Bush’s Diaries Reveal Iran-Contra Concerns : White House: Excerpts of tapes, just released by the President, express fears about his political future.

As the Iran-Contra scandal unfolded in 1986, then-Vice President George Bush feared that his loyalty to the scandal-tainted Ronald Reagan Administration could cost him his own chance at the presidency, according to a set of extraordinarily revealing taped diaries released Friday.

“Time will tell. My stature will tell. You’ve got to come out of this with integrity and honor, telling the truth, supporting the President. . . ,” Bush said in early December, 1986. “But who knows what events will unfold?”

Bush’s remarks were included in diaries he dictated beginning in November, 1986, shortly before the Iran-Contra scandal erupted. The existence of the diaries, however, was not known publicly until last month, when White House attorneys disclosed the information to Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair.

The White House has contended that the notes would support Bush’s contention that he was “out of the loop” on the Iran-Contra affair.

“I think in the long run--provided I’m right--that this whole matter will be resolved,” Bush dictated in his diary on Dec. 10, 1986. “It will be OK, and then we can have stories out there (that say) ‘didn’t panic, didn’t run, didn’t duck away from the President.’ But I’m inclined to feel that I have been a loser out of this Iran thing, just as the President has.”

The existence of the notes has in itself become a part of the saga of the Iran-Contra scandal. Walsh said last month that Bush’s failure to reveal them to his investigators constituted “misconduct,” and until Friday, the White House had offered no explanation for the failure to turn them over.

In releasing portions of the notes, an attorney for Bush said the President had not disclosed them earlier because he was never aware of the prosecutor’s 1987 request to turn over all material relevant to the case.

Attorneys in the Bush White House, meanwhile, were aware of the request but did not know about the diaries, said Bush’s lawyer, former Atty. Gen. Griffin B. Bell.

The Iran-Contra affair involved the secret sale of U.S. arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. Proceeds from the sales were diverted to Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels, known as Contras.

Bush has long contended that he was aware of the sale of arms and of efforts to secure release of the hostages, but he has said he was unaware the two initiatives were linked.

Bell’s comments were in a report to the President that was released along with excerpts from the diaries and the transcript of a five-hour videotape deposition Bush gave to Walsh’s investigators on Jan. 11, 1988.

In the deposition, Bush contended that when he discovered that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to the Contras, “I felt like I had been hit in the gut.”

The transcript, however, added little to what Bush has said publicly about his knowledge of the arms sales.

Bush began the diaries on Nov. 4, 1986, primarily, he said, as a means of recording his thoughts about his upcoming run for the White House.

Often in fractured syntax, the excerpts indicated that the diaries had become a sort of therapy for Bush during the tense days as the full scope of the Iran-Contra scandal became clear.

At one point, Bush expressed frustration that “the vice president has no power, and yet I am the one damaged.”

On Nov. 5, 1986, in his first direct reference to the unfolding controversy, Bush described himself confidently as “one of the few people that know fully the details,” and dismissed the early, sketchy details as “a lot of flak and misinformation out there.”

But by his final entry, a Christmas Eve, 1986, rumination, he complained: “I am not in the decision process. . . . The facts are that the vice president is not in the decision-making loop.”

Bush’s entries indicate that his first direct warning that the scandal was larger than he expected and could reflect upon him came in a conversation with former Secretary of State George P. Shultz on Nov. 9, 1986.

Bush said Shultz complained that he himself “had felt cut out. . . . He feels that I’m in jeopardy myself. He thought he had heard me say something that later proved to be a lie, and his advice to me, as a person interested in my future, (was) ‘Don’t get involved in all this.’ ” In the tape, Bush did not specify what that alleged lie was.

On Nov. 24 of that year, the day he was informed by then-Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III that money from the Iranian arms sales had been diverted to the Contras, Bush worried: “It may get so bad--this, or the economy, or something--that I will cease to be a credible candidate.”

Throughout, Bush seemed haunted, even obsessed, by his memories of the Watergate scandal, during which he had been Republican Party chairman.

“I remember the way things oozed out,” he said. “It is important to level, to be honest, to be direct. We are not to say anything. The dam gates are open. . . . It really is hemorrhaging.”

On Dec. 1, 1986, during what he described as “a madhouse day at the office,” Bush said he even discussed his fears with former President Richard M. Nixon, and seemed reassured that Nixon “called the difference between this and Watergate (sic) ‘the tempest in the teapot.’ This is the teapot--interesting, interesting.”

Yet later that day, he said: “My mind goes back to the old Watergate days--rumor and innuendo. The President made a mistake which he never makes of this size.”

And still later: “We had a nice dinner for the staff, and we tried to tell them what it was like during Watergate days. That this was better--that we’d make it. That the President was telling the truth and that I must and will stay with the President. I know my staff is uneasy about this.”

Much of Bush’s account centers on the bitter squabbles and angry recriminations that erupted among Shultz, then-National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and Reagan White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan as they groped for a way out of the controversy.

“But the President bears up beautifully. He smiles when the press fire these tough questions. That is something that I have got to learn and learn better. I will keep trying,” Bush said on Nov. 13.

Bell’s report on the notes said Bush intended the dictation to be “private, confidential and political in nature.” Bush arranged for the tapes to be transcribed by a “trusted employee” in his Houston office, and the transcripts were prepared by June 15, 1987, the report said.

Walsh first disclosed the existence of Bush’s diaries last Dec. 24, after Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and five other Iran-Contra defendants.

Walsh contended that Bush’s failure to submit the material in response to the 1987 document requests constituted “misconduct” and vowed “appropriate action.”

According to Bell’s report, on April 8, 1987, C. Boyden Gray, then chief counsel to the vice president, sent Bush’s staff a memo on producing documents to meet Walsh’s requests. The report said Bush has no recollection of ever reviewing the memo or any requests for documents, and that no one recalls ever discussing the scope of Walsh’s request with him.

Although Bush “apparently was not aware of the request for diaries, even had he been aware . . . his present view is that he would not have believed that his dictation constituted a diary responsive to an Iran-Contra document request,” the report said.

The transcribed tapes went undiscovered until last Sept. 24 when a White House employee, at Bush’s request, did an inventory of the contents of a safe in the White House residential quarters, reviewed the tapes and found discussions of Iran-Contra matters.

After highlighting relevant passages, she told Bush of them, but he said he did not believe they had any relevance to the Iran-Contra probe, the report said.

The President then asked Gray to review them for relevance, according to the report.

Gray determined that the transcripts contained pertinent information. But knowing that a June 30, 1992, document request had been postponed until after the election, “combined with the crush of the campaign and the need to interview individuals” who might know why the transcripts had not been found earlier, Gray “decided unilaterally not to raise the issue until after the election,” the report said.

Last Dec. 1, nearly a month after the election, Gray raised the existence of the material with White House officials, and they agreed to notify Walsh’s office as soon as the transcripts were reviewed.

Walsh spokeswoman Mary Belcher said Friday that “we have reviewed the report generated by the President’s lawyers and the selective release of his diaries. Because our investigation is ongoing, we are not free to comment on the accuracy or the completeness of the report.”