Irked Lawmakers Score Reagan ‘Lack of Trust’ : Leaders Say President Had More Faith in Iran Than in Them When Weapons Were Shipped

Congressional leaders, still angry that they were not notified when the United States began shipping arms to Iran in early 1986, said Wednesday that they cannot understand how President Reagan could have trusted the Iranians more than he trusted Congress.

At a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, Republicans and Democrats alike expressed outrage over Reagan’s decision to keep them in the dark about the arms sales. Congress did not learn about the shipments until they were disclosed by a Lebanese magazine in November.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), a Reagan loyalist, said in testimony before the Intelligence Committee that he is still upset that the President apparently did not trust him and other congressional leaders to keep the Iranian initiative secret.

‘Can Be Trusted’

“I am personally offended by the fact that I was left out of the loop so long,” Michel said. “I’m certainly not going to apologize for my own Administration for having taken that tack. There are those of us who can be trusted.”

House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), also testifying before the committee, said the President’s decision not to tell Congress reflected “the makings of executive arrogance--the idea that certain things are too risky, too important . . . to be shared with Congress.”

Rep. Matthew F. McHugh (D-N.Y.) said he agrees with a statement submitted to the panel by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), former vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who asked why Reagan trusted Congress less than Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian middleman in the arms deals who had flunked several CIA lie-detector tests.

“When you get to the point where you can trust a Ghorbanifar, a man the career intelligence service did not trust, before you trust the Speaker of the House, or when you decide to pass on intelligence information to the Ayatollah (Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s leader) but will not inform the chairman of the Intelligence Committee of a presidential finding, then matters are confused,” Moynihan said.

Division on Remedy

“Not only was Congress not trusted, but members of his own Cabinet were not trusted,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) said.

Although Republicans and Democrats agreed that Reagan did not inform Congress about the Iranian arms sales in a “timely fashion,” as required by law, they were sharply divided over proposals to remedy the situation in the future. Republicans opposed a bill written by Stokes and other House Democrats to require the President to notify congressional leaders no later than 48 hours after initiating covert actions.

Michel said the measure would be “the functional equivalent of a foreign policy straitjacket” that would undermine the authority of the President in the eyes of the world and, in particular, of the Soviet Union.

“I can think of no worse a scenario than one in which a Soviet leader meets with an American President--any American President--who has been stripped of the freedom to act swiftly and with flexibility,” he said.

Possibility Doubted

In addition, Michel argued that the 48-hour notification requirement might be impossible to meet, particularly when members of Congress are traveling around the world during a recess. He pleaded with Democrats not to pass the measure hastily “in the emotion of this Iran- contra affair.”

Michel’s position was supported by three former intelligence officials--former CIA Directors Stansfield Turner and William E. Colby and former CIA Deputy Director Ray S. Cline--who said Congress should seek to rebuild a trusting relationship with the President instead of trying to legislate future compliance with the law.

The three former CIA officials argued that the President sometimes needs to keep Congress in the dark about covert activities because premature public disclosure of the information might cost the lives of individuals involved in a mission. In addition, they said, other countries are sometimes reluctant to participate in secret operations with the United States if they know that Congress is going to be informed, posing a risk of disclosure.

‘Not Days, Not Weeks’

But Wright and other Democrats argued that the bill is intended only to fulfill the original intent of the law, which requires a President to inform Congress before most covert actions but allows for “timely” notice in cases in which prior notice is impossible. Wright said that timely notice is “not days, not weeks and most certainly not months.”

He suggested that the Iran-contra affair might have been prevented if Reagan had complied with a strict interpretation of the law. “It is my belief that, had the President notified Congress what was happening with Iran, he might have been made aware of the risks involved,” he said.

With Wright’s support, the Stokes bill is expected to be approved by the House, perhaps with some modifications. It is not expected to become law, however, because it is opposed by some influential Senate Democrats as well as the President, who would surely veto it.