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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (8076)	10/8/1998 2:33:00 PM
From: Borzou Daragahi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

More Memory Lane Copyright 1992 The New York Times Company The New York Times October 5, 1992, Monday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 20; Column 1; Editorial Desk LENGTH: 399 words HEADLINE: Mr. Bush Had to Know BODY: George Bush claims that when he was Vice President he knew very little about the Iran-contra affair. The record shows that he knew plenty. If inclined, he could have opposed the selling of arms to Iran as ransom for hostages and the illegal supply of the contra rebels in Nicaragua. Mr. Bush maintains he was excluded from the "loop" of informed officials who engineered the blunders at both the Iran and Nicaragua ends of the scandal. At the Iran end, he claims to have learned the full implications of arms-for-hostages dealings about when the public did -- after the story broke late in 1986. Yet Howard Teicher, a Middle East specialist on the Reagan White House staff, says he explained the swap to him in the spring of 1986. And a memo by an Israeli official, made public last week by ABC's "Nightline," shows Mr. Bush's full awareness in July that the U.S. was dealing -- with radicals not moderates -- in arms for hostages. These are not small discrepancies, since the earlier Mr. Bush knew what was happening, the longer he had to act on the warning of his own anti-terrorism task force that ransoming hostages would be self-defeating. All of this strengthens the damning evidence of a 1987 conversation between Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, and George Shultz, Secretary of State, about Mr. Bush's pretense of non-involvement. Mr. Weinberger complained that Mr. Bush was falsely claiming ignorance of their fervent objections to the arms deals. In the scandal's contra chapter, evidence of Mr. Bush's awareness of covert supplies for the Nicaraguan rebels continues to emerge from the Congressional investigation and the probe of Lawrence Walsh, the independent prosecutor. There simply were too many White House briefings -- and too much interaction between the Vice President's security adviser, Donald Gregg, and Oliver North and other contra supporters -- to make Mr. Bush's protestations of ignorance credible. Mr. Bush is not accused of knowing about the linkage between the Iran and contra ventures, namely the financing of the contras by diverting proceeds from the Iran arms sales. But the evidence suggests that he either lent active support to the arms-for-hostages deal and to the covert supplying of the contras -- or irresponsibly abstained from intervening. Mr. Bush's role in Iran-contra deserves close interrogation in the debates ahead.