Conspiracy Without End: The Legacy of Watergate : Politics: The escalating criminality of the Reagan-Bush era was an effort to undermine the democratic process and hold office at any price.

It is often said that, during Watergate, the system worked. Perhaps. But in dealing with its spiritual stepchild-- Iran-Contra and the continuing consti tutional criminality of the Reagan- Bush years--it is now painfully apparent that the system has failed.

So badly has it failed that the indisputable constitutional legacy of the Reagan-Bush era--whatever one’s views about the economic, social or foreign policies of these two Presidents--is a precedent of unchecked constitutional violence that has been more damaging to the rule of law than Watergate ever was. It will surely haunt future generations.

The official response to Watergate was characterized by responsible leadership in both Republican and Democratic parties: Men and women who recognized in Richard M. Nixon’s behavior a grave threat to the U.S. constitutional system.

This has not happened on the Reagan-Bush watch--partly because of the craven congressional leadership of both parties; partly because neither Ronald Reagan nor George Bush set out to be crooks, the one naive and the other clumsy and merely unprincipled; partly because the quality of evidence, though damning, overwhelming and more than sufficient for the courtroom, has not met the almost unattainable Nixonian standard of proof: the Watergate tapes. Ultimately, Nixon’s tapes may have made it easier for Presidents to escape the full force of the law.

The escalating criminality of the Bush-Reagan era--in which the breaking-and entering of Bill Clinton’s passport records has become emblematic, just as the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist was a symbol of the Watergate era--refuses to go away, like some dark stain on the national conscience.

In pardoning Caspar W. Weinberger and some old friends from CIA days, Bush ensured that the stain will not be removed. With the stroke of his pen and the disingenuousness of his words, Bush forced the issue of his own culpability. He has also made stunningly clear the pattern and purposes of serious criminality in his and Reagan’s administrations: To hold office at any price.

“The common denominator of their motivation . . . was patriotism,” Bush declared in his Christmas Eve pardons. “They did not profit or seek to profit from their conduct. . . . The prosecutions . . . represent what I believe is a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences. These differences should be addressed in the political arena. . . . The proper forum is the voting booth, not the courtroom.”

Bush is correct about one thing: The ballot box is the most sanctified right of the U.S. constitutional system. And it has been systematically violated by the Bush-Baker-Barr gang and, preceding their astonishing misconduct, by the Iran-Contra conspiracy that gave birth to post-Reagan lawlessness. That is what all of the cover-ups of the Reagan-Bush era have been about: to take away from the people truly free choice in electing a President and the ability to judge whether the elected incumbent should continue to hold office.

From Day One--the day Edwin Meese III announced the “discovery” of the diversion of funds from Iranian arms shipments to the Contras--the purpose of the Reagan-Bush cover-ups has been to hold onto the presidency in the face of evidence that, if not suppressed, might well have resulted in either impeachment proceedings or defeat at the polls. That is what the Weinberger notes--in which the former secretary of defense states he warned Reagan (at a meeting attended by Bush) that the Iranian arms shipments were possibly illegal--make abundantly clear.

Cover-up I (the initial Iran-Contra cover-up that began with Meese’s “investigation” of the Iran-Contra connection and insulated Reagan from the illegal activities of Oliver L. North and others); Cover-up II (the Iraqgate/Banca Nazionale del Lavoro scandal); Cover-up III (the break-in at the National Archives to get Bill Clinton’s passport records, involving Bush’s senior White House staff), and Cover-up IV (the continuing cover-up of Bush’s role in Iran-Contra) all had identical objectives: to thwart constitutional choice by concealing the full record.

--In the initial cover-up of Iran-Contra, as Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh has charged, the objective was to avoid impeachment proceedings against Reagan. Weinberger’s notes might have provided the impetus to force the Congress to act on the basis of the law, instead of considerable affection for Reagan and fear of his popularity.

--In the Banca Lavoro cover-up, greased by Atty. Gen. William P. Barr’s refusal to appoint an independent counsel, the purpose was to keep the voters from knowing that Bush and his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, had built up the forces of the same Saddam Hussein that they proceeded to take the United States to war against. These factors, if explored in a courtroom with evidence given under oath, might have insured Bush’s defeat at the polls.

--In the most brazen of all the law-breaking of the Bush-Reagan years--another White House-authorized break-in to obtain private records of a presidential enemy (his political opponent)--the aim was to undermine the electoral process by illegally obtaining information that might be damaging to Bill Clinton and thus swing the election at the last moment.

Here, too, the initial response of the White House was to lie and cover up. Only after Bush’s defeat at the polls and the independent investigation by the State Department’s inspector general--and the refusal of Bush’s burglars’ to take the rap for higher-ups (sound familiar?)--was Barr forced by law to seek appointment of an independent counsel. Then, Barr attempted to continue the cover-up by asking the judges appointing the prosecutor to limit the investigation to one of Baker’s assistants. The judges, after examining the evidence, took the extraordinary step of specifying that the prosecutor’s charter be broadened to include all individuals involved.

And now, full circle, it becomes incontrovertible that Bush’s role in Iran-Contra was considerably different from his statements insisting he was out of the loop. Recent evidence indicates that Bush attended numerous meetings during which the Iranian arms shipments were discussed. Whether his initial actions were criminal or (more likely) not, they would have, at minimum, implicated him in a monumental misjudgment of policy and abuse of power that the voters should have known about. If known, this might have cost him the election in 1988.

Questions about Bush’s Iran-Contra role--and his persistent lying about it--continued throughout his term in the White House and campaign for reelection. Hence Cover-up IV. Now we have the President’s pardon. And with it the revelation by Walsh that for six years Bush has been holding onto a diary that, like Weinberger’s notes, might provide some missing answers to the biggest Iran-Contra questions. Walsh may yet seek to prove that the pardons and Cover-ups I and IV are part of the same conspiracy: the mother of all cover-ups.

The point here is not that Reagan should have been impeached (perhaps not) or that Bush should have been defeated by Michael S. Dukakis (likewise). Given the history of both men, it is extremely doubtful that either Reagan or Bush embarked knowingly on a course to undermine the Constitution. Characteristically, both initially chose not to level about their roles in policies that were legally dubious at best and politically damaging at worst.

Thus, the disparate cover-ups of the whole Reagan-Bush era began as untruthful responses to disparate secret policies--and then became almost a continuum of illegality, a state of mind in which political exposure and fear of defeat was met with conspiracies to hide the truth from the people and their representatives and, eventually, the law. Watergate was only the beginning.

Meanwhile, as in Watergate, the response of the President has been to make the conduct of the independent counsel--as opposed to the President and his men and women--the issue. “They did not . . . seek to profit from their conduct,” Bush would have us believe. His words have a familiar ring. “I have never profited from public service. . . . I am not a crook,” Nixon told us. No one profited in the Bush-Reagan cover-ups? The ultimate profit here was the ultimate prize: the presidency. These cover-ups had as their purpose to defraud the people not of their currency, but of their rights of citizenship.

DR, BARBARA CUMMINGS / For The Times