Iran-Contra Connection: Reagan’s Watergate?

There’s a whole new crowd of post-Watergate kids in school, and here comes their first big chance to watch the Constitution in action!

The hot question of the moment is whether Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North (the White House basement operative who was just rendered inoperative) will clam up and take the rap a la G. Gordon Liddy or will spill all the beans in the best tradition of John Dean.

With heads rolling, maybe Vice President George Bush will eventually be axed, as was Spiro Agnew.

Instead of Richard Nixon’s Cubans, we have Ronald Reagan’s contras , Israelis and Iranians.

Instead of burglars caught in Watergate, we have Eugene Hasenfus caught from the skies of Nicaragua. We even have a flopped cover-up--our “Hasenfus Who?” act failed in part because from his “safe house” in Central America Hasenfus contacted the basement of the Reagan home, not by short-wave radio or carrier pigeon but by commercial telephone service (damn those incriminating U.S. long-distance carrier phone bills!).

On the brighter side, no more Cabinet member wives (Martha Mitchell) for the dribbles of truth, we have a bona-fide Cabinet member, Secretary of State George Shultz, who refuses to bend.

Maybe even a second “deep throat” will courageously step forward and help save the republic.

But it remains a sad day. Once again, our republic must determine if our President is merely inept or feloniously dishonest--either way, we deserve far better. There were no injuries or deaths in Watergate. Our furtive military meddling in the Middle East and in Latin America involves the loss of thousands of lives, and has even earned us the condemnation of the World Court.

Learn well, America’s school children, for it has been said that history repeats itself and some think that you deserve better.

DAVE QUICK

Los Angeles