Throughout his career, John Poindexter had played by the rules. As a vice admiral in the U.S. Navy, he was regarded as a painstakingly efficient officer who paid scrupulous attention to the chain of command, never challenging his superiors, always following orders to the letter. Indeed, one commanding officer characterized Poindexter as "totally loyal and trustworthy, and a thorough briefer who rarely interjected his own viewpoints." But as Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser from December 1985 to November 1986, Poindexter told his questioners last week, he broke that pattern. In February 1986, after just two months on the job, he decided to usurp the authority of his Commander in Chief.
In his testimony before the congressional committees investigating the Iran-contra affair, Poindexter insisted he and he alone gave final approval to Lieut. Colonel Oliver North's proposal to take profits from U.S. arms sales to Iran and divert them to the Nicaraguan rebel forces. He claimed to have exercised this authority without ever telling the President, so as to protect Reagan from the "politically volatile issue" that subsequently exploded on them. "I made the decision," Poindexter declared in an even, matter-of-fact tone. "I was convinced that the President would, in the end, think it was a good idea. But I did not want him to be associated with the decision."
Moreover, Poindexter said, his extraordinary exercise of authority did not end with the contra diversion. As the scandal was breaking last November, Poindexter testified, he destroyed a piece of vital evidence: a covert-action finding, drafted by the CIA and signed by the President in December 1985, that retroactively approved Israel's shipments of U.S. arms to the Iranians. The document, said the admiral, depicted the weapons transactions as a straight arms-for-hostages swap with Iran rather than a diplomatic effort to establish contacts with Iranian moderates, as the President has maintained. "I thought it was politically embarrassing," said Poindexter of the finding. "I tore it up, put it in the burn basket behind my desk."
To the President's supporters, Poindexter's confession was a turning point in the Iran-contra melodrama, resolving one of the essential issues of the scandal. There would be no evidence directly linking Reagan to the ugly and possibly unlawful use of money garnered by selling weapons to terrorists. While the White House staff breathed a sigh of relief over the admiral's disclosure, Reagan at first seemed nonchalant. "What's new about that?" he shrugged. "I've been saying that for seven months."
But Poindexter's testimony still has devastating implications. If the admiral is to be believed, his story reveals a startling lack of accountability in the White House. "If the President didn't know, in some ways it's more serious than if he did," said House Majority Leader Thomas Foley. "Presidents ought to be allowed to create their own political disasters," said Republican Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire. "Nobody else ought to do it for them."