Reagan Doesn’t Link Bush to Iran Affair

For George Bush, the Iran-Contra affair has offered a paradoxical, nagging and potentially embarrassing question:

Was it possible that a vice president who spent eight years at the side of President Ronald Reagan and claims involvement in all major decision to have also been uninformed about one of the most crucial events of those years?

Reagan’s testimony, given under oath during eight hours of courtroom questioning, did little to shed new light on what Bush may have known of the Iran-Contra affair--the diversion of profits from the sale of weapons to Iran to help fund the Contras fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

A transcript of the former President’s testimony was made public Thursday. Reagan was questioned last Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles in preparation for the trial of his former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter. The former White House aide is charged with misleading Congress, making false statements and conspiracy in connection with the Iran-Contra affair.

Under the ground rules for the unusual court testimony by a former President, the lawyers were limited in the scope of their questioning and in the number of questions they could ask, thus forcing them to focus their attention specifically on Reagan.

Nevertheless, Poindexter’s lawyer, Richard W. Beckler, slipped in a reference to a picture he showed Reagan of Bush with Carl R. (Spitz) Channell. Channell pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with fund raising for the Contras.

And, in initial questioning in which Beckler sought to establish Poindexter’s presence in Reagan’s meetings on national security matters, Reagan volunteered that “a good deal of the time, the vice president would be present alongside of me.”

Bush has said throughout the more than three years since the Iran-Contra affair became public that he missed many of the key meetings--on one occasion, for example, because he was attending a fund-raising event for a congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, and on another because he was at the Army-Navy football game.

At one point, Reagan’s testimony placed Bush at a crucial meeting of the National Security Planning Group, during a period when the Administration was looking for ways to support the Contras despite a congressional ban on U.S. funding for the rebels. And Reagan quickly noted that Bush sought to keep the support within legal boundaries.

White House spokesmen, who have maintained silence on the legal maneuverings in the Iran-Contra case, said the White House would have no comment on the Reagan testimony.