European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 07, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 columns the stars and stripes Jim Fain nor ego s Cia links May get him off Hook now that president Bush has bagged his Black beast he May find him self in the dilemma or the Barking dog that catches the car it s chasing. Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega boasts he has a trunk full of dirty secrets involving Bush former president Reagan and . Intelligence agencies. For once he s probably telling the truth. He was on the payroll for 20 years. Though a double agent and drug broker he was so useful in supplying contras and arming the Ayatollah that Reagan Bush embraced him seven of those years. A splendid recipe for Gray mail. Noriega s lawyers will demand Cia files. It s hard to Sec How the judge could Rule at least some of them Are not vital to Noriega s defense. How much of his Fortune did we give him for example. At that Point. Bush will have to decide whether to declassify the information or accept dismissal of the charges. The administration recently went to just such lengths to Bury facts in the Iran Contra scandal. Dick Thornburgh the most Ward heeling attorney general since Richard Kleindinst caused the acquittal of Encia agent Joseph Fernan Dez on charges of lying to various government agencies including his own. Fernandez s attorney convinced the court he needed some Cia records to prove his client had been controlled by Agency Bosses. Thornburgh said no Way. According to Independent counsel Law rence Walsh the information was Incon sequential and largely Public. Maybe so Thornburgh replied but National Security would be endangered if we officially admitted such things. Absurd of course but Little to be done about it. An attorney general has tha Legal right. We will next see this one in Voke it in the Case of rear adm. Lohn  Reagan s Security adviser under indictment for Iran Contra in William f. Buckley Volvo mint. Facing the Prospect of the Slammer  has decided the Buck did Stop with him after All. He now says Rea Gan was in ail the Way. He wanted to subpoena Reagan and Bush and their re cords. The judge said no on Bush but asked to look at Reagan s diaries. Rea Gan s lawyers arc resisting tooth and claw. You d think the of gip would Sali vate to defend a faithful lieutenant Butone of the sad lessons of this affair is that while loyalty up May be flourishing loyally Down is extinct. Under Reagan the Buck Seldom got past the Spear carriers. If Reagan or his papers finally arc or dered into court Thornburgh will dash to pay the Gray mail and the charges will Fly out the window. Whether hell let Noriega go to trial is another question. If he permits disclosure of classified information you la know Bush has concluded his Den lability spook speak for shielding a president from responsibility for his actions is impermeable. The fallout might shed Light on aspects of the Iran Contra scandal however. If so Noriega will finally have accomplished something useful in life. So will Poindexter if tie s permitted to cleanup a few things. As matters stand a president has a Blank Check to violate and evade Laws As Reagan did with his twin hostage an Contra obsessions. All he needs is an at Torney general willing to Wield a secrecy stamp. Not a healthy Way to run a democracy. The elective process requires accountability of those it anoints. Congress intelligence committees ought to pounce on All this Pronto before Poindexter and Noriega become moot. Cox tows service Nightmare my Case Cedaire of disclosure of Cia Fife and my contacts with very Hick u. S. Of reids Reagan Nof Gorbachev fore Down the Wall a decade that began with the election of Ronald Reagan and ended with a soviet offer of Aid to Iran Quinze Romania after the execution of its communist tyrant makes the heart glad reinforcing the Faith of those who knew All along that there is Light Back there however opaque the darkness. Yes yes of course whenever there is Good news there is the need to remind ourselves that the human predicaments Are still with us and will always be with us. Cou ism every Day in every Way things arc getting better and better is the Way of life that leads to lying Down to sleep when the hitlers of this world big and Small mobilize their strengths. Let clime lyrics hand Down its own  one shall think of this As Reagan s decade. No decade or decades associated with a single successful Leader not Pericles not von Metternich a not Victoria s Are fairly evaluated by dredging up surviving delinquencies deeds that needed to be done and were left undone. A Catalon of surviving problems at the end of Rea Gan s decade pollution crime the disintegration of the family the growth of the super state the soviet s nuclear inventory can leave us so preoccupied with what needs to be done that we fail to take into account the Progress we have made and to be grateful for it. But that Progress measured especially in developments abroad makes this perhaps the most striking decade in human memory never mind that its promises Are not yet completely realized it is most certainly the decade in which communism ceased to be a Creed surviving Only As a threat. And Ronald Reagan had More to do with this than any statesman in the postwar world. Reagan is not , who emerged As the Homer of anti communism. After the Publica Tion of the gulag archipelago French  by demons could no longer believe. But gulag notwithstanding what was beginning to happen,35 years after the end of the second world War was sheer accommodation ism. We must not doubt the disposition of even civilized people to adjust to ugly realities. To deny this would be to support unsupportable theses among them that the German people arc a wicked race As witness their toleration of Adolf Hitler. They did not for the most part tolerate Hitler they came to terms fatalistic ally with his special strengths his diabolical charms. Beginning in the late 1970s, the democratic party in the United states lost its sometime disposition to remain adamantly opposed not merely to the expansion of the communist world but to us very being. With the death of sen. Scoop Jackson somehow the spiritual steel went out of the great political party. So that when the country turned to a president who a few months into office pronounced the soviet Union an evil Empire the Western firmament Shook with indignation. How just How could a superpower under the leadership of someone who spoke such conclusive words reflecting such conclusive judgments handle the diplomatic Challenge of coming to terms with the soviet Union there arc those including this pundit who believe Reagan made a profound mistake in concluding a treaty that left Europe without effective nuclear  his spirit was what truly counted and in Berlin in the same year hat the communists celebrated the 2 a anniversary of the Berlin Wall it was Ronald Reagan who looked up at and said or. Gorbachev tear Down this Wall in his rhetoric he was unrelenting about the fatal delinquencies of the soviet system. He made one speech in which he especially infuriated the Kremlin by insisting that their system had a Rendez Vous with the Ash Heap of  All the time reality was creeping in on Eastern Europe. But of course reality has been around for a Long while. Even Jean Paul Sartre could know that there were wounds there without feeling the need to probe every one of them. So that the Solzhenitsyn of this world who had Given us the spiritual fodder Nec Essary to continue to distinguish Between the great lie and the great truths had a Leader willing to ignite the Torch. The Firks simmered and before the decade washout we were choking with elated pleasure Over the wonderful paradoxes of which the possibility of soviet troops to help Romania get rid of a communist govern ment is perhaps the most Brilliant. Though my own favorite is radio Marti an invention of Ronald Rea Gan bitterly opposed by american appeasers Broad casting into Cuba digests of radio Moscow news which had now been banned by Fidel Castro As being too  great heroes of the decade Lech Walesa Solzhenitsyn Andrei Sakharov and so Many others have earned their place in Freedom s House of lords and their Leader was Ronald Reagan who was Trai Nedas a movie actor. Only in America one is tempted to say except that Lech Walesa was trained As an electrician. C in Luerul Pru Syndicate