Word: iranscam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...coke smugglers can accomplish this feat because they have plenty of help. They rely on a booming money-laundering industry that serves a clientele ranging from tax-avoiding corporations to the Iranscam schemers. The system depends on the collaboration, or often just the negligence, of bankers and other moneymen who can use electronic-funds networks and the secrecy laws of tax havens to shuffle assets with alacrity. The very institutions that could do the most to stop money laundering have the least incentive to do so. According to police and launderers, the basic fee for recycling money of dubious origin...
Dukakis' most obvious strategic opening is to attack the Reagan Administration for its most obvious failings, including Iranscam and the Noriega fiasco. So far he has done that without appearing negative by assaulting Bush personally. A more difficult challenge for Dukakis will be to flesh out his vague stump speeches with more specifics. This means converting his pleasant-sounding concepts -- such as a "real war on drugs" and "comprehensive day care" -- to realistic programs complete with price tags. He also owes voters a credible explanation of how he will curb the federal deficit. If his follow-up sounds as expensive...
...many Americans, that is just the problem. The President possesses the constitutional power to pardon whom he will whenever he wishes, and he can exercise that right on either whim or instinct. But should he issue pardons in the Iranscam case at all? And what are the ethics involved...
Judge Gerhard Gesell's announced determination to move the indictments along quickly could make a pardon more likely, since a trial could be under way by Election Day, with a verdict in hand before Reagan leaves office on Jan. 20. One scenario is that Reagan would defiantly pardon the Iranscam defendants in the final hours of his presidency; another is that he would grant a pardon right after the election. Waiting until just after the voting would be ethically very dubious, says Washington Lawyer James Hamilton, a former Senate Watergate committee counsel. He believes it would be "highly inappropriate, depriving...
...most common argument against pardoning the Iranscam defendants is that their actions are too serious to forgive without repentance. "A pardon would say that the democratic process is only a valid one sometimes, and that highly committed patriots can set it aside -- like Dr. Strangelove," notes Ethicist Josephson. He adds, "It would send a message that there are times when we will permit high-level Government officials to lie to Congress. How could we trust anything afterward...