CRISIS FOR REAGAN - SETBACKS MAY UNRAVEL FOREIGN-POLICY GAINS OF THE ADMINISTRATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000707060041-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: November 14, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

~, _ Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/10 :CIA-RDP90-009658000707060041-0
j~r~`~ A -ti WALL STREET JOUR:vAL
1~ 14 November 1986
OiY PAG
Crisis for Reagan
Setbacks May Unravel
Foreign-Policy Gains
Of the Administration
Shipment of Weapons to Iran
Is the Latest Issue to Raise
Doubts About Credibility
Avoiding Leaks and Congress
By Jottx Watco'rr and Eutex Htrrte
SIaJJRCpOT1ETJOJTHE WALL$TREETJOURNAL
WASHINGTON-After impressing the
world by building U.S. strength and credi-
bility, the Reagan administration has suf-
fered aseries of embarrassments that
threaten to unravel gains that President
Reagan's bold foreign policy has won.
"I'm afraid that after six years of
things looking as if they were coming to-
gether, suddenly they are all coming apart
for a variety of reasons," says Lawrence
Eagleburger, a former Reagan administra-
tion undersecretary of state and now the
president of Kissinger Associates in New
York. "It could be a very rough two years
ahead."
Three recent revelations have raised
questions about the administration's credi?
bility, both at home and abroad: the presi-
dent's admission that the U.S. has secretly
been sending arms to Iran while the U.S.
was campaigning publicly to isolate the Is-
lamic republic for its support of terrorism;
allegations that the administration was
skirting congressional restrictions on aid to
Nicaraguan rebels; and the details of the
U S. campaign to deceive Libya.
main, raising doubts about the administra-
tion's ability to move forward or even hold
on to its foreign-policy gains so far.
For instance, the president's confusing
and contradictory accounts of his meeting
with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in
Iceland last month, along with growing
doubts about the wisdom of Mr. Reagan's
nuclear-arms policies, have prompted
questions about the administration's
competence.
Because the administration is losing the
upper hand in managing its foreign policy,
the debate is shifting from the substance
on each issue-Iran, Libya, Nicaragua,
arms control-to concerns about judgment
and performance.
"We are seeing, as we did towards the
end of the Carter administration, disarray,
inability to cope with our problems, gene~-
alized fallout that is going to do damage,"
says Fred Dutton, a former secretary of
the cabinet during President Kennedy's
Bay of Pigs debacle and currently a lobby-
ist whose clients include Saudi Arabia.
Of course, Mr. Reagan still has two
years to pursue his major foreign-policy
goals-arms control, a reduction in ter-
rorism, and rolling back Marxist gains in
Nicaragua and around the world. He com-
mands broad public support and retains
the ability to surprise the world with his
boldness.
trying to get our hostages released was a
fine one. The methodology was poor." Sev
eral congressional committees plan to hold
hearings on the administration's covert
dealings with Iran.
And Sen. Pell says he expects Senate
hearings early next year on arms control
and anuclear-test-ban treaty. While he
doesn't want to "start out by blanket cri?
tiques of the administration," he says, he
is concerned about the prognosis for arms
control. "The question now," he says. "is
the will to reach that agreement."
Mr. Hormats believes that the credibil-
ity damage from the Iran affair can be re-
versed if the administration makes pro-
gress on arms control, which is the most
important issue for many of this country's
allies, and if U.S. officials quickly sit down
with the allies to come to a consensus and
clear the air about antiterrorism policy.
Until such actions take place, he con?
eludes, "it certainly is a major setback to
Reagan's foreign policy; if a great power
does things which confuse its own people
and its allies, that inevitably must weaken
its ability to conduct its foreign policy."
Ironically, President Reagan now
seems to be plagued by the same kind of
foreign-policy confusion, contradictions
and credibility problems that he cam?
paigned on in 1980 as weaknesses in the ad-
ministration of his predecessor, Jimmy
Carter.
What bothers many in Congress is the
secretiveness of the Reagan foreign policy.
Both Democrats and Republicans on Capi?
tol Hill are angry that they weren't in-
formed about the Iran hostage plan. )Sven.,
the intelligence committees weren't told
about it unU] after the news was leaked by
a Lebanese magazine. "Certainly they're
setting up a messy situation for the Demo-
crats to take a crack at in Con-
gress ...which now has an institutional
interest to make sure its turf is main-
tained," says Mr. Dutton, the former cabi-
net secretary.
Frustrations have been building in Con-
gress for years over the Reagan adminis?
tration's sharp increase in covert activities
around the globe. "Lf covert operations
grew any faster. they'd be listed on the
New York Stock Exchan?e." says a form r
Reaean administration State Departm nt
official. Richard Haass who now tea hac
Harvard.
Some in the White Hour inn r it 1 ,
however. favor such covert missions as a
way to outflank congressional and bureau-
cratic resistance to their policies. Thus, in
what looked like a bad "Mission Impossi-
ble" script, former National Security Ad-
viser Robert C. McFarlane and Lt. Col. Ol-
iver North, a member of the National Se-
curity Council staff, secretly flew to Teh?
ran in May aboard a plane delivering mili-
tary hardware but returned empty-
handed.
Facing Congressional Battles
But with the Senate now controlled by
the Democrats and with the jockeying for
the presidency under way once more, Mr.
Reagan is likely to face more pressure to
explain and justify his foreign policies. Re-
publicans as well as Democrats have been
critical of his secret dealings with Iran.
Next year the administration will face bat-
tles in Congress over aid to the Nicaraguan
rebels, anuclear-test ban, strategic-de-
fense research, the defense budget, U.S.
policy toward South Africa, trade and
other issues.
And even if [he administration's deci-
sion to send military supplies to Iran leads
Goal of Speech to the release of more hostages from Leb-
In a combative, nationally televised anon. the once?covert initiative will con-
speech last night, President Reagan de- tinue to enerate criticism. The secret Iran
scribed as "utterly false" news reports P negotiations were "t a worst handlin? of
that his administration had sold arms to an inteL-i?ence problem in our history,"
Iran in a direct swap for the freedom of -cavc_ Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the
L'.S. hostages in Lebanon. I New York Democrat and former co-chair-
"The United States has not made con- I man of the Senate Intelli?ence Commit-
cessions to those who hold our people cap- 'tee-
live in Lebanon. And we will not." hP "Great powers cannot afford to be mis-
said. understood," says Robert Hormats, a for?
.1Rr. Reagan conceded, however, that he
approved small shipments of defensive and
spare parts to Iran to demonstrate that the
U.S. was sincere in seeking "a new rela-
tionship" with Iran, which could lead
to the hostages' release. (See story on
page 3.1
The speech was designed to ease the
immediate credibility crisis over U.S. anti-
terrorism policy. But other problems re-
met Reagan State Department official who
now is a vice president at Goldman, Sachs
& Co., the securities firm. "Pursuing one
resolute policy in public and another in pri-
vate has harmed the administration's cred-
ibility."
Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell of
Rhode Island, who will become the chair-
man of the Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee in January, says, "The objective of
Contin~~od
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of,
Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Arizona Re-
publican who heads the Senate Armed
Cervices Committee, says: "It seems to be
true ...that the United States has given
either parts or equivalent to Iran to re-
lease some hostages. I think that's a
dreadful mistake, probably one of the ma-
jor mistakes the United States has ever
made in foreign policy."
The decision to use the National Secu-
rity Council as a focal point for action, and
cut the State and Defense departments out,
apparently emerged from three factors: a
fear of leaks, a desire to avoid congres-
sional oversight, and an attempt to over-
come the rivalries and dissension that
sometimes led to foreign-policy gridlock
during President Reagan's first term.
Now a smaller, more isolated group of
advisers is both shaping and cai r,~ng out
foreign-policy decisions at the White
House. While Chief of Staff Donald Regan
is credited with ending the embarrassing
dissent, he is faulted for limiting the ad-
vice that the president gets.
The administration's arms?control and
nuclear policies have generated confusion.
Mr. Reagan's 1983 proposal for amissile-
defense system popularly called Star Wars
appeared at first to be a clever political
stroke to defuse the growing anti-nuclear
movements in the U.S. and Western Eu-
rope.
After Reykjavik
But after his meeting with Soviet leader
Gorbachev in Reykjavik last month, the
impression emerged that Mr. Reagan seri-
ously believed that his Strategic Defense
Initiative could lead to the abolition of nu-
clear weapons.
As a result, some leading nuclear strat-
egists worry that the president may unwit-
tingly have undermined political support
for nuclear weapons in both the U.S. and
Western Europe without offering a practi-
cal replacement for the 40-year-old doc A
trine of deterrence.
The Soviets tiow are trying to capitalize
on confusion over what Mr. Reagan said in
Iceland. At the arms talks in Geneva, they
are trying to hold Mr. Reagan to his pur-
ported promises to negotiate ambitious
schemes either to abolish all strategic nu-
clear weapons or to do away with all nu-
clear weapons. He will have to explain to a
skeptical Congress why it should spend bil-
lions of dollars to modernize the nation's
nuclear force with new weapons he wants
to abolish and billions more for Star Wars
defenses that, if he gets his way, won't
have any ballistic missiles to shoot
~ down.
The lraman imtlative has also bred con-
fusion. The president explained the reason
for trying to deal with moderate elements
in the Iranian leadership in his speech last
night. Nevertl-eless, the negotiations have
compromised the administration's policy
on terrorism and America's proclaimed
neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war.
Bnezinski's Vlew
"The basic idea of opening links to Iran
is a good one, but the administration's pur-
suit of it ended up with us being suckered
by both the Iranians and the Israelis,"
says Zbigniew Brzezinski, who made a
vain effort of his own to open a channel to
Iran when he was Mr. Carter's national?se-
curity adviser.
"We have put ourselves in a position
where we will not be believed and where
our own reliability and steadiness are open
to question," says Mr. Eagleburger, the
former undersecretary of state. "And reli-
ability and steadiness are the most impor-
tant attributes of our foreign policy, be-
cause we are the leaders of the Free World
and others depend on us and on what we
say.
~eDt mb r t administration befud-
dled-its allies and the American public
when it reluctantly admitted that it had
drafted a plan to use deceptive military
maneuvers and covert operations to un?
nerve Libvan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
As part of the effort, which was approved
by the President and his top advisers, the
U.S. planned to spread false reports in the
Mideast and deploy ships near Libya in a
threatening manner.
The administration's efforts to encour?
age support for the anti-Sandinista rebels
in Nicaragua, even while Congress forbade
direct assistance, have raised more ques-
tions about the role of the National Secu-
rity Council and about the administration's
willingness to live within the law. "The ad?
-ministration ut the cart before the horse
by r;ett n mvo v in a arami it~II~~'o~~er-
ation wit out rst bui me a oolitica~e
for it." savs William Colbv. former direc-
tor of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The administration, notes former De-
fense Secretary Harold Brown, now the
chairman of Johns Hopkins University's
Foreign Policy Institute, came into office
convinced that rebuilding American
strength and assertiveness would reverse
the growth of Soviet power.
But, he contends, "The administration
lacked a coherent view of the world and a
coherent organization that could digest
complex problems, analyze them, pass
them up to the president for decisions, then
implement them. That was bound to lead
to trouble down the line."
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