Nixon Would Pardon North and Poindexter : Says Reagan Should Act if Crimes Lacked Intent

Former President Richard M. Nixon suggested Sunday that President Reagan pardon former White House aides John M. Poindexter and Oliver L. North if their roles in the Iran-Contra affair should lead to their conviction for crimes Reagan deems unintentional.

If Reagan concludes that the central figures in the attempted arms-for-hostages deal with Iran thought they were acting in his interest or with his approval, Nixon said, “the President would have a good case for pardoning, because then, the so-called crime would lack an intent.”

By the same token, Nixon said he “probably should have pardoned” H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, his top lieutenants, who were convicted and sent to prison in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal that drove him from office under the imminent threat of impeachment in 1974.

He Received Pardon

Nixon, now 75 and himself the beneficiary of a blanket presidential pardon, expounded on a possible pardon for the indicted Reagan aides in his most extensive television interview in more than a decade.

Appearing on NBC’s televised “Meet the Press,” he offered his analyses and recommendations on a panorama of foreign, domestic and political issues.

Although less combative than the Nixon of old, he still characterized Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, one of the chief contenders for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, as a man with the personality of a word processor. He labeled Henry A. Kissinger, his old national security adviser and secretary of state, “devious” and “difficult,” adding that “some people” even consider Kissinger “obnoxious.”

More relaxed than he was in his $600,000 interview series with David Frost in 1977, the former chief executive was philosophical about his place in history and about the country he once led.

When asked whether he found the 1980s characterized by greed, he declared: “There is nothing wrong at all with greed, provided that greed is one that contributes to the wealth of the country, so that the wealth of the country can then handle some of the problems that people want.

“Let me tell you, if some people weren’t greedy, we wouldn’t have the tax money (so) that we could even be talking about more for education, more for health and the rest.”

Despite his expressed reservations, Nixon recommended that the next President--and he predicted it will be George Bush--make Kissinger “a full-time heavyweight negotiator” assigned to the Middle East.

A ‘Terrific Negotiator’

Flawed though he may be, Kissinger remains a “terrific negotiator,” Nixon said.

“And I would suggest that the next President, be it Dukakis or Bush, would be well advised to give him the title of ambassador plenipotentiary, give him a year, and he will work out some settlement,” Nixon said. (He ruled out the Rev. Jesse Jackson in that role as too far to the left.)

Similarly, he advised that the White House put another heavyweight in charge of the war against illicit drugs, but named no candidate for the job.

“I’d appoint a czar,” he said, explaining that 14 or 15 government agencies “are so busy fighting each other that they aren’t devoting their attention to fighting the common enemy.”

“There should be a czar in the White House who pulls all the drug activities from the Justice Department, the Treasury Department and the Customs and all together, with complete and total authority and backing by the President.”

New Book Coming Out

Nixon’s emergence from his present home base at Saddle River, N.J., coincided with publication of his seventh book, and his “Meet the Press” appearance is to be followed by early-morning interviews on the same network this week.

He brushed aside a suggestion that he is now making himself available in order to promote sales of the book.

“As far as selling the book is concerned, that’s no problem,” he said, “because I got a very good advance on it, and it isn’t going to make any difference whether it sells that much or not. My purpose at the present time is, frankly, to get the message across.”

While he eagerly handicapped the political races, giving the Democratic nomination to Dukakis and suggesting that Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole would make a good running mate for Bush, Nixon dwelt on his old loves--geopolitics and the nature of communism, both topics of his new book--”1999, Victory Without War.”

Cites Communist Goal

The man whose Administration produced the period of U.S.-Soviet “detente” warned against being taken in by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the new glasnost initiatives.

“Gorbachev may be a number of things,” he said. “He may be more reasonable than all the rest, but he certainly has the same goal of a communist world.”

As he is required to do in all television interviews, Nixon again confessed--still grudgingly--that the Watergate scandal was a scandal.

“We should have exposed it,” he said, “found out who did it, rather than attempting . . . to contain it, to cover it up. It was the cover-up that was wrong and that was a very big thing.”

Although he expects eventually to be fairly treated by history, the former President said he probably will not get fair treatment from historians “because most historians are on the left.”

A Self-Appraisal

In the meantime, he gave himself excellent marks.

“If it had not been for the China initiative, which only I could do at that point,” he said, “we would be in a terrible situation today, with China allying with the Soviet Union and with the Soviet Union’s power.”

Had he been able to complete his second term, he said, “We would not have lost the war in Vietnam.”

“I would have seen to it that we would have forced the North Vietnamese to keep the Paris peace agreement, and that would have meant that we wouldn’t have had basically what happened in all the places around the world--Cambodia, Laos, even what happened in Africa and even in Nicaragua.”

His worst mistake, he said, was not bombing North Vietnam and mining its harbors immediately after taking office in 1969.

Nixon said he has no plans to seek elective office again.