Dole Would Fire Any Official in Meese’s Position

Kansas Sen. Bob Dole on Sunday edged close to a call for the ouster of embattled Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III as Dole and Vice President George Bush continued bickering into the eve of Iowa’s crucial presidential preference caucuses.

The Kansas senator said a Dole Administration would not tolerate an attorney general involved in as many legal scrapes as Meese, although he refrained from saying that Meese should quit or be fired. “I made a deal with Ronald Reagan,” Dole said. “I said, ‘If you don’t fire any of my people, I won’t fire any of yours.’ ”

But Dole said that if he became President he would get rid of an attorney general who, like Meese, had been called before several grand juries investigating possible criminal misconduct.

‘Cut Your Losses’

“In my view, if there’s any appearance of impropriety . . . and you think it’s going to hang on for awhile, you ought to cut your losses,” Dole said.

Meanwhile, Dole and Bush, the leading rivals for the Republican nomination, pledged to cool a testy personal feud. But both continued to take potshots at each other’s integrity and judgment on nationally televised interview programs. Dole appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and Bush on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

Bush said he did not think Dole was “mean-spirited,” as the vice president’s Iowa campaign chief suggested in a press release last week. But Bush said there was “no way” he would apologize to Dole, though he did offer a conditional apology to Dole’s wife, Elizabeth, if she was offended by anything Bush aides have said.

The press release included a notation that Elizabeth Hanford Dole’s former blind trust was being looked into by authorities. Dole had confronted Bush in the Senate chamber Thursday to demand an apology to his wife.

Bush said he found nothing offensive to Elizabeth Dole in the release but, if she did, “I would totally apologize to her.”

Hints Bush Is Soft on Scandal

For his part, Dole implied that Bush was soft on scandal in his own office because he had not jettisoned Donald P. Gregg, a national security aide linked by some reports to the Iran-Contra scandal.

Dole said Democrats are ready to rehash the Iran-Contra scandal should Bush head the Republican ticket.

“Look at every survey and every Democrat out there is rubbing their hands with glee saying we hope it’s going to be George Bush because of the Iran-Contra thing,” Dole said.

Dole said a potential influence-peddling scandal involving his own associates would not cause a similar liability because he moved swiftly to fire the principal involved, one-time campaign treasurer David Owen. Owen was a participant with another Dole aide in a company that obtained a no-bid contract to supply food to an Army base.

“It wouldn’t be a problem for Bob Dole, because once I found out about it, Dave Owen was gone,” Dole said. “We didn’t wait. There’ve been a lot of accusations about Don Gregg but he’s still on Bush’s staff.”

‘I’m Running for President’

Bush, on ABC, refused to talk about Gregg. “I’m running for President, not trying to get into arguments,” Bush said.

Also on the television program, Bush defended himself as ignorant of several crucial events in the course of the Iran-Contra affair.

He reiterated that he was unaware of Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s angry comments during a Jan. 7, 1986, meeting with high Administration officials that the plan violated U.S. law. Bush said he may have been out of the room when Shultz voiced objections, although Shultz has said Bush was present.

“I don’t recall it at all,” Bush said. “The President told me he remembered George Shultz sitting in my chair.”

Bush also said that when he met six months later with Israeli counterterrorism expert Amiram Nir--a party to the Iran arms exchange--he did not understand when Nir told him the Iran deal was an arms-for-hostage swap. A memo by Bush’s chief of staff, Craig Fuller, states that Nir told the vice president that Americans were dealing with Iranian radicals in an arms-for-hostage swap. Bush has said he thought the deal was not arms-for-hostages and involved moderates.