NATION : Prison Urged for Poindexter
Prosecutors said today that former national security adviser John M. Poindexter should go to prison because he subverted democratic principles by feeding Congress a “diet of lies” about the Iran-Contra scandal.
A prison term would “warn other high-ranking officials that criminal violations of the public trust will result in more than mere loss of public employment,” prosecutors in the office of independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh said in a memo to U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene.
Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser from late 1985 until the Iran-Contra affair unraveled in November, 1986, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday on five felony convictions.
The retired Navy rear admiral faces up to 25 years in prison and fines up to $1.25 million. He was convicted April 7 of conspiracy, making false statements and obstructing congressional inquiries into the sale of U.S. arms to Iran and covert aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.
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