Edit This for Content, Style and Do Fact-Checking

EDITORIAL EXERCISE

Edit this for content, style and do fact-checking.

Hed order: 2-24-1 (two columns, 24 point, one line). Note: Unlike news hedlines, the heds on opinion pieces can also contain opinion.

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guiltty. When he was convicted on five felony charges Saturday, former national secu'rity adviser John Poinddexter became the higest-ranking presidential aide to be found guilty since Watergate. Like some of the president's men in the Kennedy-era scandal, he should go to jail.

All others convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal -- including rambunctious National security council aide Oliver North and Poindexter's predecessor, Robert McF3rlane -- got off with probation, fines and verbal floggings. Poindexter merits harsher treatment because he was in a position to put his foot down and had the responsibility to say no, but instead joined in the lawbreaking.

Poindexter's basic crime was living to Congress about a November 1985 shipment of Hawk missiles to Iran that was supposed to result in release of four Americans held hostage in Beirut by pro-Iran extremists. Proceeds from that arms sales to Iran were then sent to Nicaragua's contra rebels during the five year . congressional ban on Contra aid. Poindexter, who had helped supervise the shipment, told Congress that he did not even hear about it until two months after the fact. Further, he tore up a presidenttial "finding'”I authorizing U.S. participation in the shipment, signed by president Reagan, in hope that no one would ever find out that Reagan had approved the deal.

Poindexter, a ertired admiral and Ph.D. who was first in his class at the Naval Academy at West point, should have known better. Our system government depends on good-faith behavior betwwen the independent branches of gov~rnment. If Congress -- and the electorate -- can't trust White House testimony, how can government function.

Poindexter's motive was evidently to protect Reagan. But how much did Reagan know? Did he order the Iran-Contra affair? Is Poindexter taking the rap for his boss? Reagan's videotaped testimony -- a flurry of I-don't-recalls -- leave the questions hanging.

Whoever instigated the sorry affair, it is John Poindexter's shame that it happened on his watch, and Ronald Reagan's that it happened in his White House.