http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6DA1231F932A25754C0A967958260&sec=&spon=Published: July 11, 1991
It took more than four years to confirm a kernel of truth, but the public now knows, beyond all the fudging or evasion, that senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency were part of the cover-up of the Iran-contra scandal. Forbidden by Congress to operate a covert supply line to the rebels in Nicaragua, C.I.A. officials lied at every opportunity to tell the truth and kept the lid on whenever Congress inquired.
Alan Fiers, the agency's former director of covert action in Central America, has blown the lid with his guilty plea to two counts of withholding information from Congress. The charge is a form of contempt of Congress, which is just what the Reagan Administration displayed with the entire project and its cover-up.
The plea, and Mr. Fiers's agreement to cooperate under a grant of immunity from Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor, breaks the stone wall of lies, hiding behind classified information and partisan attacks on the Office of Independent Counsel. This development should at least momentarily silence those who blame Mr. Walsh as though the crime were the cost of his investigation rather than the subversion of government.
Mr. Fiers, a career officer, committed serious offenses. He seems credible when he says he wanted to testify truthfully to members of Congress in 1986 as they got wind of the diversion of arms-for-Iranian-hostages money to illicit support of the contras. He says he was ordered to suppress the truth by his superior, Clair George, who has since retired as director of C.I.A. operations.
Mr. George has some explaining to do. So does Robert Gates, who was number two man in the agency then and now is President Bush's nominee for number one.
Contrast Mr. Fiers's behavior with that of Oliver North, who ran the Iran-contra operation from the White House and now holds himself out to be a persecuted patriot as he accepts rich speaking fees. When the scandal broke in late 1986, Mr. North shredded and smuggled out incriminating papers -- not to keep them from spies but from the F.B.I. Even so, his recent compelled testimony before a grand jury is said by some to have helped prosecutors obtain Mr. Fiers's guilty plea.
Mr. Fiers has struck a deal for leniency, but he might have chosen to stand trial on more serious charges, filed a storm of bogus "national security" secrecy claims and stalled Mr. Walsh's search for the truth. Instead he has come clean and says he has done "what I think is in the best interests of the country and not only that, what the Constitution requires of me."
How high, wide and deep will the investigation now go? No one can know for sure, but many an Iran-contra operative, high and low, has reason to wonder. And in any case, truth is served.
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