President Reagan’s Secret Dealing With Iran

There are two Ronald Reagans. One is the fatherly, all knowing, John Waynesque character he plays for the benefit of television and an easily duped public. The other is the bumbling incompetent, at the mercy of ill-chosen advisers.

Hypocrisy has been a mainstay in the Reagan Administration. He claimed that government of Poland had no right to prevent Solidarity from holding a strike, and he fired all U.S. air traffic controllers for the same offense.

With his inauguration Reagan announced the end of big government influencing our lives, and now the Reagan disciples want to dictate sexual behavior and religious bias.

Six short years after being swept into office, more than just a little on the premise of his strength and Jimmy Carter’s weakness in the midst of the stranglehold the Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran had on America, Reagan pays off. The worst part is, he did it in secret, like a man paying off blackmail for fear of his infidelity being revealed in public. With this action, Reagan has rendered all that came before it, a lie.

The image of America he has projected--the strong, just, unfaltering nation who will not give in or give up--is gone.

Terrorists now have carte blanche to take Americans as hostages, because like a man with a small business being extorted for protection by a gang, America pays. Khomeini is the gangster, and Reagan runs the grocery store on the corner.

DONALD WAYNE MILLER

Huntington Beach