THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9409290424
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
Robert McFarlane claims it took him seven years to give his account of his years as President Reagan's national security adviser and of the Iran-Contra affair because his original publisher wanted sensationalism and he refused to stoop to it.
Yet he seems plenty limber in Special Trust (Cadell & Davies, 399 pp., $25), co-written with former Newsweek correspondent Sofia Smardz. It begins with McFarlane's attempted suicide and ends with his recovery. The rest of the story is flashback between those confessional bookends. If that isn't sensationalism, it's Oprahization.
His account also arrives in the middle of a run for the Senate by his former staffer, Lt. Col. Oliver North. McFarlane launched the book with a ``60 Minutes'' interview with Mike Wallace blasting North as a liar unfit to hold high office. The timing can hardly be an accident.
But though McFarlane's book is filled with injured vanity and dedicated to settling scores, that doesn't mean he's not a credible witness to those years. Sometimes the aggrieved have the greatest motive to tell it like it was.
North being of the most local interest, it is reasonable to begin with him. According to McFarlane, North lied when he said he was following McFarlane's orders on swapping arms for hostages in Iran and soliciting aid for Nicaraguan Contras. In fact, McFarlane says, he tried to turn off the Iran initiative before he left government and admonished everyone in his shop to proceed with caution on the Contras. When North found himself under fire, he was un-Marinelike in evading responsibility, seeking shelter and betraying comrades, McFarlane says.
He also suggests that North's Marine career had plateaued long before the scandal broke because his superiors had identified disturbing personality traits. Marine Commandant P.X. Kelley told McFarlane that North would never make general because of his post-Vietnam psychiatric problems, his obsessive self-promotion and his untrustworthiness.
But that doesn't mean that North wasn't following somebody's orders. McFarlane says Reagan became mesmerized by the prospect of freeing hostages and couldn't be dissuaded even when it became obvious he was paying ransom to terrorists. McFarlane also accuses the president of encouraging aid to the Contras with little regard for the legalities. He joins the chorus that has fingered CIA chief Bill Casey as the conspirator in chief.
In Special Trust, McFarlane does not absolve himself of culpability. He let North have a very long leash and knew he played fast and loose with the truth. McFarlane comes across as a man vain of his foreign policy smarts but naive about the ways of the world. Though he worked for Henry Kissinger in the Nixon White House, he didn't have to navigate the snake pit personally, just stay on the right side of Dr. K.
McFarlane suggests that the Reagan White House was another nest of vipers characterized by chaotic management and guerrilla warfare. But this time he was not a staffer, but a player. And the good soldier was out of his depth.
He paints a devastating picture of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz feuding over turf, fighting against Iran-Contras, but acquiescing when they lost. He accuses both of lying under oath to Congress. And he scorns Reagan for allowing his minions to become scapegoats because he lacked ``the moral conviction and intellectual courage'' to defend policies he set in motion.
Ultimately, McFarlane is bitter for having taken responsibility for his part in a foreign policy misfire while everyone else, from the president to the lowliest lieutenant colonel, ran for cover or developed amnesia. They left their wounded comrade - Bud McFarlane - bleeding on the field of battle.
He's got a point. And he is still seeking credit for his good works. He claims that he all but invented Star Wars as a brilliant way to bankrupt the Soviets. That the Reagan doctrine was his. That his briefing papers set the tone for the Reagan-Gorbachev arms negotiations.
But he reveals an inability to grasp the ugly reality of the world of politics. In Iran and Lebanon he couldn't see the political trees for the geopolitical forest. He was had by both the Ayatollah and Hafez al-Assad.
McFarlane was obviously happiest when crafting some memo or position paper. He even copied Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, when he drafted a suicide note. Going under for the third time, he was still hungry for approval.
So long as his masters scratched McFarlane behind the ears when he brought them a bone, he remained oblivious to the covert operations all around him. He hardly noticed that a key aide was rolling around loose on the deck of the ship of state, that his president was obsessed by the coming biblical apocalypse, that his fellow National Security bigwigs were more interested in sitting at the right hand of power than in doing the right thing.
The man was born to be a scapegoat. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
McFarlane
by CNB