European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - June 16, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes tuesday june 16.1987 . Rosenthal time for Plain talk on persian Gulf Mideast there is a Peculiar Quality about the Way our government talks 10 the american people about for eign policy problems involving life and death issues. It his an old fashioned Musty Quality As if in come from another period and Way of thinking. Americans by and Large Are trying to Deal with each other with men Candor not always succeeding hut trying harder than Ever before. Men and women treat each other More honestly make More Effort to explain themselves and under stand each other. So do parents and children. And because of a fatal contagious disease that can be acquired or spread through sexual Intercourse Weare learning to Talv publicly about details of sexuality that just a year or two ago would have been banned from the airwaves or newspapers. We May not achieve Candor but it is taken As a reasonable goal. Secretiveness pretence intellectual narrowness Are going out of style like smoking at the dinner table or drinking too much. And yet when in comes to International crises of great import we Are treated As backward children inca Pable of grasping reality or being trusted with it. Let s Start with two nervous areas where washing ton has not been flowing with frankness the persian Gulf. The american Public should be old that if we keep warships in the Gulf the iranians May i them and we will Likely wind up in a War with Iran. In May be limited but it will be iranians May decide not to attack but americans should understand thai As Long As our warships Are Here the decision on War or no War will be made i Tehran. The american people should also be told now if our government feels that the need to keep the Gulf open for shipping to prevent an iranian Victory in the War with Iraq and As a Block to soviet Power is important enough to risk War with Iran if not the Only decent course would be to withdraw the ships and to cede the Gulf to soviet strength. To permit the ships to patrol the Gulf and be attacked without planning for retaliation is not a serious Choice. It would abdicate responsibility not simply in the Gulf but for american seamen whose lives have been put a risk. For the government not to talk plainly now is an insult to americans intelligence. If the decision is to risk War with Iran Only candid forewarning can Muster the Public support we know by now is absolutely Essen tial to the commitment of american military Power. The Middle East. Here neither Washington Jerusalem nor the arabs Ulk plainly about the promo William Safire Sal far an International conference. Right now in would be a Slick however covered with velvet glasnost with which the soviet Union could beat both Israel and Heunink d slates by supporting the Flo and the hard line Arab states against Jerusalem. Before a conference is held there should be agreement to confront and attack three realities one is the refusal of most Arab slates to Deal directly and reasonably with Israel. They wish to drive her into a Small ghetto and still have difficulty accepting her permanent existence the second is that the israelis by refusing to recognize he passion of palestinian nationality have Maydeil burgeon. Third Israel win no receive world sympathy indefinitely if in persists in to All the West image of Srael was once a flowering desert now it is soldiers on patrol in alien streets paved with hate. There is a solution that prominent arabs in the Middle East know is logical and historically justified it is dangerous for them to talk about it. The King of Jordan rules Over a stale that was Cre ated by the British in the 1920s for his Grandfather Alarab foreigner out of territory almost entirely pales Tinian. Jordan plus a substantial chunk of the West Bank is the Palestine of the future. Thai would be one stale one population one government one Homeland. The King is Uncertain of Strong support among we Bank palestinians and shies away from Jordan pales Tine because he fears Plo terror would destroy him. The Plo Bales the idea because eventually it could Lead to a Strong Jordan Palestine without it. The israeli government has become so enmeshed in the wat Bank politically and emotionally that it will not now accept the Only solution thai would remove the Burden of occupation arid the Une rasing threat of unsatisfied palestinian nationalism. The Reagan administration like its predecessor Wilt leave the truth about Jordan Palestine to its Suc Cessor. Bui on the risk of War with Iran there is not much time left for the president to use the asset of Candor. Today or tomorrow would be Tine. My Vort Limtt n intelligence oversight Board kept in the Dork while lips were smacking at the incipient appearance of Fawn half another administration witness came before he Iran Centra panel to testify about a Legal opinion he had written Breton Scialom had held in the summer of 1985 thai the National Security Council was not involved in intelligence activities that the Boland amendment restricted. The Young lawyer was savaged on his credentials he had flunked four bar exams finally squeaking through in Pennsylvania and this had been his first legislative opinion. He was derided for having believed Oliver North and the Csc counsel Paul Thompson when they assured him the Csc was clean. The at Limey did not say that his opinion had been reviewed line by Lin by his three Bosses at the presi Dent s intelligence oversight Board prob one of whom is Charles Meyers head of the Denver office of Gibson Dunn & Cruncher and until 1981 Dean of the Stanford Law school. But the committee was eager to discredit any critic of the amendment and concentrated on the inexperience of the witness perhaps he congressmen did no Wani to look further and do Battle with his old pro Superior. Having ridiculed he Young lawyer who did no wrong the intrepid committee went on o Fawn All Over miss total immunity of 1987, the wonder to me was that prob did any investigating at All. That Little known Board has been kept in the dark by the Cia and by the president it was supposed to serve. The president has iwo separate boards to provide him with Independent advice about spook Dom. Best known is the prestigious Pfab pronounced Piffie athe president s foreign intelligence advisory Board headed by Anne Armstrong and Leo Cherne starring Henry Kissinger Jeane Kirkpatrick and Clare Boothe Luce which evaluates the Quality of Intelli gence work and handles assignments like assessing the electronic penetration of our Moscow embassy. The other is the three Man prob assigned by executive order 12334 to report directly and exclusively o the president on a confidential basis any evidence of intelligence wrongdoing. With a one person staff namely Sciaroni it relies on the Cia inspector general o turn Overall evidence of possible illegality. Fob s head is w. Glenn Campbell guiding Light of the Hoover institution at Stanford a Stalwart conservative academic and gentleman about whom two things Are immediately apparent he is not the country Singer and he is not an info table and powerful old Washington hand with he clout to overcome bureaucratic obstacles such As the late ambassador Robert Mur Phy who first headed the Board. Nobody will admit this publicly but Phi band prob have been feuding for years. The advisory Board thinks the oversight Board is Lazy and ideologically hidebound while the prob feels that Chernic advisory group was reshuffled in late 1985 to spare William Casey from criticism. Prob smells a rat or mole at the Way Casey chose to have the Cia s inspector general report to Pfab about two half hearted investigations first Inlo the Yurchenko embarrassment and then into the Cia s self protective handling of the Howard defector Epi Sode. The Fri wound up taking the rap for letting a soviet spy escape to Moscow. What concerns us now is the circumvention of Campbell s wrongdoing oversight Board in late 1985, at that Lime As Bill Casey was secretly turning the Csc into a reporting free operational of his Cia the head of Clandestine services Clair George refused to Brief prob on Covert action. Prob protested to Casey who decides this Casey i Campbell you Don t have the Bill Casey to avoid carrying the dispute to the presi Dent briefed the Board himself on some Covert actions but not on the iranian arms Deal. At that time i think significantly inspector general John Stein who had previously been Clair George s Boss at Cia asked to be reassigned overseas his last briefing of prob was. Nov. 3. 198. Soon after president Reagan broke his understanding with he Board and concealed from prob the arms Torran Deputy director John Mcmahon quit inc nest month. That was some Winter for the shattering of oversight. By giving a false illusion of watchfulness prob docs More harm than Good. The president should give that Board investigative Power and appoint members he cannot easily mislead or close the whole thing Down. He tort Tunas news serve a
