Un-Pardonable Crime

THE wheels of justice may turn slowly, but they do turn.

Last week, four key participants in the Iran-contra affair, including Lt. Colonel Oliver North and former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, were indicted for their role in the secret maneuverings that led to selling arms to the Ayatollah and funneling funds to the rebels in Nicaragua. The indictments, one hopes, will do what the dramatic hearings on the affair failed to do: make it clear that crimes were committed and that the Constitution was bypassed.

The language of the indictments says forcefully and clearly what the president, not to mention the vice president, should have said long ago about the covert doings, terming them "a program to continue funding of and logisitical and other support for military and paramilitary operations" at a time when the law prevented such action.

The rest of the counts in the indictment are commentary. The shredding of documents, the failure to cooperate with investigators, the lying to Congress--all of it is effect rather than cause. It is the disregard for the will of the Congress--and thus the will of the people--and the single-minded determination to back the contras even when the nation had made known its opposition to that support, that must be punished. The other actions are only the inevitable consequences of one branch of government taking the law unto its own hands.

And that crime, which is also the breaking of a trust, seems to rest on the shoulders not only of the men who carried out the missions, but on the men who lead that branch of government--namely the president and the vice president. For as much as the individual actions of Hakim and Secord, North and Poindexter were criminal, the policy of the Reagan administration itself should not escape condemnation. To this day, neither the president nor Vice President Bush will back off from dubbing North and Poindexter "heroes," nor will they concede that it was not Congress which had demanded ending aid to the contras, but the people through the Congress. Still they back the intentions of their men, pretending that it is enough to say that "mistakes were made" when talking about being faithful to fundamental precepts of democracy. With North's resignation from the marines, he has promised to subpoena "high officials" to defend him. Perhaps on the witness stand, those who made the policy will finally be forced to take responsibility for its undemocratic nature.

Such stubbornness and disrespect for both the Constitution and the citizenry only means that in the end we can expect President Reagan to issue pardons. We can also expect that the pardons will come long after the election is over, which may even be long after Vice President Bush has been elected his successor. If this were to come to pass, it would be hard to have much faith, either in a Constitution which could allow such deeds to go unpunished, or in a citizenry which could allow such deeds to be repeated. As slowly as the wheels of justice may turn, turn they must. the indictments are long overdue. And if they result in a slew of convictions, who is a president to say otherwise?