented to the President. Neither man seems to have raised any objection to the North memo, to the way Poindexter presented it or to the implications that were involved. The President didn’t know or care enough to grasp the import of what he was asked to do. His top advisers who should have understood were apparently content to let that ignorance continue undisturbed.