Weinberger Attacks Tower Commission

In remarks before addressing the Harvard Model Congress yesterday. Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger '38 blasted the Tower Commission report saying its conclusions about his participation in the Iran-contra affair were "completely wrong." Weinberger also said that he and Secretary of State George F. Shultz repeatedly advised President Reagan to abandon the arms-for-hostages policy.

In his first comments on the Tower Report since it was released last week, Weinberger said individuals on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) deliberately excluded him from meetings on the Iran arms deals after he had voiced his opposition to the policy.

"We were deliberately excluded because the people there [at the NSC] who wanted to pursue this policy didn't want the President to hear advice to the contrary," he said.

Because he was excluded, Weinberger said the section of the Tower Report which faulted both the Secretaries of Defense and State for distancing himself from the affair could not be based on any sub-stantative evidence.

"I made my opposition to the plan known at every opportunity and continued to do so very strongly throughout," said Weinberger, who later in the day delivered a speech before several hundred high school students participating in the Harvard-run conference.

The sections on him and Shultz "aren't findings. They are just conclusions and statements. They're totally unsupported by any evidence or any findings. They're just, as we used to say in the law, naked conclusion," Weinberger said.

"I am perfectly confident and content that I presented many, many times to the President all of the arguments I could think of, as did George Shultz, both together and separately, as to why [selling arms for hostages] shouldn't be done," said Weinberger. "You run out of appeals after a time, and that's what happened."

Shultz has made similar statement concerning the Tower Report's evaluation of his performance.

The summary of the report's findings, which was adopted by the Commission last Thursday, said that "given the importance of the initiative, Secretary Shultz and Secretary Weinberger, while indicating their opposition, distanced themselves from the march of events."

Although Weinberger criticized the report, he said that Reagan has acted properly in responding to the criticisms the Tower Commission made of the President's administration.

Weinberger praised Reagan's speech Wednesday night, in which the chief executive accepted responsibility for the Iran-contra affair and pledged to adopt the Tower Commission's recommendations for restructuring the NSC.

The initial steps by the President in repairing the damage done to his administration by the affair met the approval of the secretary.

Weinberger praised the appointment of Frank C. Carlucci to head the NSC, and he said that William Webster's nomination for the top job at the CIA was "absolutely perfect." Both Carlucci and Webster will take over agencies implicated by Iran-contra controversy.

Weinberger, who has served as Secretary ofDefense throughout the Reagan Administration, saidhe has no plans to resign. But he said that he isunsure how long he will remain in his post at theDefense Department. "We don't have tenure, and godknows I don't want it," said the Harvard graduate