The White House and Impropriety

By Laurence I. Barrett

Are private sector ethics failing the Reaganauts in office?

It was a fine week for scandal buffs. On Tuesday, Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan denounced his principal accuser in a bribery investigation as a "damnable and contemptible liar," and insisted that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the matter further. Next day the Justice Department announced that it was obliging Donovan, as, in fact, it had planned to do even before he spoke out. Within hours, Attorney General William French Smith closed down a separate inquiry into the affairs of Richard Allen, the White House National Security Adviser, with no finding of wrongdoing. Nonetheless, Allen remained on "administrative leave" while White House staffers debated whether or not he should return to office.

Bulletins of this kind have become disturbingly common in recent months, despite the Administration's affection for law-and-order rhetoric. Ronald Reagan speaks from his Middle American viscera when he says that lawlessness demands a "spiritual solution" and that retribution "should be swift and sure."

But to some degree the Administration is displaying a double standard. Reagan's stern preachments, it is now clear, are aimed at murderers, rapists and pornographers. For white-collar violations of the law, there is understanding and forgiveness; for the suspicion of impropriety, there is sympathetic patience.

One prominent example of this generous and benign attitude is Maurice Stans, 73, the chief money raiser for Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. Stans had pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts during the post-Watergate investigations of political fund abuses. Since Reagan assumed office, Stans has been quietly lobbying among his friends on Capitol Hill and in the Administration for some kind of symbolic rehabilitation. It took months for Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver to find an appropriately obscure post for Stans, but find one he eventually did. In early December Stans was named to the board of the Overseas Private Investment Corp., which insures private U.S. investment abroad. Explained one of Reagan's top advisers: "The President felt that here was a man who had worked hard for his country and his party, a decent man who had suffered a lot."

Reagan's compassion is commendable in principle but leaves at least one large question unanswered. Did he really intend to put the presidential seal of approval on the dubious tactics that typified fund raising during the 1972 campaign?

Similar questions arise about the appointment of Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum, as head of the President's Cancer Panel. In 1975, Hammer pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges involving improper contributions to the campaign fund administered by Stans. It was hardly a major matter, and Hammer is an esteemed U.S. business leader. But if the President wanted a successful corporate executive to chair this panel, surely there was someone available who had not openly confessed to illegal political activities.

Reagan and his legal advisers firmly believe that some of the post-Watergate prosecutions and regulations went too far. They may be right, but that is not the point. Juries found ample evidence to convict the principal Watergate conspirators; bipartisan majorities in Congress agreed with a widespread public sentiment that loopholes in the laws about financial disclosure for Government officials and campaign finance practices needed to be closed. The Reaganauts may resent the laws, but to flout their spirit out of private conviction is to display debatable judgment -- and is risky politics to boot.

That seeming indifference to the particular and more demanding standards expected of public servants is apparent in the Administration's attitude toward what is becoming a continuing problem for the White House: doubts about the ethical judgments of officials insensitive jobs.

To be sure, a quick exit was arranged for one such official whose business transactions as a private citizen came under scrutiny. He was Max Hugel, who was widely viewed as ill-equipped to serve as chief of covert operations for the CIA anyway.

But other questions remain troubling. Should not the Administration have been much more fastidious at the outset in checking out Allen's and Donovan's business affairs? Should it not have had the foresight to require that its controversial CIA director, William Casey, be scrupulous in disclosing his financial dossier?

There is no proof that any of these men are guilty of anything, and presumably they are not, but legal culpability is only one issue. A more important one is the seeming indifference in high places to the appearance of possibly dubious practices. These incidents, along with others involving lesser officials, demonstrate that too many of Reagan's men have dull eyes for the keen edge of propriety. In an Administration containing many wealthy individuals, for example, only two dozen have put their assets in trust arrangements scrutinized either by the Office of Government Ethics or the Justice Department.

A few of Reagan's political advisers privately bemoan the lax attitudes. But they seem unable to change a mind-set that starts with the President himself. Part of this outlook is the product of strong, sin cere views about Big Government vs. the individual, an attitude shared by Reagan and his original inner circle of wealthy California advisers. As authors of their own success stories, they resent the intrusion of do-gooders and Government regulators into their affairs. Financial disclosure requirements are nettlesome; in fact, they are an invasion of privacy. What is more, sharp financial practices hardly amount to a cardinal sin. A man on his way to his first million or two in a competitive field may have to deal with business associates who are not wearing halos.

Transferring these standards to the White House, however, causes problems, to which Ronald Reagan so far has been insensitive. Many of his wealthy appointees appear so conscious of the in comes and comforts that they gave up in order to join the Administration that they resent the additional sacrifice that the laws of disclosure require. But the ability to survive under a microscope has become a political requirement in Washington since Watergate. Perhaps those who find the scrutiny intolerable should not hold public posts. -- By Laurence I. Barrett

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