-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Semi-Sovereign Presidency Charles Tiefer Westview Press�1994 ISBN 0-8133-1930-7 ----- -- Understanding the semi-sovereign nature of the Bush White House's claim of power requires a review of some interesting Anglo-American history. Chief executives have a long record of seeking personal rule by setting aside specific provisions of law. The Meese-backed CICA controversy in 1985 through 1988 revived study of that history. As a court noted, "During the reign of absolute British monarchs, the notion that the Executive, at the time the King, could decide for himself, without a decision of the courts, which laws should be obeyed was put to the test. . . . " That test of British monarchical power occurred in the late 1600s: "King James II attempted to claim such authority, but the English people would no longer tolerate such a claim, and their judicial system rejected it in the historic Seven Bishops Case of 1688."[46] The Framers embodied this rejection of sovereign prerogative in the "Faithful Execution" clause of the Constitution, modeled on the English Bill of Rights of 1689.[47] A court explained that "[o]nce signed by the President ... the bill becomes part of the law of the land and the President must 'take care that [it] be faithfully executed."' For the President "[t]o construe this duty to faithfully execute the laws as implying the power to forbid their execution perverts the clear language of the 'take care' clause: 'To "execute" a statute ... emphatically does not mean to kill it.' "[48] The Constitutional Convention further rejected any such power for the president when Elbridge Gerry persuasively argued "that the power of suspending might do all the mischief dreaded from the negative of useful laws (i.e., the President's veto), without answering the salutary purpose of checking unjust or unwise ones."[49]-- Om K ----- -3- Striking Down or Revising Laws: Signing Statements in the Bush Presidency The Bush Administration's separation of powers strategy centered on the White House Counsel, C. Boyden Gray, who used as his most treasured tool his newly exalted law-altering pen�the pen for presidential signing statements. Presidents traditionally influence how Congress shapes bills prior to enactment in many ways: by submitting their own proposals, lobbying Congress during consideration, and making veto threats. However, from 1789 to the 1980s, presidents recognized that after congressional passage the Constitution allowed them only one decision: whether to veto.[1] Edwin Meese suggested the first real alternative: When President Reagan signed a bill he could simultaneously issue a "signing statement," which would declare provisions of the new law unconstitutional. At the time, this novel idea received intense criticism from Congress, the public, and the courts, and it appeared to be a temporary aberration. The strategy of the Bush Administration took this notion and expanded it into an extraordinary tool enabling White House staff to escape the system of checks and balances. A 1990 New York Times profile of Gray, one of the few such profiles before the struggle a year later over the civil rights bill, noted his support of the aggressive use of signing statements: "At the heart of Mr. Gray's public philosophy is his keenness to preserve Presidential prerogatives. Mr. Bush's method of signing bills with appended statements that he will not enforce certain provisions he regards as infringements on his authority is a technique Mr. Gray has championed."[2] TWO LAWYERS FOR THE PRESIDENT: EDWIN MEESE AND C. BOYDEN GRAY Edwin Meese President Reagan began issuing a considerable number of signing statements upon the advice of Edwin Meese III, presidential counselor and later attorney general. For example, he signed a 1984 bill, the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA), which reformed federal procurement, but simultaneously declared key provisions of CICA to be unconstitutional. This was no mere matter of going on record, as in a public speech or message to Congress. Attorney General Meese backed up the president's declaration of CICA's invalidity with elaborate claims in public hearings and court submissions. They gave as the grounds that the president had the same constitutional role as the judiciary does under Marbury v. Madison, namely, that when the Justice Department objected to a law the president should have the power to invalidate the law and direct the government to treat it as a nullity rather than as a law. To implement the president's power, the OMB issued a governmentwide order directing all agencies not to obey the CICA but to "proceed with the procurement process as though no-such-provisions were contained in the act."[3] The CICA statement illustrates the most potent part of the Meese innovation. But President Reagan also issued a few signing statements asserting power of a different kind: to revise the law being enacted. Only one of these had any particular importance. At passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, his signing statement watered down the law's important protection of lawful resident aliens against discrimination. The bill drafters wrote protection for them into the law; the president interpreted that protection out of the law. As a leading observer noted: "The implementation of the Act thus presents the danger of encroachment on both the Legislature and the courts inherent in the production of 'executive history' statements, and presents an action offensive to the doctrine of separation of powers."[4] In 1986, Attorney General Meese arranged for signing statements to be published in USCCAN, the report of legislative history often used by lawyers.[5] There, the statements joined the congressional committee reports as though they were part of the official record of the statute's shaping, even though they had been issued after completion of the shaping of the bill. Notwithstanding the Reagan Administration's moves, the Meese claim of power through signing statements should have been no more than a temporary aberration. In a major legal battle lasting from 1985 to 1988, Attorney General Meese's pronouncements regarding the CICA received a total and devastating rebuff. The executive claim of power regarding CICA was assailed not only by the Congress and the public in 1985 but by the appellate courts as well in 1986 through 1988. The executive had to stage a humiliating retreat.[6] More generally, the Reagan Administration's assertion of power in signing statements drew well-reasoned scholarly criticism and little defense.[7] Meanwhile, the Iran-contra affair shed light both on the Reagan White House's extreme view of its own power to disregard laws and Bush's motivation during his own administration to claim that power in the form of signing statements rather than the way the Reagan White House did. When Congress limited U.S. government assistance for the Nicaraguan contras by the Boland Amendment after 1982, some of the White House staff viewed the Boland Amendment as not applying to them. President Reagan's own conservative supporters subsequently conceded that if the Reagan White House was willing to state its constitutional position openly, this was the time to use the tool of signing statements.[8] President Reagan could have signed the Boland Amendments into law during the key period of 1984 to 1986 with signing statements expressing the kind of views the NSC staff later expressed at Iran-contra congressional hearings-that the provisions were unconstitutional or did not apply to presidential staff. Instead of taking such a legal position in signing statements, the NSC staff, when it engaged in schemes like diversion of arms proceeds and foreign solicitation, covered up its activity by covert lawbreaking and deception. The shadow that hung over George Bush from his own participation in and knowledge of Iran-contra affected the new president's personal style. It may have affected his willingness to use this tool of signing statements. The new president would choose to employ the formal-appearing mechanism of signing statements, regardless of their controversiality and dubious authority, rather than repeat what the Reagan White House had undergone in Iran-contra for not using such a tool. By the end of the Reagan Administration, the setbacks regarding the CICA, Iran-contra, and Attorney General Meese's near-indictment by a succession of independent counsels took the force out of the earlier Meese moves. The extensive enactments of the Democratic Congress in 1987 and 1988 drew no significant signing statements.[9] Thus, despite the earlier fits and starts Meese's pretensions to lawmaking power through signing statements had not become deeply rooted before the Bush Presidency. C. Boyden Gray How did the White House counsel come to hold great power and to wield this extraordinary tool? Gray's role in the Bush White House reflected both the president's personal style and political situation. The background of the White House counsel reflected the same kind of elite status that shaped George Bush. Like Bush, Gray grew up with wealth, as an heir to the R. J. Reynolds tobacco fortune in North Carolina, with a personal fortune of over $10 million. His first job in private practice was with the firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C., where colleagues describe his principal work as lobbying for business. In 1981, George Bush, looking to fill the post of counsel to the vice president, found him through staff recommendations. Only then did they discover that their families both had had vacation homes in Kennebunkport, Maine, and Hope Sound, Florida, and that the two scions of wealth possessed numerous friends in common. In fact, their fathers�Prescott Bush, senator, and Gordon Gray, President Eisenhower's national security adviser�were members of the small, secretive, extraordinarily exclusive, all-white male Alibi Club in Washington. So were Bush and Gray themselves in the 1980s. This club, though it has only fifty members, has numbered over its history at least four CIA directors, four Supreme Court justices, three former secretaries of state, and three secretaries of war or defense. The two fathers not only clubbed together but often paired off to golf together, sometimes with young George Bush along. Young Clayton Boyden Gray had gone to St. Mark's School and Harvard College; young George Herbert Walker Bush had gone to Phillips Andover Academy and Yale College.[10] To put it mildly, they were a natural fit on Bush's elite side. As the vice president's counsel, Gray had two tasks that held significance for the future. Vice President Bush headed a task force on regulatory reform and delegated most of the responsibility to Gray. Although the task force had a limited role, it stimulated Gray to later help create the Quayle Council. Second, as counsel, Gray steered Vice President Bush through the worst scandal of his eight-year term, Iran-contra. When the story broke in 1986, Gray examined hundreds of boxes of records and devised the explanations by which Bush threaded through the numerous aspects of his troubled relations with the Iran-contra scandal.[11] Gray devised the clever approach of having the vice president tell his vague, thin story only once, early, to the sympathetic Tower Commission, and then avoid talking to the congressional inquiry. [12] Even on election eve in 1992, Gray was still writing the defenses of Bush from Iran-contra charges. Gray himself decided at that time to withhold from the independent counsel Bush's Iran-contra diary entries that contradicted Gray's published account. Only after the 1992 election did he allow their release, when they showed that Bush-supposedly "out of the loop"�privately described himself in November 1986 as "one of the few people who knew fully the details" about the arms sales to Iran.[13] Gray devised the pardon of four convicted and two indicted Iran-contra figures that took place on Christmas eve 1992, just before the trial of former secretary of defense Casper Weinberger would have focused public scrutiny on the White House meetings in which Bush had supported the arms-for-hostages deal. As White House counsel, Gray took over an office in which the prior counsel performed mundane tasks, such as checking White House fulfillment of ethics requirements and drafting routine proclamations. In the Reagan Administration two friends of the president, William French Smith and Edwin Meese, filled the lawyering role as successive attorneys general, but the White House counsels had relatively little access or power. They were notoriously cut out of the key matters: President Reagan's White House counsel never even knew of the Iran-contra matter.[14] President Bush treated Gray from the outset as President Reagan had treated Meese from the outset: not just as the in-house lawyer but as a chief lieutenant: "When Bush became president, he gave his counsel three major responsibilities: making sure administration officials follow ethical rules, overseeing the selection of federal judges, and protecting the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency. Bush also asked Gray to work on new civil-rights and clean-air bills. "[15] That constituted quite a level of power, with civil rights and clean air as the two most important legislative enactments of the Bush Administration apart from the budget. Protecting the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency, normally a job of the attorney general, became an open-ended mandate to get involved in foreign affairs, defense, regulatory review, and line-item veto proposals, among other matters. Many insiders viewed Gray's power as very high. His predecessor as White House counsel, A. B. Culvahouse, said, "The President spends a lot of political capital on Boyden's advice on everything from quotas to clean air to the disability act. On the issues Boyden has chosen, he is awfully damned influential."[16] A conservative consultant said in 1990 that "the White House counsel's office has become the ex-officio policy shop in this Administration."[17] A White House adviser told the New York Times, "On domestic issues, it's basically him, [Richard] Darman and Sununu .... Basically nobody else gets to talk much to the President."[18] As selector of judges, Gray played leading roles in two choices for Supreme Court justice: David Souter and Clarence Thomas. One of the numerous junior attorneys in the White House counsel's office, Lee Liberman, had charge of the more vast project of filling hundreds of district and appellate court vacancies with ideologically approved choices. In President Bush's numerous vetoes and countless veto threats, Gray had a large role. For example, he "played a key role in encouraging Bush in 1990 to veto an intelligence authorization bill for intruding on presidential power."[19] Early on, he made a brief misstep in challenging publicly Secretary of State James Baker's accord with Congress on contra aid. The rebuke he drew seems mainly to have taught him to exercise power in the shadows rather than speaking on the record to the press. This background frames the discussion of Gray's involvement with Bush's signing statements. 1989: PREVENTING CURBING OF IRAN-CONTRA ABUSES Congress Proposes Reform Traditionally, revelation of executive scandals and national crises led to legislative investigation and proposals to curb recurrences, from earliest crises through Pearl Harbor, Watergate, and the intelligence abuses revealed in the 1970s.[20] Foreign observers might look askance at America's dramatically public methods of cleaning house, but Americans have defended their willingness to uncover mistakes and respond with reform as a national strength. Naturally, Congress expected to do the same in response to the Iran-contra scandal. In 1988, after the Iran-contra hearings of 1987, it laid the groundwork by preliminary consideration of reform bills for covert actions. However, President Bush and his White House counsel seized the initiative in 1989 to blunt such reform by using the newly broadened executive power of the signing statement. In effect, signing statements amounted to Gray's middle-period approach to legitimating what occurred in Iran-contra, after his explanations for Vice President Bush in the 1986-1988 investigations and before his arranging in 1992 for pardons of convicted or indicted participants. Understanding this moment requires a review of some of the pertinent Iran-contra abuses with attention to the special connection of the legislative reforms to Vice President Bush's own Iran-contra role. The first focus of reform concerned leveraging, the practice of an administration evading prohibitions like the Boland Amendment by persuading foreign countries receiving American aid or arms sales to do what the administration itself was prohibited from doing. When the Boland Amendments cut off contra funding and the Reagan Administration secretly solicited other countries to fund the contras, Vice President Bush heard about the principal contributions directly from National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane .[21] Bush's active role in "leveraging" through Honduras in 1985 came out in the stipulated facts at the trial of Oliver North: On February 12, 1985, North proposed [that] ... expedited military deliveries, economic funding, and other support should be offered as an incentive to Honduras for its continued support to the Nicaraguan Resistance. The memo stated that this part of the message should not be contained in a written document but should be delivered verbally by a discreet emissary .... [Shortly thereafter,] when Vice President Bush met with President [Cordova Roberto] Suazo [of Honduras], Bush told Suazo that President Reagan had directed expedited delivery of U.S. military items to Honduras. Vice President Bush also informed Suazo that President Reagan had directed that currently withheld economic assistance for Honduras should be released; that the United States would provide from its own military stocks critical security assistance items that had been ordered by Honduran armed forces; and that several security programs underway for Honduran security forces would be enhanced.[22] North's comment about setting the deal up "verbally" rather than "in a written document" reflects the standard pattern that such leveraging occurs with a minimum of proof available later (or in contemporaneous leaks) of quid pro quo. Besides leveraging, two other Iran-contra problems became the focus of legislative reform: the trading of arms with terrorist nations and the lack of an independent inspector general at the CIA to curb abuses. With particular regard to these three problems, as Congressional Quarterly Almanac noted, "During the final days of the 1989 session, Congress approved three measures to close legal loopholes that became evident during the Iran-contra investigations."[23] The president's familiar powers and tools could only soften somewhat such reform. Vetoing and veto bargaining had its limits, because even relatively pro-administration members of Congress supported reasonable reforms.[24] Nominating loyal subordinates, like former NSC deputy Robert Gates or former vice presidential aide Donald I. Gregg, had its limits, because even they, faced as Gates was with dramatic hearings about their own role in covering up the Iran-contra scandal, had to promise reform.[25] The White House Defeats Reform Therefore, Gray, in order to head off reform in general and Iran-contra reform in particular, needed a power outside the traditional relation of the president to lawmaking or execution. He needed a power invulnerable to public reaction expressed in override votes on vetoes, to oversight or confirmation hearings on agency officials like Gates and Gregg, or to other congressional tools such as conditions on appropriations. A White House angry about the shadow of Iran-contra but not wanting any more public arena fights than necessary found the perfect response in signing statements. In contrast with disputes over overrides or oversight, in which the political forces could hurt a president with such low support in Congress, the use of presidential statements outside the traditional process let the president increase his power while avoiding public and congressional reaction. For example, to curb leveraging, the chairman of the House subcommittee on foreign aid appropriations, Representative David Obey (D-Wis.), in 1989 steered through his own prohibition, the "Obey Amendment," as section 582 of the annual foreign aid bill. Section 582(a) prohibited aid or arms sales "to any foreign government ... in exchange for that foreign government or person undertaking any action which is, if carried out by the United States Government � expressly prohibited �. " Presi-dent Bush vetoed the first version of the foreign aid bill over the two is-sues of leveraging and family planning. Congress then passed a second version, which compromised on family planning but not on leveraging. This sequence of presidential veto, and House compromise on one of two points, should have made this bill a classic example of the veto bargaining analyzed by political scientists studying divided postwar government.[26] However, after Congress passed the second version of the foreign aid bill retaining the Obey Amendment, the president issued a signing statement that said: I have been most troubled by Section 582.... I intend to construe this section narrowly. I agree with the view expressed on the House and Senate floor that this section is intended only to prohibit "quid pro quo" transactionsthat is, transactions in which U.S. funds are provided to a foreign nation on the express condition that the foreign nation provide specific assistance to a third country, which assistance U.S. officials are expressly prohibited from providing by U.S. law.[27] President Bush took most of the force out of the Obey Amendment. Section 582 forbade providing any funds to foreign governments "in exchange" for taking actions prohibited to the U.S. government. It did not concern only the rare exchange with an explicit quid pro quo agreement, but all exchanges, including implicit agreements as well. The Iran-contra hearings and report had described the problem of implicit arrangements with "expectations of secret return favors" and "expectation [s] by the donor nations that they can expect something in return for their largesse."[28] Administration officials could readily conduct leveraging by soliciting aid for a prohibited object by an implicit understanding without any blatant "express condition." For one example, the president's statement barred the provision from applying to the situation when, as vice president, he himself had delivered the aid message to President Suazo of Honduras while not stating express conditions. For another example, Secretary Weinberger had been told in 1985 of the Saudi contributions to the contras, and he returned the favor by helping the Saudis on arms sales. Weinberger was later indicted for denying his knowledge under oath, and the Weinberger trial would have explored further if not for President Bush's 1992 pardon. George Bush had gotten from Robert McFarlane, national security adviser in 1985, the same knowledge as Weinberger; Bush had withheld his knowledge even when McFarlane attempted suicide from compounded feelings of guilt. A transaction more suspiciously like leveraging would be hard to find, but as revised by the presidential signing statement, the Obey Amendment would not come near it. President Bush's statement justified itself by this description of section 582'S legislative history: As reflected both in Congressman [Mickey] Edwards' statements and in the explanatory colloquy between Senators Kasten and Rudman, a "quid pro quo" arrangement requires that both countries understand and agree that U.S. aid will not be provided if the foreign government does not provide the specific assistance.... My decision to sign this bill is predicated on these understandings of Section 582. Gray had drafted this statement with a manipulation of legislative history, namely, having the president purport to attribute significance to "the explanatory colloquy between Senators Kasten and Rudman." Senators Robert Kasten (R-Wis.) and Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) had held, in fact, a colloquy on the Senate floor. However, their colloquy concerned an amendment that Senator Kasten himself withdrew when it faced rejection by Congress.[29] The rejected version went nowhere. The Obey Amendment became law because Congress insisted on retaining it, even when it had to compromise on family planning, the other point of President Bush's veto of the first version of the bill.[30] Representative Obey had explained why Congress insisted on the Obey Amendment: [This bill] recognizes that both Houses of the Congress did not pass family planning language vetoed by the President by more than a handful of votes. And that means, because we have to have two-thirds vote in order to overcome the President's veto, it simply is not practical at this stage in the legislative process for us to pursue that issue again. The other issue on which the President vetoed the bill is what is known as leveraging. I happen to think that this is a crucial issue which relates to the integrity of constitutional processes in the American system of government. That is why even though we have dropped the language the President objected to on the question of population, we did not drop efforts to nail into this law the principle that taxpayer money for foreign aid ought to be expended for the purposes for which it is appropriated, and they ought not to be expended in any way to promote or entice other governments to support policies which would be illegal if followed by the United States.... We took an oath to uphold that Constitution, and that is why we have insisted on retaining antileveraging language in this bill.... [N]o reasonable person can disagree with the proposition that the President is not above the law, that any administration is not above the law.[31] In other words, after a presidential veto, the House had chosen to compromise on a different issue but to "nail into this law" the Obey Amendment by "retaining antileveraging language in this bill." That language barred not merely explicit quid pro quos but "any way to promote or entice other governments." Senate Republicans had proposed a substitute but had withdrawn it. They had left Representative Obey's language in place. Their colloquies could hardly accomplish what they had declined to do, namely, substitute their language for the actual provision. The president's declaration defending the view that the Obey Amendment concerned only "express," "quid pro quo" conditions simply obtained for the president what he was unwilling to obtain by a second veto (which he did not make) and did so by reciting the views of a senator unwilling to press an amendment (which he withdrew). It was as though the more evidence that the president and other opponents of the Obey Amendment had lost in the constitutional system of checks and balances, the more the president viewed himself as justified in revising the amendment-outside the system, using the new power. Moreover, the circumstances made the president's signing statement all the more highly suspect. The Senate minority leader, Senator Robert Dole (R-Kan.), alluded to White House staff and its strategy during these particular floor debates.[32] As will be seen regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Gray's strategy appeared to begin with the regular veto bargaining for whatever changes in the bill Congress would make. During this, Gray would have his congressional supporters plant in the Congressional Record an alternative account of what Congress was doing in passing the bill without the changes in the bill that Congress would not make. Merely in the record, they would mean very little. However, the president's signing statement, for both the Obey Amendment and the 1991 Civil Rights Act, then cited the view inserted in the Congressional Record, depicting that view as what the law actually meant. Through this coupled preplanting of what would normally be obvious as a losing view and post-reaping in a signing statement with the presidential stamp of power on it, the White House counsel harvested an entire law that supplants congressional legislating on a central and hotly contested issue. Some may ask how a signing statement could have such effect. Because the Framers gave the president no revisory power, one would ordinarily assume that he cannot obtain one just by a statement and a claim of power. Further examples in this chapter will shed more light on this, but the revision of the Obey Amendment begins to indicate the complex reality. Once the president carried out this elaborate strategy for narrowing that key controversial provision, his view became likely to prevail, particularly in the context of foreign affairs, where the president traditionally had a large scope in the laws' execution anyway. The guarantors of correct interpretation of law common in some domestic contexts-court rulings�are very few and far between in foreign affairs. When they occur, they come too late and with extreme deference to the executive on the issue of whether to become involved at all. Most probably, the actual intent of Congress would never be heard about again once the president had imposed his view on the Obey Amendment. Congress had employed its best tools during a divided government-hearings, appeals to the public, debates on proposals, veto bargaining, renewed versions after a first vetobut the White House had defeated it by use of a new tool, outside the previous system, by which the White House could effectively nullify unwanted reforms. Defeating Other Iran-Contra Reforms A similar dismal fate at the White House counsel's office awaited the other two Iran-contra reform bills, one regarding the CIA and the other regarding terrorist nations. One bill had concerned the problem of abuse of the CIA in the absence of an independent inspector general. Vice President Bush, a former CIA director, had been immersed in the use of the CIA for the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. He and his adviser Gregg, a former CIA officer, had been trapped in denials of knowledge of the contra resupply operation with its related CIA abuses.[33] The CIA had an inspector general office ostensibly to ferret out abuses, but the office had no statutory mandate, no independence, and hence little effect on the Iran-contra scandal. Congress's Iran-contra report had stated: The Committees recommend that a system be developed so that the CIA has an independent statutory Inspector General confirmed by the Senate, like the Inspectors General of other agencies .... The CIA's internal investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair-conducted by the Office of the Inspector General-paralleled those of the Intelligence Committees and then the Iran Committees. It contributed to, and cooperated with, the Tower Board. Yet, the Office of the Inspector General appears not to have had the manpower, resources or tenacity to acquire key facts uncovered by the other investigations. [34] Two more years of experience, hearings, and reports further confirmed this. In that time, a single prosecution for false statements resulted from the CIA inspector general's inquiries into Iran-contra, and the Bush Administration scuttled even that.[35] Accordingly, Congress enacted provisions for a statutory inspector general for the CIA as Title VIII of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1990. As with the Obey Amendment, the White House's approach began with the procedure familiar in postwar divided government: bargaining over a 'veto threat, actually vetoing a first version of a bill, and then having Congress decide what it would compromise on and what the second version of the bill would retain.[36] When President Bush signed the act, he released a three-page statement amounting to a fulllength revision of the inspector general law. The accompanying rhetoric about "resist[ing] any attempt by the Intelligence Committees to micromanage the CIA" and protecting the "deliberative processes of the executive branch" foreshadowed the themes of the 1991 Princeton Address. He bluntly declared that "I have repeatedly made clear that I am unpersuaded of the necessity for Title VIII of the Act. . . . "[37] Accordingly, "[i]n implementing Title VIII the operational policies of the existing Office of Inspector General will remain in force to the maximum extent possible." This meant retaining the practices enfeebling the inspector general (IG) as a check on abuse, including limiting the lntelligence Committees' access to IG reports such as reports about obstructed investigations, apparently retaining the system of IG staff rotation[38] and rendering merely advisory the law's qualifications for the IG. >From the perspective of President Bush's own Iran-contra past, the particular interest consists of the signing statement's limits on the CIA IG telling the Intelligence Committees of obstruction. The November 1986 obstruction of the Intelligence Committee's attempts to find out about the CIA's role in Iran-contra fueled the subsequent scandal. Vice President Bush had attended the key presidential meetings on November 10, 12, and 24, 1986, after exposure of the scandal. There, as the indictment of Secretary Weinberger (before his pardon by Bush) explained, Attorney General Meese laid out the false story that would go to Congress's Intelligence Committees about the illegal missile shipment of November 1985 involving the CIA. Meese got everyone present, including Bush, to acquiesce in the false story denying U.S. involvement in (November 10 and 12)�or at least President Reagan's (November 24) knowledge of-that CIA-aided illegal shipment. The independent counsel publicly reported why "Vice President Bush should have known the statement was false" denying President Reagan's knowledge.[39] Moreover, two of the independent counsel's indictments charged perjury in inquiries about that shipment, the two pending indictments blocked by the 1992 Bush pardon. One was the indictment of Weinberger for denying he had contemporaneous knowledge of that shipment. The other was the indictment of the CIA official Dewey Clarridge for denying the CIA's role in that shipment.[40] From Iran-contra, President Bush and his White House counsel had evident reasons to prefer that Congress be kept in the dark about obstruction of investigations of the CIA. Those were ample reasons for the president, if he could, to draw the teeth of the reform law meant for Congress not to be kept in the dark. Court rulings are few and far between on the CIA's reporting duties to Congress. Hence, the actual intent of the CIA IG law, like the actual intent of the Obey Amendment, would probably never be heard about again once the president had imposed his view. Finally, the very essence of the Iran-contra scandal was the sale of arms to a terrorist nation, Iran, for money and hostages. As explained in the congressional Iran-contra report, "Iran, which was considered a terrorist nation by the United States and which was the subject of a U.S. arms embargo, was not eligible for direct sales."[41] Secretary Weinberger had warned at the meetings attended by Vice President Bush in August 1985 and January 1986 that the trades were illegal. In 1993, former secretary of state George Shultz confirmed in his memoirs how Bush had supported the illegal trades at the meetings where Shultz and Weinberger had fought so hard against them, and how Shultz had reminded Bush of this at tense private encounters in late 1986 when Bush claimed publicly that he had been "out of the loop. "[42] When Weinberger withheld his notes from the investigations, he covered up the contemporaneous documentary evidence of how Vice President Bush had been there to hear at those meetings but refused to listen, supporting the deals regardless of illegality.[43] As follow-up, Congress enacted the Anti-Terrorism and Arms Export Amendments Act of 1989. The bill reflected a strong consensus across party and ideological lines, as shown by its title the Berman-Hyde Billnamed for Representatives Howard L. Berman (liberal D-Calif.) and Henry J. Hyde (conservative R-Ill..). As part of the price for that consensus, the bill still left leeway for the president to waive the ban on arms sales to terrorist nations. He just had to do so by a clear and aboveboard waiver with notice to Congress. However, once again the White House counsel's narrowing of a bill followed the failure to use the legitimate tool of a veto: "Bush signed the bill into law, despite complaints from some of his lawyers that it posed an un constitutional infringement on his powers to conduct foreign affairs."[44] Instead of the White House accepting its partial legislative defeats, upon the signing of the bill it again reached outside the system of checks and balances for a declaration by President Bush that radically revised key provisions: The new section 40(a)(5) prohibits the United States Government from "facilitating the acquisition of any munitions item" by a country designated by the Secretary of State under section 40(d). The new section 40(b)(1)(D) contains a parallel prohibition on actions by any U.S. person to facilitate such an acquisition. I shall interpret these provisions as placing no limit on our negotiations and communications with foreign governments. [45] This revision undermined the provision almost completely, Congress again being in a context where there would be no court rulings, and after the president took this tack, the actual intent of Congress would probably never be heard of again. Congress enacted the law with a specific type of abuse in front of it: National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane's discussions could easily be described as "negotiations and communications with foreign governments." With "no limit" on such, the White House staff had just succeeded in taking a law meant to curb its prior abuses and revised the law to authorize the same type of abuses. --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
