THE IRAN--CONTRA HEARINGS : Poindexter Credibility Hurt by Past Efforts at Deception

Much of Congress’ effort to establish what happened in the Iran- contra affair now hinges on the credibility of former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, who says he did not tell President Reagan of the diversion of arms sale profits to the Nicaraguan rebels.

The question of Poindexter’s credibility points up a paradox at the heart of the scandal: although the nation’s system of democratic government rests on openness and truth, the men who run covert operations such as the Iran and contra schemes routinely rely on deception to carry out their plans.

In the shadowy world of covert operations, commitment to deception is often regarded as a matter of the highest principle.

Still Following Plan?

The difficulty now, as congressional investigators, along with former CIA and National Security Council officials, see it, is that there is no easy way to determine whether Poindexter and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North are telling the whole truth--or whether some of their testimony is simply a continuation of their original plan of deception.

And deception, as both Poindexter and North have disclosed, was at the core of the Iran and contra operations--including plans for “deniability” and protecting the President if the secret projects were ever exposed.

Using deception as a matter of government policy and principle not only makes the truth difficult to establish but also erodes the long-term ability of a democratic government to function effectively, some experts say.

‘Very Special Dangers’

“Lies to enemies carry very special dangers of backfiring,” Sissela Bok, a philosopher, warned in her 1979 book “Lying.” “All too often, the lie directed at adversaries is a lie to friends as well; and when it is discovered, as some always are, the cost is always high.”

“The larger the deceptive scheme, the more likely it is to backfire,” she wrote. “ . . . And when a government is known to practice deception, the results are self-defeating and erosive . . . The (citizen’s) sense of being manipulated is stronger, and the trust in one’s own government or that of others is shrinking.”

“I’ll stand by that today,” Bok said in an interview. “I suppose it predicted, in a sense, what was going to happen.”

Former CIA Director Richard M. Helms, who was himself convicted of lying to Congress to conceal covert operations, said: “Historically, the idea of deniability was . . . to allow the President to deny any knowledge if a covert action went sour or astray. The question of whether he knew about them on the sly is an open one. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t.”

Affected by Several Factors

In the case of Poindexter, an academically distinguished naval officer who graduated first in his class at Annapolis and later earned a doctorate in physics at Caltech, the question of credibility is clouded by several factors.

First, North testified that CIA Director William J. Casey proposed that Poindexter should be the “fall guy” if the Iran and contra operations were exposed. Poindexter denied North’s account. Nevertheless, North’s version instantly created what Senate counsel Arthur L. Liman called “a paradox.”

“Once you have that kind of testimony,” he said, it is difficult for others to judge “whether what they are hearing is cover story, or whether what they’re hearing is the truth.”

Second, Poindexter’s own credibility became open to question long before the Iran and contra operations were exposed because the admiral frequently defended the Administration’s right to lie to protect sensitive foreign operations and sometimes actively misled Congress and the press.

“Is deception going to be a tool that the government can use in combatting a very significant national security problem?” Poindexter asked reporters in 1986, a month before he resigned. “The answer . . . has to be yes.”

During five years on the NSC staff, Poindexter repeatedly put forward false or misleading information:

Record of Deception

To the press about the 1983 invasion of Grenada and arms shipments to Iran; to Congress, about the NSC’s role in helping the contras; to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, about the fact that arms-for-hostages negotiations were continuing, and even to Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, when the admiral told Meese last November that he was only vaguely informed of North’s activities.

Those earlier exercises in “deniability” may make it more difficult for Poindexter’s testimony to prove convincing this time. Helms, for example, when asked whether he believes Poindexter’s testimony, responded: “I’m not going to answer that.”

Third, even Poindexter’s own version of “plausible deniability” may not fully answer whether President Reagan knew about the diversion of funds from the Iranian arms sales to the contras. Poindexter testified that he did not tell Reagan about the diversion so the President could truthfully duck responsibility later on.

“I wanted the President to have some deniability so that he would be protected,” Poindexter said.

As Helms and other former officials pointed out, however, past schemes of deniability often masked the truth about a covert operation--that a President did know, but his subordinates agreed to claim he did not.

“In the past, deniable operations were conducted in such a way that the paper work stopped at a certain level--but the President was nevertheless briefed on them,” former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger said. “I think that is by far the better system.”

Sometimes, former CIA official David Atlee Phillips said, presidents were informed “informally” of covert operations so they could deny any specific knowledge but still be in control.

“Even if Poindexter did not inform the President--and my instincts tell me that he did not--that still leaves a range of degrees of knowledge that the President may have had,” he said. “Poindexter might have winked at the President in the Oval Office and said, ‘One thing you don’t have to worry about is the contras; you know we’re doing everything we can.’ ”

From 1947 until 1975, presidents set up special covert action committees that approved covert actions without the presidents’ explicit approval. If the operation was exposed, the Chief Executive could deny he had approved it and at least be technically truthful.

In 1975, after a series of scandals over CIA operations, Congress passed a law requiring the President to give his formal approval to all covert actions in the form of a “finding,” a word which has been much used in the Iran-contra hearings. The intent was to make sure the CIA could not launch operations on its own, but the effect was to deprive the President of his ability to deny knowledge of any covert action.

In a sense, what Poindexter tried to do in the Iran and contra operations--both by refusing to inform Congress of the covert actions and by offering the President “deniability”--was to return to the earlier system.

“But it can’t work any more,” Phillips said. “Since Vietnam and Watergate, our morality has changed. . . . When people in government feel free to leak (information), plausible deniability is a dinosaur. It can’t survive in this climate.”

It is an old debate, and it is certain to continue. “By their very nature,” North said last week, “covert operations . . . are a lie. There is great deceit and deception practiced in the conduct of covert operations. They are, at essence, a lie. We make every effort to deceive the enemy of our conduct and to deny the association of the United States with those activities. . . . And that is not wrong.”

Perhaps reflecting the warning implicit in North’s assertion, a Washington Post-ABC News Poll released Thursday found that only one in six people believes Poindexter is generally telling the truth.

On the specific question of whether Poindexter told Reagan about the diversion, 48% said they believe the admiral’s story, and 44% said they do not.