Reagan’s Aides Bobbled Contra Issue, Nixon Says

President Reagan’s strategists mishandled the Iran- contra scandal, portraying the President as “a forgetful, fumbling, detached leader,” former President Richard M. Nixon said in a memo published in Monday’s editions of the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Far better to plead guilty of actions which were at best of doubtful illegality than to plead not guilty by reason of incompetence,” the newspaper reported Nixon said in the 19-page memorandum sent to political associates and Reagan advisers.

“The original policy of presenting the President as a forgetful, fumbling, detached leader who didn’t know what was going on as depicted in the Tower report was a major mistake,” the memo said.

The memo said Reagan’s “greatest error was secretly selling arms to Iran in the first place in direct contradiction of the Administration’s public position of not only refusing to provide arms . . . but of urging other nations not to do so.”