Accused of ‘Sadistic Disservice’ : Simpson Rips Into Press for Questioning Reagan

Assistant Senate Republican leader Alan K. Simpson lashed out at the media today, accusing White House reporters of doing “a sadistic disservice” to the United States by questioning an “off-balance” President Reagan.

After a meeting between Reagan and senators from both parties on the subject of aid to the Nicaraguan contras, the normally affable Simpson was asked why he was “covering” for the President by talking and joking as reporters tried to question Reagan at a photo session before the meeting.

In recent photo opportunities, Republican senators have begun speaking over Reagan’s responses--making them difficult to hear and impossible to broadcast.

“That’s a bunch of crap,” the Wyoming senator snapped.

‘Good Old Fling’

“What kills me is you go in there and you just begin--he’s there for a picture-taking session--and you have your good old fling, and that’s great,” Simpson said. “But you know very well that you’re not asking him things so you can get answers, you’re asking him things because you know he’s off balance and you’d like to stick it in his bazoo.”

Simpson declined to define “bazoo.” Webster’s New World Dictionary defines bazoo as the mouth or the nose.

Simpson said he was only “jazzing around” during the photo session with Reagan. At one point, he remarked to the President that NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell was wearing a pretty dress.

The questions to Reagan were about the Iran-contra affair, particularly a New York Times report that profits from the arms sale retained by middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar wound up in the hands of pro-Iranian terrorists holding the American hostages in Lebanon.

‘Out-Agnew Agnew’

After Simpson’s tirade, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole joked to his assistant that he was “trying to out-Agnew Agnew.” It was a reference to the attacks on the media in 1969 and 1970 by Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was forced from office in a kickback scandal.

Simpson said Reagan should not answer questions now or at his news conference Thursday night on Iran because of the investigations going on by Congress and the special prosecutor that will eventually reveal all the facts that “you will be able to revel in and bathe in.”

“The continued babbling of asking the President what the hell he had this morning on Iran-contra, when we are waiting for those things, is actually a kind of sadistic disservice to your country,” Simpson said.

Told that part of the problem is that reporters are virtually pushed in and out of the room by White House aides, Simpson said: “I don’t care how you come. You can come in on a slab, that doesn’t make any difference.”