Rebirth of Iran-Contra Scandal?

Had former President George Bush not pardoned him, former Secretary of State Caspar W. Weinberger would have stood trial last month on a charge of lying to Congress. Weinberger had said he had no relevant Iran-Contra notes; later, copious notes were found in the Library of Congress.

The charge was serious, but Weinberger had been widely seen as an opponent of the scandalous deal. If Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh had only Weinberger left to go after, was it not time to call the long-running Iran-Contra investigation to a halt?

It doesn’t look that way now. Last week, Time magazine published excerpts from former Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s forthcoming memoirs. The day before the scandal broke, Shultz writes, “(national security adviser John M.) Poindexter stressed that our effort toward Iran was correct and that it would continue on course. I interrupted with a starkly different view. I made no impact whatsoever. Cap Weinberger did not take my side of the argument with the vigor he had in such sessions long ago.”

Was Weinberger being pushed toward a cover-up? Shultz does not speculate. But he contradicts Bush’s claim that he, Bush, had not participated in the scheme. At a meeting in the Bush home, Shultz says, “I reminded him that he had been present at a meeting where arms for Iran and hostage releases had been proposed and that he had made no objection, despite the opposition of both Cap and me. ‘That’s where you are,’ I said. There was considerable tension between us when we parted.”

Either Shultz is lying or Bush has lied. On Monday Walsh reported that Shultz as well as former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan would have testified at the Weinberger trial. Regan was prepared to say that former President Ronald Reagan had indeed known about the arms deal from the start, while Shultz was prepared to say that the White House had sought to “rearrange the record” to protect Reagan. Bush himself and former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III might well “on public cross-examination have been subject to searching questions about the Administration’s conduct and their own in November, 1986.”

But not now. A trial that might have cleared the air about Iran-Contra will never take place. Whoever has won, the people have lost.