WASHINGTON -- Some of President Reagan's top advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and administration officials have concluded.
Investigators believe that the advisers' activities extended well beyond the secret arms sales to Iran and aid to the contras now under investigation.
Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad.
When the attorney general at the time, William French Smith, learned of the proposal, he protested in writing to North's boss, then-national security adviser Robert McFarlane.
The advisers conducted their activities through secret contacts throughout the government with persons who acted at their direction but did not officially report to them.
The activities of those contacts were coordinated by the National Security Council, the officials and investigators said.
There appears to have been no formal directive for the advisers' activities, which knowledgeable sources described as a parallel government.
In a secret assessment of the activities, the lead counsel for the Senate Iran-contra committee called it a "secret government-within-a-government."
The arrangement permitted Reagan administration officials to claim that they were not involved in controversial or illegal activities, the officials said.
"It was the ultimate plausible deniability," said a well-briefed official who has served the Reagan administration since 1982 and who often collaborated on covert assistance to the Nicaraguan contras.
The roles of top-level officials and of Reagan himself are still not clear. But that is expected to be a primary topic when North appears before the Iran-contra committees beginning Tuesday. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh also is believed to be trying to prove in his investigation of the Iran-contra affair that government officials engaged in a criminal conspiracy.
ADVISERS FORMED SHADOW GOVERNMENT, PROBERS SAY
Much of the time, Cabinet secretaries and their aides were unaware of the advisers' activities. When they periodically detected operations, they complained or tried to derail them, interviews show.
But no one ever questioned the activities in a broad way, possibly out of a belief that the advisers were operating with presidential sanction, officials said.
But no one ever questioned the activities in a broad way, possibly out of a belief that the advisers were operating with presidential sanction, officials said.
Reagan did know of or approve at least some of the actions of the secret group, according to previous accounts by aides, friends and high-ranking foreign officials.
One such case is the 1985 visit to Libya by William Wilson, then-U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and a close Reagan friend, to meet with Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, officials said last week. Secretary of State George Shultz rebuked Wilson, but the officials said Reagan knew of the trip in advance.
The heart of the secret structure from 1983 to 1986 was North's office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, investigators believe.
North's influence within the secret structure was so great, the sources said, that he was able to have the orbits of sophisticated surveillance satellites altered to follow Soviet ships around the world, call for the launching of high-flying spy aircraft on secret missions over Cuba and Nicaragua and become involved in sensitive domestic activities...
