Counting the Spoons

Later this summer congressional investigating committees are scheduled to hear from Lt. Col. Oliver L. North and Adm. John M. Poindexter, former Reagan Administration members who have emerged as the so-far-silent big guns in the Iran- contra scandal. Meanwhile, the noise produced by witnesses of lesser caliber who have already told their stories continues to shake Washington. Chairman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) of the House investigating committee, a man not given to over-statement, describes this testimony as some of the most extraordinary ever heard by Congress. The essence of that testimony has exposed a pattern of deception, greed, abuse of power, contempt for constitutional processes and quite probably willful attempts to obstruct justice.

There can be no remaining doubt now that in a zealous determination to continue channeling aid to the Nicaraguan contras members of the Administration withheld information and otherwise sought to mislead Congress about what they were up to. There is no doubt that part of this effort involved presidentially approved sales of weapons to Iran, an act of foreign-policy folly that is being paid for even now in the Persian Gulf. Those sales were meant first of all to serve as ransom for the release of Americans held in Lebanon. Along the way they were transformed into a profit-making enterprise for the supposed support of the contras.

Additional funds--tens of millions of dollars--were solicited from foreign governments and private donors. Some of this money seems very clearly to have been skimmed off for private use, making a mockery of claims that only the purest of patriotic motives guided all those involved. Emerson said it long ago: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

A lot of the spoons from the contra financing scheme are still missing from the drawer.

What most of all remains to be precisely and plausibly explained is how a few White House functionaries, aided by powerful patrons elsewhere in government, gained such enormous and corrupting power over the foreign policy of the United States. Many members of the investigating committees remain openly skeptical that Oliver North’s activities were in fact independent of and unknown to higher authority. There is nothing partisan in that skepticism. In the end the question of accountability is central to the issue of what happened, and why. Where did the orders originate, who if anyone troubled to inquire closely into the legality of what was taking place? These will be the great questions in the air when the committees resume their public hearings in a few weeks’ time.