Under Heavy Fire

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Ronald Reagan feels it came as a "bolt from the blue," and now he considers it the most serious problem he has confronted during his 14 years in public office. According to an intimate, the President remains "very disappointed and very disturbed about what he was not told" about the Iran-contra scandal. Reagan still thinks he does not know all the details of the Iranian arms shipments and the subsequent funneling of profits to the Nicaraguan rebels. "Everybody keeps saying that they want all the facts," says this ally. "My God, so does he!" In his radio broadcast Saturday, the President regretfully conceded that "the execution of these policies was flawed, and mistakes were made."

Demands that he dismiss more top aides have nettled the President, yet his thinking has apparently shifted somewhat over the past week. He does not want to be pushed into abrupt firings or show signs of yielding to pressure. He answered with a testy no! to reporters who repeatedly asked him whether he planned to jettison Chief of Staff Donald Regan, and an aide insisted that the President had no plans to sack CIA Director William Casey. But it is now quite probable that both men will be departing from their posts within the next month or so.

Despite the continuing revelations and uproar, Reagan fervently believes that his Administration can recover from this crisis, that there is still a reservoir of affection for him. Last week he took his firmest step yet toward coming to grips with the affair. Avoiding the befuddlement and bitterness that had marked his earlier statements on the scandal, he delivered a terse four-minute address from the Oval Office on Tuesday in which he 1) announced the choice of a distinguished new National Security Adviser; 2) urged the naming of an independent counsel to investigate the affair; 3) supported congressional requests for special committees to look into the scandal; and 4) promised his Administration's full cooperation with investigators. "I can appreciate why some of these things are difficult to comprehend," he told his audience. "You're enti tled to have your questions answered."

For a moment there seemed to be a sigh of relief. The choice of Frank Carlucci, an experienced and capable diplomat and Government official, to head the National Security Council received widespread bipartisan plaudits. And by calling for a special prosecutor to look at all aspects of the affair, the Administration seemed to be signaling that it was eager to avoid any appearance of a cover-up.

Yet even though the actions represented most of what the sidelines doctors had prescribed, the furor over "Iranscam" barely abated. When Reagan's departed National Security Adviser John Poindexter and his renegade deputy Lieut. Colonel Oliver North appeared before a Senate committee, both invoked the Fifth Amendment. Robert McFarlane, Poindexter's predecessor and an early promoter of establishing contacts with Iran, did respond to Senate interrogators, but he cast doubt on Reagan's claims about what the President knew and when he knew it. As a flood of disclosures about North's secret arms network fueled fascination with details of the bizarre affair, Congressmen intensified calls for the heads of others who may have been in on the scam.