Report, lets keep three things in mind. There is no evidence that they first, did anything wrong. He is responsible for what happened and i think he will , take that responsibility. The president did not break any laws, and he did not cover anything up. We cant forget the president initiated this report and appointed the commissioners, the former senator. He has also gone along with the appointment of independent counsel and indicated he would welcome an investigation. I think as the report itself says i dont remember which , page, but the press does want president does want the truth out. The commission itself concluded in the report that the board is convinced the president does want the full story out. He wants the story out because of revelations we see elsewhere are necessarily the best thing of the world for ronald reagan. I mean they are not the best thing in the world for him. But he wants it out. I think the third thing to keep in mind the problems of the past arent as important as the problems of the future. The president is still the president , and we have a lot of work to do in the congress. I think the president should demonstrate he is firmly in control, and he will have time to do that. Is the president firmly in control . Mr. Dole i think so. You suggested there should be some organizational or personnel changes, do you have anything in mind . Mr. Dole the part i read the past hour is there are a number of individuals singled out for some criticism. That is the president s call. I havent gotten into that business, but it would seem to me if you dont protect the president , you dont serve the president well, then you ought to move on. Getting the moving van in there. You said the president did not do anything wrong. Did he fail to do things he should have done . Mr. Dole obviously he should have been in charge. He didnt force a review of the procedure, that is one of the things pointed out. There was very little review. That is certainly something that should have been done. How much further do you wish the tower report have gone . Le i have not read it all. They made recommendations, as i understand listening. There was never any division of opinion among the three members of the board or commission. I think they did a good job. It is a Public Service they rendered. They gave up a lot of their time. There are still the two committees and the independent counsel. Their mission was not to establish any violation of the law. The commission suggests the situation was one of the president acting casually. Doesnt that disturb you . Will this person be able to be on top of things for two more years . Mr. Dole without a doubt about it. I think the president does have a different approach. Some of us may be too concerned about details and maybe the president is not concerned enough. He is more of a conceptual leader. How much did the president damage himself by saying he just didnt recall . What is worse the tower , Commission Conclusion or the president saying i couldnt remember . Mr. Dole i dont know. I think people have to make a judgment on the fact the president did not recall certain details. I think say this the president , he appointed this group and the report is out. It does not implicate the president in any way. The president apparently did not adopt a handson approach. It was sort of an independent operation from the white house, which you cannot tolerate. From that standpoint, i think the American Public will want additional answers. I would hope when the president reports to the nation next week that we would have those answers. At that time he should demonstrate that he is fully in control and tends to date into dig into some of these details. The Tower Commission report ratifies what the polls show most of the americans have believed all along, mainly that mistakes were made and the president of the United States made quite a number of them. The commission highlighted four major mistakes. First they found the iran policy in an arms for hostages deal was bad policy, and it was the president s policy. All along i felt that was the heart of the issue, that all of these things were subplots and that basic decision was made to sell arms to iran. It was arms for hostages. Hostages madefor a shambles of this countrys antiterrorism policy and damaged our relation with allies. And possibly increased a number of deaths in the iraniraq war. If the latter happened, then all the rationalization or excuses cannot wash the blood from our hands. The president did not monitor or keep on top of what was being done in his name by his subordinates. He brought this operation into the white house and then did not monitor it properly. Third are the failures to the part of the president s men. A chief the sea advisors and the secretaries of state and of course colonel north were have found to have failed in their duties to inform the president about what was being done, as well as the implications of his policy. The president cannot evade responsibility for their failures. If they had an obligation to give some answers, he had an obligation to ask some questions. Finally the Tower Commission , criticized what they described as the administrations of session with secrecy. That is probably the easiest part of the whole affair to understand. The advisors knew the American People would not stand for a policy of sending guns to the ayatollah, so they tried to do it covertly. One thing we should have learned by now no covert policy can long , endure if it doesnt have the support of the American People. In sum the Tower Commissions delivered a stinging indictment of policy, people, and process, starting with the president himself. It will be for the congressional committees and special prosecutor to determine if laws were broken with regard to the arm sales or the diversion of money to the contras. For now it is clear that president reagan instituted a and that policy was carried out. To prevent future Horror Stories like this he must carry out the reforms necessary to keep this from happening again and sees his incredible detachment from the most important job in the world. What does it say to you that the president of the United States says he cannot remember making this important decision to begin this policy . Mr. Glenn i conclude all the same things you conclude from it. It is not whether he remembers a certain date or not or the dates he seems to remember at different times is brought out the fact that decision was made at all. That to me is the most incredible thing of all. We had 241 marines killed in beirut. Now we send arms to the people that are responsible for that. At the same time we are telling the rest of the world we are not doing it. We are trading arms for hostages. It is mismanaged. There is secrecy. They tried to cover the whole thing up. I thought the words jumped out at me in the reports we made so far. Start of one paragraph, starts with the following words. The National Security is only advisory. It is the president alone who decides. That pretty well sums up the whole thing. Do you agree with the Tower Commission that the irancontra controversy was an aberration from some of your colleagues to say we think the examples of the flawed process mr. Glenn i would think the latter. This is indicative of a number of things not being well thought out. The recommendations of the Tower Commission are, by their own admission, very modest. The one i might take issue with, we do have to consider whether we are going to have confirmation hearing on any the nfc staff head from now on. They recommended against that, but i would say that if the nfc is to go back to its role of advising and coordinating, it should be left as it is. If the nfc is to become an operational unit again, then we have to insist on confirmation as we do for other people who have operational duties in our government. They suggest there is a joint congressional Intelligence Committee. I think we would question that. I think we would want to consider that a little more. The Governmental Affairs committee that i shared just the other day is giving the comptroller general Auditing Authority to go into all accounts of government. He has that authority to monitor accounts and Defense Intelligence which are certainly about us highly secure as any agency to be monitored in government. We worked that out satisfactorily without breaking security there. It has worked for some time. Yet the covert accounts are not monitored by anyone. Let me give you an example of what came up in testimony. Said hisroller general people were trying to monitor what happened to the 27 million of humanitarian aid. They can only track through all their efforts only 9 million of that humanitarian aid. The rest of it they think may have gotten to came in bank accounts. They were able to track 80,000 worth of humanitarian aid. That was spent for and grenades. Hand grenades. Another thing to add on one of the nfc does and whatever funds are being put through that office should be audited. As the comptroller testified, if they had that authority and this whole thing may not have happened. That is something we may want to consider. I think that the Tower Commissions report is correct. There was a violation of u. S. Law and a failure to report it the congress in a timely fashion. The most significant aspect in my judgment is what it did not find when it came to the critical issue of diversion of funds to the contras the tower , commission concluded it did not have hard evidence to come up with any finding. I believe it is high time that limited use immunity was given to north. That can be done without affecting the criminal prosecutions against them to really get to the bottom of the entire matter. We are really getting at the case in drips and wraps. You have a lot of disclosures, a lot of Senate Intelligence committee reports, Tower Commission reports, but central questions cannot be answered until north and poindexter testify. Thats what we ought to do next. Should the limited immunity be handled by the the select committee, the intelligence community, how it got to be handled . Mr. Specter communities have the authority to grant that limited use. They will probably grant limited use immunity to the staffers, things like that. Dont you think its best to start there and work your way up . Mr. Specter thats the customary approach when they issue a criminal prosecution. The issue is much broader, and that is the disclosure of all of the facts so we can see the entire picture, letting the chips fall where they may and getting on with the business of operating the national government. You have a preoccupation with this irancontra matter and issues of international affairs, the budget on the domestic scene are not being attended to so i think it requires going to , the core. That is north and poindexter. During the watergate era, the judicial rulings made it plain that the congressional interest took precedence over the special prosecutor. I think you can do that without impinging on a criminal case. I say that based upon my own experience as a district attorney. In any event the big issue is finding out exactly what happened, getting to the bottom of it so we can put this behind us. Towhat does this say president reagans ability or lack of it to control his staff and run the office of the presidency . Specter it oppositely doesnt speak well obviously doesnt speak well for the president. It shows a breakdown of the entire federal executive branch. This report is a damming condemnation for failure to provide information to the president to do their jobs. Of course the chief of staff is criticized in this report. Director casey at the cia has been taken to task. Everybody in key positions in the federal government is criticized very roundly. It is pretty hard for the president to function when all of his top people are not doing their jobs. You spoke about bad if i from advice from the president s subordinates. What about the conduct of his office, is he performing as the president should and what should he do to change if he isnt . Mr. Specter the president has not performed as the president should beyond any question. There is responsibility for what has happened. I dont think any time in this country has there been a breakdown of this proportion, where you have the secretary of state, secretary of defense, the chief of staff, the director of the cia in a state of total glass. It is pretty hard to really reform the system until you all know that all has happened. We will not know all that has happened until you hear from north and poindexter. We are wasting our time going through the slow mechanism of this use immunity to people at the bottom of the ladder. Intois not investigation the streets of new york. This investigation touches the operation of the united dates government. It is high time we stopped trading this as a matter of minor corruption involving the city. What do you think of the report. . I think it was a thorough report. These are three very respected individuals from Political Parties and different spirits levels. They all have a great deal of respect here and throughout the country. This is a significant report that i think is well done. Think what direction do you think this will lead investigators . I think the commission headed by john power did not deal in criminal culpability. That will be left up to the special prosecutor. In what not really deal kind of laws might have been violated. They did not consider that part of the mandate. They did not get into the money and what happened to it as far as diversions. They did not go into very much detail in the contract matter and whether the funds were diverted there. All of those areas will be explored. They have not heard from some of the key witnesses. They had no charter for subpoena. I think what they have done is greatly assisted the congressional committees and senate counsel. I think they have made our job handledand it will be much quicker than it otherwise could have been. There is no effort on the part of the white house to make the teleport bigger than it actually is. Is this begun to minimize the work that would be done in congress. What are your feelings about that . Mr. Nunn i dont know what the white house would do with that. By the report itself much remains to be done. This will expedite the process, and having been one of those who suggested the president of point. Im very gratified with this because the process of government has to go home while we have these congressional committees. We have a lot of changes that need to be made. This report will help us in terms of setting the decisionmaking process in better order in the white house. We cant stop government while we investigate these. Government has to go on and has to be improved. I think this report will help towards that end. What is your opinion of the proposal for the nsc and the fact that they do not favor the idea of banning covert action . Mr. Nunn they made it very explicit, they do not believe the national should be engaged in operations. They said they did not favor legislation to ban that. The purpose of that report is very clear in that respect. They do not believe the nsc should be involved in operations. If you get them involved in operations as they were in this case you have no one standing , between the president or operations themselves for policy purposes. The question whether the National Security advisor should be confirmed, i had mixed views on that. I think there will be mixed opinion. I think the report, having said that should not be done by legislation will have a real influence in congress. If you have a National SecurityCouncil Advisor confirmed, you may have more oversight over that individual, but theres nothing to keep the president from going out and appointing someone else to give him advice in these areas. In that case it would not be a real remedy. As whether a prohibition of covert activities ought to be law, i have not decided that, but i will talk to them and many others will too. And their advice will be very helpful. This is not a filibuster. I tend to make my remarks very brief if it is agreeable to you. As you probably heard to the point of nausea any comments made concerning the Tower Commission report, and i am sure i have very little to add to that. Except i think it was a very necessary step. This information needed to be disclosed. I think the remaining parts of the puzzle, which are the involvement of colonel north and poindexter are crucial to this case in one way or another, they need to be revealed, in which the Tower Commission was not able to ascertain since they dont have subpoena power. Can the president recover . I believe he can. I think it is well to remember and we have a tendency to remember this was a very effective and popular president. He still has a reservoir of goodwill on the part of the American People who like him who are concerned about the institution of the presidency and are not interested in seeing five president s in a row leave that office in a crippled or damaged condition. I believe it is very clear abundantly clear the president , was badly served by president reagan, admiral poindexter, and others who in my opinion of views the office and showed very little respect for the authority that was delegated to them. I hope they will necessarily take great responsibility for it. Not absolving the president because he is responsible. But the captain is to blame whether he is on the bridge or asleep in his cabin when the ship runs aground. There is a difference. I think that the Prime Minister did a great disservice to the president by not keeping him informed and not providing him with the information so that he could make better decisions than those which he arrived at. Thank you very much. Fine publice made a servant. There is no question of the mans integrity. Obviously and intelligent men. I think one of the toughest jobs is heading up this commission. He also is a very strong republican and you have to supervise and issue this tough of a report on the president of his own party is not easy for him. John has faced up some tough ones before. Were you surprised that the report was as blunt in tone . I was not surprised. Would you go further . Mr. Bentsen the president was illserved, illadvised, and i think he ought to clean house. He did a poor job managing his immediate subordinates. Why do you think he ought to clean house . Mr. Bentsen i think he ought to take all of those that were directly responsible in the National Security group. Where does he go from there . Mr. Bentsen i am not going to write out a laundry list for you. There was some blunt talks about managing the staff. What else is he not managing . Mr. Bentsen its the nature. That should come as no surprise. That is how. The job in california. He is a man who delegates. They were detailed. There ought to be some balance in there. When you delegate to that degree and dont insist on accountability, it is going to get you in trouble. Is what it has done. I think the mistakes of reagan, well, you measure the mistakes on a scale of justice, the mistakes of a warm heart you do that different of a cold heart. I think his mistakes were a matter of his compassion and concern for the hostages. You cant go start trading but arms for hostages. You get them on the installment plan when you do that. I think it is a good constructive report, and i want to commend the commissioners for the work they have done and the staff. The principal thing that impresses me is the constraints with which the commission operated. Those constraints included the inability to use subpoenas. Inability to get hold of the bank records, and to hear from the principal witnesses. I think even with the commissions report, we still have a very incomplete understanding of all of the critical events. Until we hear those witnesses, we all know who they are. And until we get the bank records we are not going to be able to understand the events surrounding the iran affair. He said he would recommend mr. Hamilton i think one of the lessons that emerges from all of this is the inadequacy of the oversight process of the intelligence community. I am less concerned about structure than i am about attitudes. I dont think a particular structure will solve our problems here. What is necessary is that we appreciate the respective roles of the executive branch and the legislature in carrying out out not only Foreign Policy but covert actions. I think some people put forward the proposal of a joint committee, Intelligence Committee as a means of limiting oversight. I think we have a failure in all of this of the oversight process and i did not want to limit the oversight. The report seems to say that it is most likely president reagan did give advanced approval on the first shipment of arms to iran. Does that or anything else you have heard conflict with the kind of information you have before the committee . I do not want to make a judgment about the evident about the president s involvement in approving or not approving those arms sales. All of us recognize that at least at this point it is not clear that we still have mountains of documents that we have yet to examine. Obviously, that is a point we would be interested in. Law at thesaid the point where the nsc was operating was murky and ambiguous and no way to know whether they were breaking the law. Do you agree . I do not think the boland amendment respects were precise and clear and with almost any statute, there were problems of interpretation and some ambiguity. Surely the overall thrust of the boland amendment was that the congress did not want the Foreign Policy of the United States to include assisting the contras. It seemed to me that that message was quite clear. It is also clear that there were those who wanted to assist the contras, despite the expression of the congress. Will you start the immunity process this afternoon in terms of the house investigation, and that will lead you in directions that the Tower Commission was not able to penetrate . We will start the immunity process this afternoon. Provided of course that the Committee Approves the recommendation of the chairman and ranking member, mr. Cheney and i will make. We hope in time that we will get access to both the witnesses and the evidentiary material that we consider critical to an understanding of these events. Reaganou think mr. Should resign . You go right to the bottom line . Mr. Dick cheney i think that that he should make andasier on the president should facilitate your president response to the Tower Commission. If i were in his shoes, i would tender my resignation. A sensedo it because of that he no longer is able to help the president , that his presence on the staff serves merely as a distraction and under those circumstances it seems he has an obligation to keep in mind what his primary responsible is, which is to serve the president and sometimes circumstances are such that the best way to serve the president is to depart and i think we have reached that part. Mr. Walsh had a question on the report that i cut him off. Reaction to the portrait this commission draws of the president and his conduct of u. S. Foreign policy . Dick cheney the president asked for this. It is his report, his final and he deserves a lot of credit for being willing to subject himself and his administration to the kind of scrutiny. Secondly, i think it is a very tough report. Inhink it is stated statements like terms, done on an objective basis, but the picture that it portrays of the way policy was made in this particular instance is not a pretty one. Respect toy, with the president , and his key advisers in the cabinet and the white house and on the nsc staff, would indicate that they did not function the way you would like to think of president and his staff would function. Failurere was a decided arese the processes that there to seriously address a question of this important. Clearly the president has to bear some of the responsibility. Clearly, those people who served him on his staff have to bear some of the responsibility. It is a useful exercise to have gone through. It has to be difficult to sit out in the west wing today and read those comments about your administration. But i think, if the president takes the advice to heart, if he is prepared to make some of the changes that would seem to be required in light of the findings of this study, he clearly cant learn from the process and there is no reason why he cannot rejuvenate his administration. The task of how successful his last two years as president will be depends upon how he responds to this report. I think if he responds aggressively and if he does in fact assert himself in the Foreign Policy arena, there is no reason the last few years cannot be successful. If the report gathers dust on the shelf, if it advice is not taken seriously, if the people in the white house underestimated the seriousness of the problem it addresses, there is every reason to expect the last two years of the Reagan Administration will be unproductive and a frustrating time, not only for the president , but for those of us who support him. The Tower Commission has performed a very valuable service, i supported the president s initiative in appointing the Tower Commission. I think it was extremely useful. It extremely useful to have a group of that visibility and statute. Look at the question of the National Security council operation. The National Security council was never envisioned as an operational agency. The Tower Commission report makes it clear that it should never be used that way again. Except under very, very exceptional circumstances, extremely limited, under direct knowledge and authorization of the president of the United States and i agree with that is no question that going around the institutions of government and avoiding the checks and balances that are in our system was one that camey problems out as a result of this iran matter. And the Tower Commission confirms that and supports that strongly, and im delighted they have done that. Also, in commission dealing with the National Security council operations, determined other things. One is that they do not recommend any legislative changes. I am not ready to adopt that in full. But conceptually and principally i think they are on the right track. Nonconfirmation by the senate of the United States on the appointment of the National Security adviser. After all, the National Security council and the advisor are the Principal Management tools of the president in coordinating and formulating his own decisions and it should be that way. It is a president ial tool, not another agency of government. Official,ther cabinet they are directly responsible to the president , they are under his direction, under his control. It should stay that way in my judgment. That is my preliminary opinion though i reserve the right later on as we get into this matter deeper to see whether or not legislative changes may be required. , in they, i think that confirmation of the exhaustive study made by the Tower Commission, they have ratified and confirmed what i have felt from the very beginning. That this was an abuse of the system. I hope it is an aberration as they say in their own words. I do i never felt that National Security council should be or should have the capability of being an operational agency, either for covert purposes or otherwise. That is the important contribution made by this report of the Tower Commission. After all, it is the president who makes Foreign Policy. He has the responsibility. The nsc operates under his direction and control. It is his instrument for management purposes. Whatever the reason, whether they did not tell him or did tell him or whether he could remember or did not remember, whatever the reason, the fact is that it was a failure of management and this is what the Tower Commission says in my judgment. I think they are right. Tower said they were not charged with finding any criminal of course not. Will what they have come up with us is the select committee . Certainly it will and any independent counsel because in a narrative statement and their working papers, they probably got leads that have not come to light. For example, with response to the tapes, etc. Yes, that will be helpful but we have to remember that the Tower Commission study was very narrowly constructed. As they pointed out, not their job anymore it is the job of the to select committees to go into the question question of enforcement of the law or whether there were a violation of the law, that is of to the Justice Department or independent counsel or both. The report will be helpful to both committees and the independent counsel. They were not able to track money, nobody is right now. That job still has to be done. There is a lot that has to be done with respect to this entire matter if we will have a complete and accurate record. I am a member of the select committee on iran and i can before you today to comment on the Tower Commission report. The first observation i will like to make, the Tower Commission report does not appear to have anything startlingly new or surprising in it. They contains a number of information bits that is important to have collected in one place but there are as many questions left unanswered we knew were unanswered as before the report came out. However, i think it is important starting point and the best report to date we have had on the subject. I would like to make critical comments, at least to raise a couple of these questions. First of all, the report goes to the question of the policy that was made and the flawed nature that appears to be in the policy of making some foreignpolicy decisions. It is apparent from looking at this that, if the facts are correct and i assume they are, the dominant or a dominant reason for the iran arms deal was the release of american hostages. The question is to why did there not appear to be other policy options presented to the president or seriously considered to deal with the. Ostages and terrorist matters that raises grave questions of our entire policy procedure for dealing with hostages and terrorists. For example, why did the president seriously consider some kind of rescue operation, it does not appear anywhere in the report or any of the information i have seen to date that he was presented with that option or it was ever seriously discussed. The report for the more, the Tower Commission report says the full operation was done outside of the parameters of the normal routine procedures that were established and that those procedures for National Security advice to the president should be followed. They say in the report that the system is not flawed. If the system is used. I raised the question with you and everybody else why wasnt the system used then . What caused colonel north and others to not use the system if it was not flawed . The select committee has a serious obligation to look at the system itself to see if it was flawed because, if it werent, it seems to me that those individuals were more likely to have been using it and that question itself was not raised and not answer by the Tower Commission. Toould be happy to try answer questions to the limited extent i can, if there are from what you learn in the are yoummission report, concerned about this picture of a president that does not know what is going on inside the white house . I am not concerned he does not know what is going on, in general he does come in this particular case, the advice mechanism was not working and i think we have to look into what i just said, why wasnt his system working . Was it his fault, the buck stops with the president , but it seems there is something inherently wrong with the system itself, not just with the individuals he has appointed in this process. Probably that system has been flawed or had a problem for a longer time than this presidency. It unfortunately has not surfaced. One week after the release of on Tower Commission report the iran contra affair, president reagan delivered an address from the oval office to the American People. His statement from march 4, 1987 is about 12 minutes. Pres. Reagan my fellow americans, ive spoke to you