He Still Doesn’t Get It

Every time President Reagan opens his mouth about the Iran-Contra scandal, it becomes clearer that he is itching to pardon his former aides, Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North. Only the looming presidential election and the political backlash that a pardon would create against Vice President George Bush keep the President in check and prevent him from taking a step that we think would leave an indelible stain on his Administration’s record.

Someone at the White House has been coaching the President to say, when asked about the 23-count indictment against North, Poindexter and two arms dealers, that he will make no comment because the matter is before the courts. Reagan sometimes gets those lines out--but then he departs from the script and lets the world know what he really thinks. Just the other day, during a question-and-answer session with high-school students, the President said of his former aides, “I just have to believe that they’re going to be found innocent, because I don’t think they were guilty of any lawbreaking or any crime.” A week earlier he had minimized the conduct of Robert C. McFarlane, a former national-security adviser, who pleaded guilty to four counts of withholding information from Congress. “I’ve done that myself,” the President quipped.

Even before the indictments were handed down, of course, the President insisted that no laws were broken; then, he sounded merely loyal to his subordinates, perhaps out of touch. But for him to prejudge the outcome of their trials now that they have been indicted shows a profound disrespect, bordering on contempt, not only for independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh but also for the judicial process itself. Does the President want the people to believe that an indictment is a trivial matter? Does he want to sway potential jurors, both those who might automatically believe him and those who just as automatically will not?

Ever since the news of the Iran-Contra connection first broke, the President has done his best to play down what he calls “the whole so-called Iran scandal.” Although congressional committees concluded that Reagan allowed a “cabal of zealots” to run his foreign policy and to put themselves above the law, although the Tower Commission faulted his lax management style, the President still insists that nothing was amiss. As he told those high-school students last week, “I find it hard to think of it as a scandal.”

Well, we find it hard to think that the President understands the consequences of these off-the-cuff remarks. No matter how weak he considers Walsh’s case against his former lieutenants, it should be up to a jury, not their one-time boss, to decide whether they broke the law. So far no one has seriously challenged Reagan’s own integrity, largely because of Poindexter’s unshakable testimony that he never told the President that proceeds from the Iran arms sales were diverted to the Contras. But, if the President continues to insist that Poindexter and North are innocent and if he grants them pardons before trial, then history will likely judge that they fell on their swords for him--and that he misused his presidential powers to shield them.