Hamilton Deserves Answers

It is early to leap to conclusions about the meaning of a document that has then-Vice President Bush chatting with the president of Honduras about helping out Contra forces across the border from Nicaragua in 1985.

But Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) is right to leap on the White House for an explanation of why memoranda on which the document is based were not turned over to Congress during hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also has expressed an interest.

The document is a joint prosecution/defense “admission of fact” introduced during the trial of Marine Col. Oliver L. North, who is accused, among other things, of lying to Congress to help cover up a diversion of funds from arm sales to Iran into the hands of Contra forces then battling for control of Nicaragua.

The core of North’s defense has been that he did nothing that his superiors either did not know about or do themselves and the “admission of fact” can be read to support his claim.

The “admission” cites a range of material, including memoranda and excerpts from the record of one National Security Council meeting. One memorandum was written by Robert C. McFarlane, former national security adviser to President Reagan, at a time in 1985 when Honduras was balking at helping the Contras more. It recommended that the White House send a messenger to Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova to remind him that American aid to Honduras was important in the same way that Honduran aid to the Congress was, “without making the linkage too explicit.”

Nothing in the document actually says that Bush was the messenger, and foreign service officers who were involved at the time denied that Bush dangled a “quid pro quo” arrangement in front of Suazo. Still, Bush did make the trip. The documents were not among those that the White House turned over to the investigating committee that Hamilton chaired. Hamilton wants to know why.

“The documents clearly suggest that (Bush) was involved in the quid pro quo arrangements with Honduras,” Hamilton has said. “I don’t think the documents prove that, but they clearly suggest it. And it would be apparent from those suggestions that he was more ‘in the loop’ than he has thus far stated.”

Bush should be even more eager than Hamilton to find out why the documents were not sent to Congress. It will be hard to argue that they were not relevant to the committee’s inquiry. As Hamilton said, any suggestion that the vice president was more a part of the Iran-Contra affair than he has fessed up to would have rung a bell.

But the main incentive for the White House to clear up Hamilton’s question is that the charge of hiding documents from Congress revives questions about whether Bush was as far removed from the Iran-Contra scandal as he insists he was.