The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Retired Admiral John Poindexter, Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser, helped weave the Iran-contra web that ensnared him, yet there was little enthusiasm in Washington last week at his reckoning. He has legal bills of more than $3 million, has seen four years of his life wasted, and now has been sentenced to six months in jail. Chances are slim for a successful appeal of his convictions for deceiving Congress. A presidential pardon is even more remote. Poindexter is the seventh person found guilty in this sad drama and the only one so far to be ordered to jail. He may keep that distinction.

The feeling is that independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's legal juggernaut, which has cost $21 million and fielded as many as 60 lawyers and support staff, is running thin on defendants, new evidence and sympathy. A grand jury may explore further links to Reagan and George Bush, and Poindexter could be called to testify with a grant of immunity. People who know the admiral well are convinced that the effort will come to naught, that history will have to judge Reagan -- where the buck really stops -- on the fuzzy story before us. "John Poindexter was made a flag officer in the U.S. Navy for the express reason that he would not break in a crisis," says retired Admiral Clarence Hill Jr., a friend and manager of Poindexter's legal fund. "He did not. And he is not going to break in the future. He believes he is right."

When the news of Poindexter's sentence ran through the capital, some of his former White House colleagues were in black tie at the President's Dinner, the Republican Party's grandest Washington fund raiser. "I felt sick," said one. "There was not a criminal bone in his body. He was doing what he thought his Commander in Chief wanted. He got a jail term for political incompetence. Since when is that a felony?"

Few people in power have had such a record of personal and professional competence and honor. Poindexter was first in his class at the Naval Academy, excelled at sea command and Pentagon maneuver, and reared five sons (four of whom are pursuing naval careers); his wife became an Episcopal minister four years ago. Poindexter was devoted to trying to thwart terrorists, free American hostages and bring democracy to Nicaragua. Nobody argued with those objectives. "No defect in character," declared a former Cabinet officer who worked with him. "But a defect in judgment. He should not be so punished for that."

"There were horrible people down there doing horrible things," contends Harvard's Richard Pipes, who served two years on the NSC staff. "It was all piled on his head. He was just in the wrong job."

Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger brushed aside the suggestion that the lesson of Poindexter is that military men should not head the NSC staff. "They should do a better job of teaching constitutional law at the Naval Academy," he said, noting that Army General Colin Powell successfully held the job after Poindexter and that retired Air Force General Brent Scowcroft has the position now. When the picture of the Iran-contra beast is finally drawn, in all probability it will not be as large or menacing as many thought. Yet the portrait will never be complete. These days in the muted luncheon- table conversations among both prosecutors and defense-team members, there is the acknowledgment that the one man who really put the grand plot together has left the scene. That is Bill Casey, the CIA director who died in May 1987 from pneumonia after surgery for a brain tumor, a man who loved power, position and a good mystery. John Poindexter did not have the temperament for the shady back-alley intrigue that Casey concocted.