Word: scowcroft
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Appointed in early December to examine the structure of the NSC, the panel turned into an aggressive inquisition on the Iran-contra affair. Former Texas Senator John Tower, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Maine Senator and Secretary of State Edmund Muskie reached their conclusions with resounding unanimity after taking testimony from some 80 witnesses and reviewing thousands of documents, including a treasure trove of NSC computer messages notable for, among other things, their frequent misspellings...
...Tower commission finds the legality of these NSC staff actions murky, partly because in December 1985 Congress altered the Boland Amendment to permit some CIA intelligence exchanges with the contras. A classified appendix provided other loopholes. Scowcroft calls the Boland Amendment a "masterpiece of ambiguity...
...three members of the commission -- Tower, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie -- called on McFarlane last Thursday in Bethesda Naval Hospital. McFarlane has been confined there since Feb. 9, after he attempted suicide by swallowing an overdose of Valium. The session in a conference room adjoining the presidential suite was stilted: the four men know each other well, but they took pains to speak formally as investigators and witness. McFarlane addressed Tower as "Senator" and Muskie as "Mr. Secretary...
...three commission members (Tower plus former Secretary of State Ed Muskie and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft) and their staff of 21 interviewed 56 witnesses, including the three former Presidents and Reagan, who in two hours and 25 minutes of questioning cracked only one joke, an epoch of solemnity. Transcripts of other sessions are encyclopedic. Extracting the critical facts in three months, an investigative equivalent of the 40-yard dash, often kept the staff on duty through weekends and into the early hours...
...Scowcroft, pondering what the commission has learned, poses the central question and then answers it. "Can we design a system that gives the President the flexibility he must have and guarantees that he will not make a mistake? The answer is no. What we can do is make sure that the President has all the information available for his decision and is told the good and bad consequences that will flow from his action. But if he wants to go off the deep end, there is no system in the world that can stop...