Arriving in the District of Columbia in the late afternoon, I switched on the television kindly provided by my hotel and saw that able and honorable man, Mr. Robert C. McFarlane, being grilled by Senate Committee Counsel John Nields.
There is a fatal absurdity at the heart of such hearings. As Richard Brookhiser pointed out not long ago in NR, Congress kept changing its collective mind about aid to the Contras. One day it was on, another day it was off. One day it was medical and humanitarian only; another, it was military. Since the President had made it clear that his policy was to assist the Contras to overthrow the Communist government imposed on the people of Nicaragua, any attempt to achieve consistency of policy in this area was bound to involve a search for ways round the vagaries of congressional voting.
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