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The White House claims the amendment placed only one restriction on the President: he could not use money available to those agencies to help the contras. Otherwise he was free to do pretty much anything he pleased -- encourage private donations or contributions from other countries, for example. Any other reading of the amendment, Reagan supporters asserted, would unconstitutionally restrict the President's power to conduct foreign policy.
Lloyd Cutler, who was counsel to President Carter, argues that "normally a statute that mentions other executive agencies but not the President explicitly is interpreted as not applying to him." But critics protest that this would put the President above the law. Says Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe: "Congress's control over the purse would be rendered a nullity if the President's pocket could conceal a slush fund dedicated to purposes and projects prohibited by the laws of the U.S." Democratic Congressman Edward Boland observed that if Reagan wanted to claim exemption from the amendment, he should have done so when it was enacted. Instead, Boland noted, Reagan signed the bill without any public comment.
Did the Boland amendment apply to the National Security Council? The White House contends that the NSC does not fit the definition of an "entity engaged in intelligence activities." A secret opinion by the President's Intelligence Oversight Board took this approach in 1985. Former Watergate Prosecutor Philip Lacovara agrees that if Congress intended the amendment to apply to "other than those persons connected with official intelligence agencies, it could and should have said so." But many experts agree with Tribe that NSC officials were clearly "acting as intelligence agents." Even Robert McFarlane testified that it was his "common-sense judgment" that the law applied to the NSC, which he headed.
Did the law forbid Administration solicitation from other countries or private individuals of funds to buy arms for the contras? By specifying that "no funds available" could be used, the Boland amendment seemed to prohibit such a ruse. Assistant Secretary of State Langhorne Motley told Congress in 1985 that the Administration interpreted the law to prohibit "soliciting and/or encouraging other countries to contribute funds." He said, "We have refrained from doing that." In fact it was being done -- without his knowledge, says Motley.
Private U.S. citizens who donated to the cause described how North and others would give a strong pep talk about the needs of the contras and then leave it to private fund raisers like Carl Channell to ask directly for donations. Republican Senator Warren Rudman described it as a "one-two punch." According to William O'Boyle, a New York City oil investor who testified last week, he was told by North that as a Government employee he could not directly ask for donations. But Joseph Coors, a Colorado brewing- company executive, testified that in January 1986 North did personally ask him for $65,000 to buy a plane for the contras.