Iran-Contra Affair

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IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR

The Iran-Contra hearings by a joint committee of both houses of Congress (the Senate Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition and the House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran) were but one more episode in the almost constant twentieth-century battle between the presidency—not necessarily the President, but the executive branch and particularly the officials of the White House—and Congress for power over foreign affairs assigned by the Constitution to the national government. Iran-Contra, like watergate and the Steel Seizure Controversy, stands out among the few instances in which Congress mounted a successful, albeit short-lived, challenge to a thrust for power by the White House.

Following the debacle of the vietnam war, initiated by President john f. kennedy and carried on disastrously by Presidents lyndon b. johnson and richard m. nixon without a specific congressional declaration of war, the United States found itself chastened, but not necessarily enlightened, by the experience. A large but by no means unanimous portion of the population wished to continue the fight against communism wherever it could be found, but preferably on foreign soil and, if necessary, without the endorsement of Congress. If American lives were wasted by unsuccessful military adventures in Korea and Vietnam, eventually bringing peace without honor, perhaps clandestine support of anticommunist guerrillas, in Central America with the approval of Congress could bring us honor without peace. After many years of unrestrained but unsuccessful activity in which American matériel and largess were profligately expended, along with the lives of the residents, Congress decided to call a halt to at least some of its clandestine support for insurgent forces below America's southern border, absent congressional approval. And when Congress discovered—it was an all but open secret—that secret operations in the foreign affairs apparatus of the White House were providing the where-withal for much of the military resistance in Central America, in defiance of congressional law, a hearing was called to establish who, what, why, and when. As in Watergate, the hearings were politically dangerous because they came so close to involving the President himself in illegality. Unlike the case of Watergate, however, the President—in this instance, ronald reagan—seemed more guilty of nonfeasance than malfeasance, as an investigation by a committee that the President had appointed, with former Senator John Tower as chairman, seemed to indicate in its report.

Fundamentally, the obligation of the President and his aides to abide by the terms of the laws enacted by Congress are not to be gainsaid. According to Article II, section 3, of the Constitution, the President "shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Occasionally, the question may legitimately arise whether in fact that language rightfully cabins the chief executive in the circumstances and there is a conflict between the two branches, which becomes a question of constitutional dimensions. Usually, the contesting sides reach a peaceful understanding. Sometimes the issue has to be resolved by the courts, as was the case when President harry s. truman seized the steel mills or when the executive branch froze the assets of the Iranian government without congressional authorization. Sometimes the controversy reaches the forum of a congressional hearing, as was the case with Watergate and again with the Iran-Contra controversy.

Prior to world war i, the United States was governed by what Woodrow Wilson could label "congressional government" in his 1913 book of that title, which did not mean that Congress did not succumb to strong presidential leadership, such as abraham lincoln 's, in times of crisis. During and after world war ii, government in the United States became the eponymous "presidential dictatorship" of clinton rossiter's 1985 volume, with Congress usually subordinated to the will expressed by the President. Since the korean war, there has been a further realignment of power, again described by an astute critic's title, Arthur Schlesinger's The Imperial Presidency (1973), this time marking not a shift between Congress and the President but a development within the presidency of an unelected, politically irresponsible bureaucracy.

It may well be that a congressional investigation of alleged wrongdoing at the level of the White House serves its function when it is called to the public's attention, when the wrongdoing that has taken place is brought to an end, and when some of the principal responsible presidential subordinates are subjected to criminal processes in the United States courts or otherwise chastised. Clearly the intent of the Framers was to fix the responsibility on the President for the conduct of his office. But we live now in more perilous times. If the continued threat of serious malefaction is to be eliminated, the price of the impeachment process to determine whether the chief executive has erred is nevertheless too destabilizing in times of crisis for the nation to pay for such hearings. The national government was paralyzed for months in the Watergate crisis. Thus, the Iran-Contra affair may not have afforded as satisfying a resolution of the questions first raised by Senator Howard Baker: "What did the President know? And when did he know it?" But the Constitution's interests were served, and the nation's interests were protected.

The Iran-Contra hearings, however consequential in theory, were a contest for constitutional power between President and Congress, and were generally regarded by the American public as entertainment rather than enlightenment. It was as if some of Hollywood's second-rate script writers had concocted a "B" version of the Watergate hearings. Everyone was covering up for a generally beloved and pathetically inept President, who could not remember what had occurred in his meetings with his national security staff. There was a handsome Marine veteran wrapped in the flag and dedicated to the extermination of communists and communism by means in or out of the Constitution's limits. There was his beauteous secretary devoted to her boss, who helped destroy and remove secret documents. There were professional spies, cabinet officers locked out of the deliberations, national security chiefs, past and present. There were strange and sinister-looking Middle Eastern arms merchants. And there was a Rasputin figure, who, fortunately for the goals of the hearings, had died before his evidence could be secured. If the purpose of the Iran-Contra hearings were to prove that congressional hearings about the conduct of the presidential office can be a futile and useless check and balance of one branch of the government on the other, the hearings succeeded beyond a peradventure of doubt. They also proved what "every schoolboy knew," that the American government had been secretly negotiating with Iran for the release of American prisoners and that it was supplying weapons to the Contra forces in Nicaragua—the first, in contradiction of the Reagan administration's own frequently announced policy; the second, at least without and likely in contradiction of congressional mandate. This is not the way American government is supposed to work.

After the hearings, many of the witnesses were indicted and some pleaded guilty to various offenses while others were found guilty. None of the major figures received heavy sentences. Lt. Col. Oliver North, the popular hero of the tale, was sentenced to 1200 hours of community service and fined $150,000 on three felony counts of willfully obstructing the congressional investigation, but his conviction was reversed—ironically, on civil liberties grounds. Robert McFarlane, former national security adviser to the President, pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts of assisting in secret efforts illegally to aid the Contras. He received two years probation, a $20,000 fine and 200 hours of community service. Admiral John M. Poindexter, Reagan's national security adviser and North's superior, did get six months on five counts of conspiracy.

Philip B. Kurland
(1992)