European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 4, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 columns the stars and stripes tuesday August 4, 1987 James Reston five decades in fhe frenches and still an of Imis after 4k years As a reporter on the new York time writing a column lira or three nines a a i k for More Ihan 30 years. 1 concluded a link while ago Hinl a Man can Slick in the i ranch too Long. La s not thai writing a column is so hard. As my old buddy red Smith used i to say. All you have to do is open a vein and bleed. But if you have 10 do in on deadline you sleep funny the night before. Gcorge Bernard i Shaw tried it for a few years on inc Spectator in Lon Don but finally gave it up because he. Said he fell like a Man standing under a Windmill. Just when he finished an article he said one sail of inc Windmill would Knock him Over and when he staggered through another column the next sail would Send him spinning. And the next and the Nam. So i m not moving out but just mov ing Over out of the Way to write when i please confident despite the recent Silli Ness in Washington thai things Here arc Seldom As Good or As bad As most people thin they arc. Officials Ore no worse Loday than they William Buckley Ruslon used to be but the reporting is better people know Mic about inc danger of mimic weapons so we Haven t had a world War for Ovir 40 years whereas there were Only 20 years Between the two great catastrophe of the Century. In America we have Learned something about to to Deal with adversity since the great depression but not much about How to Deal with Prosperity. We re very Rich but we re not having a very Good Lime. We Are producing so much food thai we Don i know what to do with the garbage while half the human race goes to bed hungry every night i have some other funny ideas. I think we be won the cold War and Don t know in. 1 think the Constitution is still work ing on its 200th birthday against the corruption in politics Commerce and even in the pulpit. I Don t like nuclear weapons or the plague of aids but fear May be bringing us to our senses. It takes a Strong country to survive a government that does t know what s going on in ils own shop and sweeps the persian Gulf without mine sweepers but things balance out. If this no fault government the people chose nol once but twice were any better we would i de serve it. And if it were any worse we could t Bearil. Even so we re probably going to get an agreement with the russians to eliminate All Short and medium Range nuclear weapons the first real reduction in these monsters since the intention of the atom bomb. When we do. Both sides will still be left with More than twice the number of nuclear weapons they had at the Lime of the cuban missile crisis but we re turning a Corner. All the nations arc speaking in differ Cut voices about the Ideal goal of human life in the Golden age of their dreams nation shall no More lift sword against nation the free development of each will Lead to the free development of All. The world shall be full of the knowledge of the lord As the Waters cover the  Bui with regard to the roads to this Ideal there is utter confusion and the clash of contradictory opinion acted upon with the violence of fanaticism. There is however a gleam of Hope for All the nations including our own arc discovering the limits of ideology. President Mitterrand is modifying his socialism in France president Reagan is looking Al his deficits and wondering about his Supply siders and even Mik Hail Gorbachev is recognizing thai communism on the 70th anniversary of the 1917 revolution has been a spectacular economic and philosophic failure. So after More than so years in journalism s greatest Era a Quarter of the two centuries since the pamphlet ears Drolc the Constitution i remain an up to Date stick in the mud Optimist. There arc Heaters of violence rebellions and uprisings of All sorts mass hypocrisy Anil false sincerity fuelled by television and a general decline in Courtesy and a decay of decency but i Don t despair. I would feel belter if marriage were More popular but i doubt if so Many people were Ever so Well fed Well read or Bright minded and curious and critical As the rising generation is today. My Hope for them after More Ihan 52 years of married life is Hal they la finally know what old love Means. A while ago i gathered some of these old columns in a Book that my old Side kick Alistair Cooke reviewed in the new yorker. When i thanked him for his amiable lies every one of which 1 enjoyed he explained Hal there were Only two kinds of obituaries vertical and horizontal and he thought i d like the vertical sort belter. So i m off for a while and i have some plans for what s left of my vertical years i m going to slow Down my Back swing. I m going to move my vegetable Garden Al fiery run closer to the Kitchen door and i m going to spend a Little More time on Martha s Vineyard before they hang out the standing room Only signs. Later i m going to try to bring Back the smoke filled room so that the next presidential candidates will be chosen by peo ple who know something about them. And finally if i m Lucky i m going 10 write a Lone love letter to  m York Timu he i so veto pal a or two questions raised by Iron Contra testimony T  � i. Vainav Mihlof 3&. Officials who had contributed Money to Secretary of state George Shultz having come and gone from he Iran Contra hearings we have heard now from the main players and two que signs crowd the mind. Rear adm. John poin Duxler Lold the investigating committee that he had nol informed the president that he was diverting funds realized from the Sale of arms to Iran because he did not wish to Cucumber the president with knowledge of something that might be conceived of As an irregularity and that Poinc ice had no reservations about putting the Money to that use because he was certain that such an act would have been approved of by or. Reagan. Whereupon we heard from the White House the one truly sour note of the entire investigation. A spokesman for or. Reagan said nol Al All. The president not Only did t know about the diversion of funds that we ail knew but inc presi Dent would not have permitted that diversion had he been asked about in. Thai is the most damaging statement president Reagan could have made be cause it confirms the charge of his critics that Reagan was nol in charge of the poli cies being made in his name. Earlier or. Reagan was damaged by he Tower com Mission which found the president Gener ally uninformed. Al no Lime the report said did he insist upon accountability and performance review. Selling priorities is not enough when it comes to sensitive and risky initiatives that directly of Eccl . National  what the president has done is in Chi eco to corroborate the charges by his critics of ill management. And the awful suspicion arises that he was induced to say what he did by advisers who gave insufficient thought to ils implications. After All Given that or. Reagan did not know about the fund diversion he has been free to make up his mind about us retroactive justification. And it is of count possible that what lie would Haic agreed to do in the fall of 19x5 he would not. In inc summer of 1487. Have agreed to go along with. We know from earlier statements that or. Reagan believes that he made a wrong decision in agreeing in effect to Swap arms for hostages. By the same Token he May. In retrospect Haic come to the conclusion Hal the fund diver Sion was politically esd did. How my ii better in would have if the president had said if inc proposal had been made to me i would have consulted my Legal Counselor. If he thought the diversion within my Powers. I d certainly have approved the use of the funds to keep the Contra movement elite pending Congress refinancing of  not Only would such a statement have been consistent with or. Reagan s my ral behaviour Afier All. He was will ing 1" receive in the Oval office foreign official o had contributed Money to the contras and to thank them for doing so it would have fortified Poindexter. It is always useful to a president to have inc Opportunity to demonstrate to Congress and the american people Why he chose to appoint the men he selects to serve him. Poindexter said he was cer Tain that president Reagan would have endorsed the fund diversion and it Tran Spires Hal Reagan would have done no such thing. The result Poindexter competence is severely challenged and one wonders Why inc president trusted an untrustworthy official. A second anomaly is the posthumous Ood Rait we Are asked to accept of Wil Liam Casey. Or. Shultz urged Congress to believe thai Casey was obsessed by i concern for the hostages so much so that he was wilting to conspire to release the terrorists in Kuwait in return for the hos now this is quite simply very hard to believe. Casey was a hard boiled gentleman who was conversant with the practices of a hard boiled profession espionage and counter espionage. The Cia is one of those lifestyles in which you can find yourself carrying cyanide in your Mouth in Case of failure. In Case of fail ure you do not expect that foreign policy will be changed to inc advantage of the enemy. If the enemy was thus lightly to be regarded there was hardly any Point in risking life and limb in the first in stance to do thai enemy damage. No William Casey was not. Believably the sentimentalist willing to risk everything " Clurn for an an can hostage. And Ronald Reagan is not believably the Man who would have re coiled at a financial Man Euver thai served an important Plank in his foreign policy nor. Believably the kind of Man who would engage in a position of critical Power an Admiral who would misread the presidential mind on so inv  a Point. A  s"0c3l