Applying the Lessons of Iran-Contra : Television: Moyers’ ‘Frontline’ report of the 1980s scandal asks the crucial question relating to today’s gulf crisis: ‘How can we hold our leaders accountable when we are kept in the dark?’

The theme is government stealth, aimed not at foreigners but against its own people. And even though “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” traces an event of the 1980s--the Iran-Contra scandal that disclosed deception in high places--it also relates directly to the present.

“So the basic constitutional question raised by Iran-Contra has yet to be answered,” reporter Bill Moyers concludes on this frightening “Frontline” program airing at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15 and at 10 on Channel 50.

Moyers asks the crucial question: “How can we hold our leaders accountable when we are kept in the dark?”

A second question: How is this applicable to Nov. 27, 1990?

This time Moyers is not on the screen, but on the phone from New York, explaining why “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”--which he calls an update of his memorable 1987 program “The Secret Government”--should be heeded by a nation now preoccupied by the Persian Gulf.

“There soon will be half a million U.S. troops poised for action in the Middle East on command of the President, with a Congress in complicity and the people cynical,” Moyers says. “We are about to have a war that the country’s not debated. The Founding Fathers gave the Congress alone the power to declare war. Our government is out of control and the gap between what citizens think and the government does is so large that people are confused about it.”

With this in mind, Moyers says, tonight’s Iran-Contra program “is one more way to explain the consequences of not paying attention.” It’s a primer on the subject, in fact, an ungentle reminder that in monitoring the Persian Gulf crisis, Americans had better keep their eyes on the shell with the pea.

Whether you share Moyers’ perspective on a given issue, he inevitably wins your attention with his thoughtful application of journalism to cosmic issues.

That’s also the case in “Power of the Past: Florence,” a documentary airing Wednesday (at 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15, 8 p.m. on Channel 50 and 10 p.m. on Channel 24) that finds the busy Moyers in Italy for a number of arresting interviews about the contemporary effect of the Renaissance. The gap between the past and present narrows when Moyers is told that a powerful Florentine family of that era maintained power by “maneuvering the constitution.”

Although two years remain on his MacArthur Foundation grant for his “World of Ideas” series on PBS, an idea man like Moyers needs constant access to the system. So his collaboration on several “Front-line” programs makes good sense.

In that regard, he was also correspondent for “Springfield Goes to War,” last week’s “Frontline” program--a combination of documentary and town meeting--that personalized the U.S. troop buildup in the gulf region by examining public opinion in a smallish Massachusetts city bordered by an Air Force base.

“He’s just another Hitler,” said an Army reservist, echoing President Bush about Iraq President Saddam Hussein. “If they don’t stop him here, they’re going to have to stop him somewhere else anyway.”

“We’re not going to be asked to vote on this war,” said another resident. “What will happen is that we’ll wake up one morning to see we’ve started fighting on the TV.”

It was precisely for this reason that Moyers says he and “Frontline” executive producer David Fanning had originally conceived “Springfield Goes to War” as a substitute for “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” should the Iran-Contra program be eclipsed by armed conflict in the gulf region. “I told David that if George Bush goes to war on the morning of the 27th, and we’re on in the evening, we’ll be irrelevant,” Moyers said.

So far, so good, however, and “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” is hardly irrelevant. It’s a presentation from crack producer Sherry Jones that is mesmerizing despite breaking no new ground. You’ve read about it, but now to see it, and in this fashion, is quite spectacular. Television’s power to provide visual context and tell a story in stunningly dramatic ways sometimes make newspapers seem musty by comparison.

Moyers: “The program helps people know what they don’t know now.” Or remember what they’ve forgotten.

Through news footage, interviews and now-public records and computer notes that Ronald Reagan’s men failed to destroy, “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” reviews “the vast spider web of secrecy organized by the White House to carry out the President’s orders.”

Or at least in some cases what they thought were the President’s orders.

The scenario goes approximately like this: Arms are secretly sold to Iran in hopes this will win the release of American hostages, an operation that conflicts with the President’s stated policy. The operation grows, with money from those sales diverted to the Contra forces battling the Nicaraguan government, along with funds solicited from friendly heads of state, at a time when U.S. aid to the Contras is prohibited by law.

As Moyers says tonight, the Administration had “created a private foreign policy operation outside the channels of government, unaccountable to constitutional control.”

Meanwhile, Moyers notes, the Congress generally accepted White House denials that nothing was amiss and “the press accepted the official view of reality as its primary beat.” A member of the White House press corps tells Moyers: “The more popular a President is, the harder it is for reporters to write negative stories.” And Reagan was very, very popular.

What Reagan knew about the Iran-Contra affair and when he knew it remain as blurry as the former President’s memory, at least as it is displayed here. Producer Jones deftly uses footage of depositions taped by Reagan in legal proceedings concerning former National Security Adviser John Poindexter. And these fumbling responses by Reagan to questions from Poindexter’s attorney about Iran-Contra details, juxtaposed with comments to Moyers by former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, are simply devastating.

McFarlane: President Reagan doesn’t retain very much of what comes his way on a given day, and if he read something in the morning and were to be asked about it a week or two later, he might very well not remember. Many people are like that--certainly we all forget things, but . . . .

Moyers: Something of this importance? Something of this magnitude? An off-the-shelf effort to help the Contras, the freedom fighters who were so important to him--he would forget the details?

McFarlane: Well, the President on hearing that would draw a conclusion, “Is this right or wrong?” And he would say, “Certainly, this is right.” But saying it’s right then enables him to clean the memory disc, and to say “OK, what I’ve heard is right, and I’ve forgotten a little bit about what it was, but it was right,” and not parse the politics, legalities, the other implications of it.

A President’s brain equated with a memory disc? Which would be worse: that Reagan lied about not knowing what was going on, or that McFarlane’s recollection of him is accurate?

Now it’s the public that may have cleaned its memory disc, with this event ever fading and getting softer around the edges as events in the gulf now occupy center stage. And Moyers wonders tonight if next time the crimes of Iran-Contra will be crimes at all, “or even misdemeanors.”