Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 26, 1994 TAG: 9402250033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cal Thomas
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Walsh has held court in the chambers of his own mind and has indicted and convicted high-level members of the Reagan and Bush administrations he sees as having either broken laws or created the ``climate'' that led others to break laws. Specifically, Walsh claims laws were broken in a 1985 arms-for-hostages deal with Iran and in aiding the Nicaraguan freedom fighters at a time when Congress' support was on-again, off-again.
In attacking the ethics of others, Walsh clearly violated the legal code of his own profession. It is unethical for a prosecutor to make out-of-court statements about people who have not been charged with a crime. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
The Watergate Special Prosecution Force refused to make public grand-jury testimony not presented in court, calling such behavior a reckless abuse of power: `` ... for WSPF to make public the evidence it gathered concerning the former president and others who were not charged with criminal offenses would be to add another abuse of power to those that led to creation of a special prosecutor's office. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibit the disclosure of information presented to a grand jury except as necessary in the course of criminal proceedings.''
Walsh seemed to acknowledge that ethics code, even while violating it, when he told a news conference it was ``very disturbing'' for him to point fingers at people he didn't prosecute. And well it should be. The Iran-Contra report smears a number of reputations, including Ronald Reagan's, George Bush's and Oliver North's, a man who is about to declare his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. If Walsh had the goods on any of these, and the others he names, he should have taken them to court. To smear these men is unconscionable.
Perhaps the most detailed rejoinder to Walsh's charges came from former Attorney General Edwin Meese III. Meese and his attorneys make a point-by-point refutation of Walsh's charges. Just one example involves the November 1985 shipment of HAWK missiles to Iran, leading to the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by Iranian-controlled Shiite Muslim fighters. Walsh claims that Meese attempted to cover up information about the shipment. In fact, it was Meese who publicly spoke of the arms shipment by Israel and of Reagan's knowledge of it (though he and Reagan have stated they didn't know about the shipment at the time it was made), on Nov. 25, 1986.
At one time, Walsh seems to be arguing that there was a more general cover-up intended to conceal the president's knowledge of the November 1985 missile shipment, no matter when the president learned of it. Walsh also claims, absent any facts to back him up, that the November 1985 shipment was illegal, but then he says whether or not it was illegal, Meese thought it ``possibly'' illegal and therefore he participated in the alleged cover-up. And so it goes for most of the report.
The real criminal activity, in the political sense, was conducted by Reagan administration opponents in Congress who could not bear to see the president's tough, anti-Communist tactics succeed. They had too much invested in the nuclear-freeze movement, unilateral disarmament and attempts to cut the defense budget and appease the Soviet Union.
The real final chapter in the Iran-Contra affair is to be found in Nicaragua, which is no longer under the dictatorial boot of the communist Sandinistas. Freedom's bell has rung, not only in Managua, but in Grenada and Eastern Europe and in many other places where communism was opposed.
In Grenada, they've erected statues to some of those considered criminals by the special prosecutor. In Washington, Lawrence Walsh has attempted a one-man judicial lynching of principled men who loved freedom.
Let history judge who the real heroes and villains are. Better still, ask a Nicaraguan.
Los Angeles Times
by CNB