An overdue reckoning

To the editor:

The Manhattan Grand Jury’s indictment of Donald Trump is a reckoning for the country.  It reveals not only the likely criminality of the former president, but also the wide gap that exists between ideals and practices. In our rigged political and economic system, how often are the powerful, including ex-presidents, held criminally accountable for their actions? 

The Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Iran-contra scandal provide some answers. The dark side of presidential history, of course, did not end with the George H.W. Bush administration and then resume 23 years later with the Trump administration.

First, no former president or cabinet member was held legally accountable and criminally prosecuted for what Hannah Arendt called the “concealment, falsehood and the role of the deliberate lie” documented in the Pentagon papers. The decades-long Vietnam War was defined by unspeakable death, destruction and war crimes.

Second, the Watergate scandal resulted in the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. The charges were contempt of Congress, abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Nixon resigned before the Senate could try him. Nixon was never criminally prosecuted because President Gerald Ford pardoned him. 

Third, the Iran-contra scandal occurred when the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and then used the profits to covertly support contra rebels fighting the left-wing Nicaraguan government. Congress, however, had prohibited aid to the contras. Lawrence Walsh, the independent prosecutor, exposed the crimes committed in the Reagan administration. Six of the defendants that he had convicted, however, were pardoned by Ronald Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, who may have played a part in the scandal. 

Walsh wrote that many of the Reagan administration officials were “brazenly deceptive" and concluded that Reagan had to know about the Iran-contra operation. “What set Iran-contra apart from previous political scandals was that a cover-up engineered in the White House of one president [Reagan] and completed by its successor [George H.W. Bush] prevented the rule of law being applied to perpetrators of criminal activity of Constitutional dimension," Walsh noted.  Neither Reagan nor Bush was ever criminally prosecuted. 

Howard Elterman