Meese Criticizes Walsh Inquiries as ‘Overkill’

Former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III on Wednesday denounced Iran-Contra investigations by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh and special congressional committees as “massive overkill” about mistakes that already have been corrected.

In a breakfast meeting with reporters, Meese referred unfavorably to “the millions of dollars spent on this thing.” He said Walsh’s operation, which is concluding its prosecution of former White House aide Oliver L. North, has probably cost more than government investigations of major Mafia figures.

From December, 1986, through last Feb. 28, the latest total available, Walsh’s office has spent $13,367,737 on its investigations and prosecutions.

Meese, now a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank here, acknowledged that North’s activities in diverting funds from secret Iranian arms sales to equip Nicaragua’s Contras was “at best extremely poor judgment . . . and unauthorized.”

But he contended that shortcomings in the White House national security structure were corrected long ago, 60 to 90 days after they were diagnosed by the presidential Tower Commission that studied the Iran-Contra affair.

Meese, who was a prosecution witness at the North trial, expressed a sharply different view of North’s motives from those painted during the trial by prosecutor John W. Keker.

“I personally feel he did not do anything out of a sense of personal gain or other than a desire to serve the country in a way at the time he felt was best,” Meese said.

Rejects Reagan Role

Meese rejected a suggestion that then-President Ronald Reagan had created a climate in which North could assume he was doing what his chief executive wanted by diverting arms sale funds to the Contras.

“The deteriorated climate was caused by Congress” in its refusal to support the Nicaraguan “freedom fighters,” Meese said. “Congress bears a major share of the blame for the general climate that existed in the country at that time.”

Meese was asked about a June 25, 1984, meeting of Reagan’s advisers on whether to seek aid for the Contras from foreign countries. Documents made public at the North trial show that Secretary of State George P. Shultz quoted White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III as stating it would be an “impeachable offense” to seek such aid, but CIA Director William J. Casey said it would not be a problem.

When Shultz pushed for a legal opinion, Meese, then White House counselor, said it was important to “tell the Department of Justice that we want them to find the proper and legal basis. . . . You have to give lawyers guidance when asking them a question.”

Meese on Wednesday rejected a characterization of his statement as “cooking the books.” He said he wanted to “impress on the Justice Department the importance of this, and if there was a legal way for it to be done, to find that legal way.”

Meese said his comment was “part of a concern I have always had. . . . There are two kinds of lawyers. There are lawyers who simply say no, which isn’t very helpful if what you’re trying to do is, in effect, a legal thing, and there are other lawyers who see if there is a legal way that it can be done. And that was what I had in mind.”