Iran-Contra Report Describes Cover-Up by Top Reagan Aides

Iran-Contra prosecutors concluded in their final report that top Cabinet officers to President Ronald Reagan engaged in a cover-up, plotting to make Oliver L. North and two national security advisers “scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect” the Administration, sources familiar with the document say.

The report lays substantial blame for the cover-up on former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, alleging that he concocted “a false account” of a November, 1985, arms-for-hostages deal with Iran to protect Reagan in the scandal’s early days, several sources said.

Prosecutors would have considered seeking Meese’s indictment after discovering new evidence in 1992, but the statute of limitations had expired, the sources added. They described the new evidence as contemporaneous notes by former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan.

Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh’s report was completed in August but has been sealed by a special panel of federal appellate judges to give those named in it time to submit responses.

For now, it is available only to those named in it and their attorneys. Several sources provided the Associated Press with a description of its contents, including notes from the executive summary.

The sources, who insisted on anonymity, said their notes indicate that the final report depicts key officials of the Reagan Administration as scrambling to deflect blame from the President and his Cabinet.

“The President’s most senior advisers and the Cabinet members on the National Security Council participated in the strategy to make National Security Council members (Robert C.) McFarlane, (John M.) Poindexter and North the scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect the Reagan Administration in its final two years,” the notes quote the report as saying.

“In an important sense, this strategy succeeded. Independent counsel discovered much of the best evidence of the cover-up in the final year of active investigation, too late for most prosecutions.”

Cabinet members on the National Security Council were Meese, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and CIA Director William J. Casey, who died in 1987.

McFarlane pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors for withholding information but was later pardoned by President George Bush. Juries convicted McFarlane’s successor, Poindexter, of five felonies and North of three, but their convictions were reversed or set aside on appeal.

Meese did not return calls to his office. Walsh declined comment.