| Show f rm - ity m n nTrm'yy The Salt Lake Tribune It s it1 rrrrr1 Sunday December 21 1986 n A17 the Question of Immunity Whose Orders Did North Follow? By Robert Healy Boston Globe Writer WASHINGTON When I was a soldier in World War II I did what I was told to do It is the order of the US military And that is the puzzle of Oliver North Episode 2 was the president's bid for immunity for North so that the national hero could go to Capitol Hill and tell all but without the fear of going to jail because of what he said Was the immunity bid simply a grandstand play by the White House for North's benefit to keep him aboard when the White House operators were aware that it would fail? As a military man North at best skated on the edge of the law working with conservative political groups that wanted to sell the country on aid to the Contras and defeat lawmakers who opposed the plan His best cover in this arrangement was that he was not really a Marine but was operating as a member of Reagan's team on the National Security Council even though it is rare in the short history of the NSC for any member to engage in such activity When the whistle was blown on North and he was fired by the president he stepped out of his National Security Council civilian clothes and put on his Marine uniform medal ribbons stacked over his breast pocket to appear before a congressional committee where he took the Fifth Amendment against Vice Adm John Poindexter North's boss as the national security adviser to the president came to the Capitol and appeared before the committees in civilian clothes There is a strange atmosphere gripping the White House Chief of staff Donald Regan is besieged and if he survives he will not be a force in Washington The other players at the White House who afwere not involved in the fair are telling jokes (“What seats 13 and sleeps one? The White House Cabinet room ”) - A Republican senator who has some a affair and about North remarked this week: “We don’t know a lot about North but we do know that North was a In fact he never should have been given security clearance for the national security job" House Speaker Thomas O'Neill thinks that North was made for the movies — an “Indiana Jones” Since President Reagan loves the fictitious characters of the movies and indeed sometimes confuses in his public statements the fictitious with the real O'Neill believes that North was made to order for Reagan There are reports from North's friends that he saw the president alone at night in the White House This is denied by White House chief of staff Donald Regan who said North never met alone with the president But what North's friends say squares with everyone's story at the White House that they didn't know what North was up to in the basement — everyone's story that is except the president s As sometimes happens in Washington there is a mighty clash of interests In this case it is between the president and North Only one can survive The cynical would point to two chances to avoid this confrontation There was the president calling North a national hero and telling him that he should tell Congress everything he knows North's lawyer Brendan Sullivan who knows better said no Knowledge of the Iran-Contr- form-fittin- g Iran-Cont- The problem for Reagan is that he may be in the position of either destroying North or losing his presidency Those may be his only options If Reagan goes totally against North he will offend the conservative supporters North rallied to fight the communists by supporting the Contras North appears to be courting immunity Some compare his case with that of John Dean Richard Nixon's counsel Dean was granted immunity at the request of the special Senate committee and then went to the committee and told all But it is not the same James Doyle who worked for special counsel Archibald Cox and wrote a book called “Not Above the Law" on the Wasaid that before got immunity James Neal the Nashville lawyer who worked the Dean case for Cox put in a sealed envelope all the evidence gathered for Dean's indictment "After he finished the Senate testimony Dean and his lawyer came for the plea negotiations and Neal told him there was no way he was going to walk" said Doyle In the negotiations Dean became a witness for the prosecution If North on his own has diverted funds to the Contras and used funds for political purposes there will be an outcry for his prosecution If he was just a soldier and took orders from CIA Director William Casey Donald Regan or President Reagan somewhere down the line he will get immunity The struggle then between the president and North would be of the magnitude of Watergate If North took orders directly from the president he has the power to bring down this presidency tergate prosecution Dean Neal R Peirce Efforts to Protect Environment Are Making Great Strides Washington Post Service WASHINGTON The environmental cause pushed against the wall by the early Reagan team of James Watt and Anne Bur-forregistered a spectacular comeback in Washington this year The Superfund to clean up hazardous waste sites was expanded to $9 billion Bills were passed to remove dangerous asbestos from school buildings and set standards for safe drinking water The president pocket-vetoe- d a revised Clean Water Act but it passed by such overwhelming margins that repassage by the new Democratic Congress veto or not is assured If you want solid proof that the environment is now rivaling the economy and employment as central concerns of the American people check out what the states are doing Congress has reauthorized and upped money for old programs to clean up hazardous wastes But the states are making what the Environmental Defense Fund's David Roe calls "quantum jumps" to prevent pollution in the first place Exhibit No 1 may be a California initia - d tive that was approved by a 63 percent margin Nov 4 It imposes tough rules to force state identification of chemicals that can cause cancer or birth defects Companies will be barred from dumping “significant levels” under criminal penalty of $100000 per day And citizens are empowered to sue to enforce the law where government officials don't act There'll be bounty payments for citizens who blow the whistle on toxic spills if a prosecutor refuses to act Across the continent in New York voters a $15 billion approved by better than bond issue to clean up "orphaned" toxic-wast- e sites where the polluters are unknown out of business or too poor to pay Gov Mario Cuomo (D) pushed the measure his Republican opponent endorsed it and state officials now advertise it as the nation’s most comprehensive toxic cleanup program New Jersey Gov Thomas Kean (R) has made decontamination of some 600 toxic-wast- e sites — the most of any state — a top priority At his urging New Jerseyans voted this fall for a $200 million bond issue that allows the state to start a $16 billion cleanup campaign The state already has on us books -l a law requiring that commercial property be cleaned up by the owner and certified free of toxic wastes before it can be sold Massachusetts voters gave 63 percent approval for a cleanup of hundreds of dumps not covered by the federal Superfund with a timetable to get the job done It’s a problem no state will be able to ignore too long: The Superfund has only 900 sites on its list compared to an estimated national total of 20000 The Washington state Legislature last spring passed new taxes including 8 cents on every pack of cigarettes to clean up pollution in Puget Sound and other waterways act forbidMaryland passed a critical-area- s ding new development writhin 1000 feet of the imperiled Chesapeake Bay And in May this year eight states signed a compact to protect and clean up the Great Lakes Why (his burst of state activity? First continuing revelation of toxic problems has stirred deep public concern Take the toughly worded question of a CBS-NeYork Times poll asking if protection of the environment is “so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high" and improvements should be made "regardless of cost" In 1981 45 percent of a national sampling agreed by January of this year 66 percent agreed of the early Reagan years may have had a backlash It spurred new activism by environmental groups which also began to beef up their state-levlobbying The issue has begun to take on a motherhood-and-apple-pi- e persuasion Even politicians with what the environmentalists call mediocre records tried to wrap themselves in the issue this year The Back in the 70s when landmark federal such as the clean air and water acts passed environmentalists assumed the states were too beholden to industry to act s on their own The acts had already bolstered the idea of an effective federal government correcting the behavior of regressive states But more and more federal environmental laws have handed enforcement off to the states The decentralization trend has been hastened says Margaret Mellon of the Environmental Law Institute by “the parsimony of the current administration that says 'Bet statutes civil-right- ter them than us’” Federal fiscal restraints she believes mean prospects for new national environmental laws are “pretty poor — any problem in the 1990s will be a de facto state problem" No one questions that states differ dramatically in environmental consciousness — Madeline Kunin’s Vermont is leagues ahead of Edwin Edwards’ Louisiana for example But localism is becoming the order of the day “The closer you are to a toxics crisis the more responsive you are” says Roe “Local government is often more responsive than state government and the states more responsive than the feds It’s just inevitable a political fact A person who lives one mile from a toxic dump is more concerned than someone who lives 20 miles away who in turn cares more than someone 200 or 2000 miles away" That concern and response is being played out in the legislatures Industry may appear to have more power than environmentalists there says Paul Doyle of the National Conference of State Legislatures “But no politician wants a Love Canal or Times Beach in his own district or state" The View of America's European Allies It Is Time to End Over Self-Destruct- ion Affair Iran-Cont- ra Benoist Special to The Washington Post PARIS — The European allies and in general all the friends of the United States are not only sad to see the storm that is devastating Washington nowadays they are also worried to see a great democracy enand of gaging in a process of that puts at risk its leadership and the confidence that had been restored since the election of Ronald Reagan By Jean-Mari- e 5 in 1980 Having inherited with a fading image I a — humiliated country fading both interna- - Benoist a nter and philosopher is a senior fellon at the de France in Paris Jean-Mari- e 4 tionally and nationally — from the Carter era Ronald Reagan has been able to make America stand up again through his inspiring leadership W'e are also baffled by this Shakespearean taste for regicide which makes the United States since the actual assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963 periodically commit symbolic murders on its rulers as if some obscure and envious forces were at work to punish those worthy citizens who have risen to the summit for the common good of their compatriots Of course w e do not ignore that the arms sale to an adversary might be to blame We also understand that the money obtained through this bargain can be judged as illegitimate and as democracies we also think that the executive should be held responsible for its actions before the nation through Congress But the very demanding quarters of Congress the press and public opinion should also be ready to consider a few other aspects of the matter One is the aspect of national security the other of necessary secrecy Instead of using a passionate and almost Piv lov lan language to express their distaste lor an arms deal with Iran those w ho criti-- i ize this policy should realize that the deal was not made only to redeem the life and s treedom of hostages hut also that the were those Iranians on which the tree world has to bet because they are our only ihanve in the post Khomeini era if we inter-louitor- 1 4 Alexander Hamilton allowed for that in the Federalist Papers It is what trusteeship is about Secrecy is a prerequisite for the conduct of an efficient strategy As Frenchmen grateful to the United States and the allies for setting us free from occupation in 1944-4we may respectfully remind the US Congress that if the Overlord operation had not been a covert operation — that is if it had been discussed openly in the Senate or the House — we would today still be suffering under the boot of the Nazis That of course was in wartime But given the gravity of the Soviet global threat which is 1) preparing a destabilization of Iran through the Tudeh Party and the peneand 2) aiming at puttrated “mullah-cracy- " ting pressure on Mexico from Cuba and the Sandinistas the danger is as great as it was in World War II The essentials of the acts of resistance to the Soviets could always be explained to Congress by the president “in a timely fashion” This means at a time when it should not ruin the course of a covert action as legitimate as the one that was being carried out If the United States does not stop this terrible process of and in front of a dismayed world the whole of the free world will be weak ened For not only the allies but all the people longing for their freedom need strong leadership in Washington Freedom isolationrequires will power to survive-no- t ism paralysis or this priggish poisonous carping in which a proud democracy inflicts upon itself like a lethal venom a perverse use of its own ideals and ethics turned into gall want to avoid a Soviet Anschluss of Iran in the next decade The fate of the balance of the Middle East the necessity to contain the fundamentalist tide of the Shiites is an issue that is more important than the fact of not informing the two intelligence committees of Congress Iranian moderates were willing to open talks with the United Stales it was a chance not to be neglected an opportunity that had to be seized Those who inspired this deal were by no means wrong On the con policy revealed a geotrary their political adeptness that the United States could be proud of If g The official will of the United Stales has been too often paralyzed in the past for us to e initiative deplore the fact that is being used to supplement inadequate public actions If similar private funding and arms shipments to the resistance of Angola had nut been raised and sent from the United Stales and Europe during the time when the Clark Amendment was putting a straitjack-e- t on all help — covert or overt — to the freedom fighters then Jonas Savimbi the anticommunist resistance leader would long ago have been crushed and the Soviets would have free access to that country's minerals and other commodities necessary to the free world s survival Those Europeans who are attached to freedom and lucid enough to assess the Soviet global threat to the world consider that the masterminds of the Iranian and Nicara quasi-privat- guan plans are not only good patriots but that they were fighting for the preservation of democracy "Official lawlessness" is too strong a word when national interest and the benefit of the free world are forcing decisions that have to be taken swiftly In the case of Iran and the Contras such decisions were secret and this secrecy is perceived by Congress as an abuse But with due respect for the legitimate representation of the general will it tan be argued that the mandate given in trust to a president should allow him and his advisers to conduct covert operations when they are in the interest of the nation and of its allies The Founding Fathers k 1 and in particular Nothing Serious The reason bad news travels faster than good is that the good tidings are slowed down by skeptics Income taxes aren't much more exasperating than all those little outgo taxes Remember back when a helpful husband was one who put his feet up for the vacuum cleaner? In getting the last word in an argument muttering does not count i fcr I t v3 |
