Jogging, Reagan / Regan Style

The special commission investigating the activities of the National Security Council and White House officials in the Iran arms- contra scandalis having a frustrating time of it pinning down President Reagan’s role in the affair. On Jan. 26 Reagan twice told the three-member group that he had authorized Israel to ship American-made weapons to Iran in 1985. Three weeks later, in a second meeting with the commission, Reagan reversed himself, saying that he had no memory of giving his authorization. The contradiction could be of key importance if the issue of perjury before Congress is one day raised.

Reagan’s change of mind reportedly followed a long and supposedly memory-refreshing conversation that he had with Donald T. Regan, his chief of staff. Regan had earlier testified before a Senate committee, under oath, that the President had not given advance approval to the Israel-Iran transaction--an event that has since come to be seen as the opening move in a blundering effort to win freedom for American hostages in Lebanon. But Robert C. McFarlane, Reagan’s former national-security adviser, told the same committee under oath that the President did indeed approve the Israeli shipments. McFarlane and Regan can’t both be right. One or the other was wrong, or lying.

The fact that Regan’s memory-jogging talk with the President proved to be obviously self-serving doesn’t mean that what he testified to under oath was necessarily wrong. Reagan’s memory, it has been noticed before, may indeed be fallible and require freshening. At a minimum, though, Reagan’s change of mind, his confusion about an event of such fundamental importance, once again underscores how incredibly offhandedly decisions of great consequence to the nation’s interests seem to have been made. A key job of the chief of staff is to keep things orderly and on track. The irony is that Regan, the supreme loyalist whose zeal in protecting Reagan’s reputation has been matched only by his own zeal in seeking to acquire power, is responsible for allowing the process to become so lax, sloppy and self-wounding. Whether Regan testified truly before the Senate committee or not, he has a lot to answer for.