Word: nsc
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When Reagan appointed the Tower commission in late November, it seemed likely that the panel would produce little more than a management consultant's dry analysis of the NSC. But armed with the President's authority to question anybody about anything, the three members took it on themselves to conduct the most sweeping investigation yet of the whole affair. They have questioned 58 witnesses, including several no other body had heard from -- Reagan, for one, as well as Manucher Ghorbanifar and Adnan Khashoggi, the two leading middlemen in the Iranian deals. The commission has prepared its own chronology...
...Tower commission, originally appointed by Reagan to recommend changes in the structure and operations of the NSC, has turned into a kind of runaway grand jury conducting a far-reaching investigation of the whole Iran arms- contra funds scandal. It is the only investigative body that has questioned the President, who last week met with its three members for the second time, in a 70-minute session. The White House is bracing itself for what Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater predicted will be a "critical and tough" report. Among other things, the commission is believed to have found deep CIA involvement...
...will be the most complete and unobstructed view of this tragedy so far. The narrative -- already 200 pages -- is in delicate negotiations with security experts because much of it came from secret intercepts and a new cache of computer data unearthed in the most cloistered chambers of the NSC as late as last week. The sad story is one of arrogance, deception, shock and cover-up in varying degrees...
...likelihood the commission's new data will overshadow its recommendations on improving the NSC operation. The probe back through history has shown that the system has worked pretty well, according to one participant. "There have been screw-ups in every Administration," says this fellow. "In the end it comes down to people. Good people make it work. Get bad people and it fails...
Among the NSC staff, Colonel North was discreet about his beliefs, but he has eagerly shared his experiences with outsiders. Two years ago, he told a complete stranger about a healing he had undergone. The Rev. Stephen King, an evangelical pastor at the Cherrydale Baptist Church in Arlington, Va., recalls that North sat down next to him in a barber shop and joyously recounted how a few years before he had been contorted by wracking back pain while in the field with a group of officers. One of the officers, a fellow charismatic, knelt down before North and prayed fervently...