Rather Than Bury Issue, Bush Needs to Give Answers

Vice President George Bush, in his confrontation with Dan Rather on television, insisted as he has several times before that he has answered all the questions concerning his role in the Iran-Contra affair, except for his confidential advice to President Reagan. But he has not answered all the questions, and indeed has opened some new ones.

For example, Bush said that he supported arms shipments to Iran, at least in part, because of his concern about William Buckley, the kidnaped Beirut station chief of the CIA. “I wanted Buckley out of there,” the vice president told Rather.

According to White House documents in the files of the congressional investigating committees and the Tower commission, the Administration had reliable information by October, 1985, that Buckley had been tortured to death the previous June. His release, therefore, could not have been a factor in the January, 1986, decision to ship missiles to Iran directly rather than replacing weapons shipped by Israel.

At the center of disputed recollections is the hour-and-20-minute meeting with Reagan in the Oval Office on Jan. 7, 1986, that led to the decision to sell 3,000 TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran in search of improved relations and the release of American hostages in Lebanon.

This was the session in which, according to the official record, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger opposed the proposed arms sale at length and in heated terms.

Before then, America’s tracks had been covered by having Israel sell arms, to be replaced from American stocks. Now for the first time, in the face of its own anti-terrorist policy and arms-export restrictions, the U.S. government proposed to launch itself on the perilous course of trading directly with the Khomeini regime under the authority of a secret document to be signed by Reagan.

Bush, who initially expressed doubt that he attended this meeting, told Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory, in written reply to her questions, “Records indicate I probably attended an ad hoc meeting,” but, he added, “I do not recall any strenuous objections. Had there been any strenuous objection, I am sure I would have remembered it.”

To Rather, Bush added that he might have left the meeting before Shultz and Weinberger spoke. Shultz remembered that Bush was present and heard it all.

I have combed the record of testimony by the principals, and there is simply no way to reconcile the conflict.

Shultz testified before the Senate-House committees last July 23 that at the Jan. 7 meeting the proposal to send arms to Iran came as a surprise to him, appearing to be similar to a plan that had drawn fire from him and Weinberger a month earlier.

“It seemed to me,” Shultz told the congressional committees, “that as people around the room talked, that Weinberger and I were the only ones who were against it. And so that included everybody who was there on the other side of the issue, which surprised me . . . . It seemed almost unreal.”

Shultz went further in his testimony before the Tower commission, saying, “I expressed myself as forcefully as I could. That is, I didn’t just rattle these arguments off, I was intense. The President knew that. The President was well aware of my views. I think everybody was well aware of my views.”

The “everybody” specifically included Bush. Shultz testified, “It was clear to me that by the time we went out, the President, the vice president, the director of Central Intelligence (William J. Casey), the national-security adviser (Adm. John M. Poindexter) all had one opinion, and I had a different one and Cap (Weinberger) shared it.”

On July 31 Weinberger testified before the congressional committees to the same effect. He described a “replay” of the December argument, and said, “Again I made all of the same arguments with increasing force, but apparently less persuasion, and George Shultz did the same thing.”

Poindexter confirmed, in his testimony on July 15, that Shultz and Weinberger had expressed their opposition “very vigorously.”

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III told the Tower commission: “George felt that this was at odds with the policy in regard to terrorism and that it would hurt us with our allies, or with our friends around the world. Cap was concerned primarily about the terrorism policy.”

Meese said that he made a “51-to-49” decision that the risks were justified by the potential benefits of having an opening to Iran and getting the hostages back.

In none of the testimony or documents on file was there any indication that Bush spoke during the meeting. If he expressed reservations to the President about being manipulated by Israel, it was not on this occasion. But the log indicates that Bush was there, and Shultz remembers that Bush ended up, with everyone except the two Cabinet secretaries, supporting the sale of arms.

Yet the vice president insists not only that he remembers no such thing but that, had he been present, “I am sure I would have remembered it.”

So, Dan Rather aside, it’s hard to leave the matter resting there.