Ronald Reagan: Can He Recover?

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The Tower commission could not examine contra aid in anything like the detail of its findings on the Iran arms sales. But at public hearings probably beginning next month, special Senate and House investigating committees will focus on developing that story further. Last week the committees, with the approval of Independent Counsel Walsh, announced that they will grant limited immunity from prosecution to secure the testimony of three witnesses: Fawn Hall, Oliver North's secretary; Robert Dutton, an associate of retired Major General Richard Secord, who was deeply involved in both the Iran and contra operations; and Edward de Garey, a Pennsylvania businessman connected to an apparent front company that paid pilots flying arms to the contras.

Any possible indictments will be up to Walsh. The independent counsel has hired 19 attorneys and opened two offices. But his inquiry is likely to be slowed by challenges that North and others have filed as to the constitutionality of the law under which he was appointed. Even if the courts reject those challenges, potential witnesses may refuse to testify until the constitutional problem is cleared up. In any case, the sheer scope of the inquiry Walsh intends to conduct could take as long as two years.

So there is rich potential for future shocks, possibly continuing until the very end of the Reagan Administration. But with the Tower report, the essentials of the bizarre story are resoundingly confirmed. Although the report contained no sensational new revelations, no "smoking gun," in Watergate parlance, the Administration might have been better off if it had. That at least would have been a distraction from having the sad tale laid out from beginning to end in Olympian, judicious language, by respected statesmen hand-picked by the President.

It will now be up to Ronald Reagan to answer one question the commission did pose in so many words. In its single literary flourish, the report prefaced its chronology of the Iran and contra operations with an apt quotation from the 2nd century Roman poet Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves? Under the American system, the answer can only be the President -- an active, engaged President, rather than the befuddled and intellectually lazy figure so damningly portrayed in the Tower report.