Word: contra
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...chill the candor of future advisers, as well as Presidents? Those conflicting points of law, confronted in the doctrine of Executive privilege during the Watergate scandal, were raised once again last week by Ronald Reagan as he struggled to avoid being pulled into the legal battles over the Iran-contra affair that had marred his presidency...
...office, implying that Reagan would have a much stronger case if George Bush joined him in asking that the diary excerpts be suppressed. So far, Bush has not, and for an obvious reason: it might appear that he and Reagan both have something to hide about their Iran-contra roles...
Unless the legal bickering over Executive privilege becomes protracted, Reagan may face imminent disclosure of his mysterious jottings, made in leather-bound notebooks. To date, only two of his closest aides have seen the original diary. The few attorneys who have examined excerpts say they contain no Iran-contra bombshells. But Poindexter, who insisted in Senate testimony that "the buck stopped with me" in keeping the diversion of arms profits a secret from his boss, hopes the diary will show that Reagan gave him at least implicit direction to do what...
...Walsh's results, through little fault of his own, are meager. He has spent some $18.5 million, and still employs 17 full-time attorneys and a staff of 51. Yet unlike Watergate, in which 25 individuals went to prison, no one, not even Iran-contra's private contractors Richard Secord and Albert Hakim and the celebrated Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, has served time. In many ways Watergate, a political burglary that mushroomed into a massive cover-up, was less serious than the deliberate defiance of a congressional law, signed by Reagan, and the undermining of a publicly proclaimed policy...
...Gipper's words on Iran-contra are suddenly in fresh demand for some solid reasons that extend beyond courtrooms. They could affect his place in history. Observes Henry Graff, a presidential historian at Columbia University: "Reagan can't have it both ways. He can't be remembered as a piece of putty in the hands of activist conspirators and also someone who put his stamp on the times and yearns for a place on Mount Rushmore...