Self Check Quiz
Standard
FCAT LA.A.2.4.4
Practice Test
1.
Which of the following is the most likely reason for the sudden rise in population in San Francisco between 1847 and 1853:
a.
Cheaper transportation made the journey west easier.
b.
People were sick of living on the east coast.
c.
The possibility of finding gold and riches drew people west.
d.
People got lost.
2.
And Ain't I a Woman?
Address to the Ohio Women's Rights Convention, 1851
Sojourner Truth:~
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I thing that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm. I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [Intellect, someone whispers.] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or Negro's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
According to Sojourner Truth, what part of the Christian doctrine is used by white men to deny women the right to vote?
a.
Women cannot vote because Christ was a man.
b.
Women cannot vote because God would not like it.
c.
Women cannot vote because Christ said so in his doctrine.
d.
Women cannot vote because Eve tempted Adam.
3.
Death at Kent State
President's Commission on Campus Unrest
OVERVIEW
Following President Richard Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia, student antiwar protests broke out all over the country. At Kent State University in Ohio, a riot occurred on May 2, 1970, and the ROTC building was burned down. During continuing demonstrations on May 4, the National Guard fired on students, killing 4 and wounding 9. By May 10, 448 colleges and universities were on strike or closed. A presidential commission issued a report on the May 4 event, and excerpts from it appear here.
Kent State was a national tragedy. It was not, however, a unique tragedy. Only the magnitude of the student disorder and the extent of student deaths and injuries set it apart from similar occurrences on numerous other American campuses during the past few years. We must learn from the particular horror of Kent State and insure that it is never repeated.
The conduct of many students and nonstudent protestors at Kent State on the first four days of May 1970 was plainly intolerable. We have said in our report, and we repeat: Violence by students on or off the campus can never be justified by any grievance, philosophy, or political idea. There can be no sanctuary or immunity from prosecution on the campus. Criminal acts by students must be treated as such wherever they occur and whatever their purpose. Those who wrought havoc on the town of Kent, those who burned the ROTC building, those who attacked and stoned National Guardsmen, and all those who urged them on and applauded their deeds share the responsibility for the deaths and injuries of May 4.
The widespread student opposition to the Cambodian action and their general resentment of the National Guardsmen's presence on the campus cannot justify the violent and irresponsible actions of many students during the long weekend.
The Cambodian invasion defined a watershed in the attitude of Kent students toward American policy in the Indochina war.
Kent State had experienced no major turmoil during the preceding year, and no disturbances comparable in scope to the events of May had ever occurred on the campus. Some students thought the Cambodian action was an unacceptable contradiction of the announced policy of gradual withdrawal from Vietnam, or that the action constituted invasion of a neutral country, or that it would prolong rather than shorten the war. Opposition to the war appears to have been the principal issue around which students rallied during the first two days of May.
Thereafter, the presence of the National Guard on campus was the focus of discontent. The Guard's presence appears to have been the main attraction and the main issue for most students who came to the May 4 rally. For students deeply opposed to the war, the Guard was a living symbol of the military system they opposed. . . .
The May 4 rally began as a peaceful assembly on the Commons – the traditional site of student assemblies. . . . The rally was held during the crowded noontime luncheon period. The rally was peaceful, and there was no apparent impending violence. Only when the Guard attempted to disperse the rally did some students react violently.
Under these circumstances, the Guard's decision to march through the crowd for hundreds of yards up and down a hill was highly questionable. The crowd simply swirled around them and reformed again after they had passed. The Guard found itself on a football practice field far removed from its supply base and running out of tear gas. Guardsmen had been subjected to harassment and assault, were hot and tired, and felt dangerously vulnerable by the time they returned to the top of Blanket Hill.
When they confronted the students, it was only too easy for a single shot to trigger a general fusillade. Many students considered the Guard's march from the ROTC ruins across the Commons up Blanket Hill, down to the football practice field, and back to Blanket Hill as a kind of charade. Tear gas canisters were tossed back and forth to the cheers of the crowd, many of whom acted as if they were watching a game.
Lt. Alexander D. Stevenson, a platoon leader of Troop G, described the crowd in these words:
At the time of the firing, the crowd was acting like this whole thing was a circus. The crowd must have thought that the National Guard was harmless. They were having fun with the Guard. The circus was in town.
The actions of some students were violent and criminal and those of some others were dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible. The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.
The National Guardsmen on the Kent State campus were armed with loaded M-1 rifles, high-velocity weapons with a horizontal range of almost two miles. As they confronted the students, all that stood between a guardsman and firing was the flick of a thumb on the safety mechanism, and the pull of an index finger on the trigger. When firing began, the toll taken by these lethal weapons was disastrous.
The Guard fired amidst great turmoil and confusion, engendered in part by their own activities. But the guardsmen should not have been able to kill so easily in the first place. The general issuance of loaded weapons to law enforcement officers engaged in controlling disorders is never justified except in the case of armed resistance that trained sniper teams are unable to handle. This was not the case at Kent State, yet each guardsman carried a loaded M-1 rifle.
This lesson is not new. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders and the guidelines of the Department of the Army set it out explicitly.
No one would have died at Kent State if this lesson had been learned by the Ohio National Guard. Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified. Apparently, no order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.
What event caused the students to assemble and protest at Kent State?
a.
The ROTC building was burned down.
b.
The National Guard had fired on the students.
c.
The government had announced a policy of gradual withdrawal from Vietnam.
d.
Cambodia was invaded.
4.
If this graph is based on data collected and officially released by the federal government in 2000, what event listed below would most significantly affect the numbers shown?
a.
the impeachment of Bill Clinton
b.
the contested presidential election of 2000
c.
the election of George W. Bush
d.
the War on Terrorism
5.
The Bonus Army
Malcolm Cowley
OVERVIEW
The so-called Bonus Army was made up of about 15,000 World War I army veterans and their families. Poor and desperate, they marched on Washington in 1932, to ask for early payment of bonus certificates not owed them until 1945. After Congress failed to pass the Bonus Bill, many veterans departed. The veterans who remained camped in shacks and threatened the peace of the capital. Using tanks, machine guns, and tear gas, the United States Army drove out the veterans and burned their camps. The following selections are from an article by Malcolm Cowley, which appeared in the New Republic on August 17, 1932. Cowley witnessed the event.
When the veterans of the Bonus Army first tried to escape, they found that the bridges into Virginia were barred by soldiers and the Maryland roads blocked against them by state troopers. They wandered from street to street or sat in ragged groups, the men exhausted, the women with wet handkerchiefs laid over their smarting eyes, the children waking from sleep to cough and whimper from the tear gas in their lungs. The flames behind them were climbing into the night sky. About four in the morning, as rain began to fall they were allowed to cross the border into Maryland, on condition that they move as rapidly as possible into another state.
The veterans were expected to disperse to their homes – but most of them had no homes, and they felt that their only safety lay in sticking together. Somehow the rumor passed from group to group that the mayor of Johnstown had invited them to his city. And they cried, as they rode toward Pennsylvania or marched in the dawn twilight along the highways, "On to Johnstown."
Their shanties and tents had been burned, their personal property destroyed, except for the few belongings they could carry on their backs; many of their families were separated, wives from husbands, children from parents. Knowing all this, they still did not appreciate the extent of their losses. Two days before, they had regarded themselves, and thought the country regarded them, as heroes trying to collect a debt long overdue. They had boasted about their months or years of service, their medals, their wounds, their patriotism in driving the Reds out of their camp; they had nailed an American flag to every hut. When threatened with forcible eviction, they answered that no American soldier would touch them: hadn't a detachment of Marines (consisting, some said, of twenty-five or thirty men, though others claimed there were two whole companies) thrown down its arms and refused to march against them?
But the infantry, last night, had driven them out like so many vermin. Mr. Hoover [President Herbert Hoover] had announced that "after months of patient indulgence, the government met overt lawlessness as it always must be met if the cherished processes of self-government are to be preserved." Mr. Hoover and his subordinates, in their eagerness to justify his action, were about to claim that the veterans were Red radicals, that they were the dregs of the population, that most of them had criminal records and, as a final insult, that half of them weren't veterans at all.
They would soon discover the effect of these official libels. At Somerset, on the Lincoln Highway, some of them asked for food. "We can't give you any," said a spokesman for the businessmen. "The President says that you're rebels – don't you understand? You're all outlaws now." …
The heroes of 1918, now metamorphosed into "thieves, plug-uglies, degenerates," were preparing to gather in the outskirts of Johnstown in the campsite offered them at Ideal Park. And the leading citizens, aided by the state police, were planning to use any means short of violence to keep them from reaching it. Mr. Hoover's proclamation had done its work.
At Jennerstown is a barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, looking for all the world like a fashionable roadhouse. In front of the barracks is a traffic light. The road ahead leads westward over Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge; the right-hand road leads nineteen miles northward into Johnstown. It was the task of the state troopers to keep the Bonus Army moving west over the mountains, toward Ligonier and the Ohio border.
In half an hour on Saturday morning, I saw more than a thousand veterans pass through Jennerstown – that is, more than fifty trucks bearing an average of twenty men apiece. Later I was told that the procession continued at irregular intervals until Sunday evening. The troopers would wait at the intersection, twenty men on their motorcycles like a school of swift gray sharks, till they heard that a convoy was approaching; then they would dart off to meet it in a cloud of dust and blue gasoline smoke, with their hats cutting the air like so many fins. One of the troopers stayed behind to manipulate the traffic light. As the trucks came nearer, he would throw a switch that changed it into a mere yellow blinker, so that all of them could shoot past the intersection without slackening speed. They were full of ragged men, kneeling, standing unsteadily, clinging to the sideboards; there was no room to sit down. Behind each truck rode a trooper, and there were half a dozen others mingled with the crowd that watched from in front of a filling station….
…A few had seen that something was wrong, that they were being carried beyond their meeting place. They tried to pass the word from truck to truck, above the roar of the motors. As they went bowling through the level village street, there was no way of escape; but just beyond Jennerstown, the road climbs steeply up Laurel Hill; the drivers shifted into second gear – and promptly lost half their passengers. The others, those who received no warning or let themselves be cowed by the troopers were carried westward….
As for the veterans who escaped at Jennerstown, they lay by the roadside utterly exhausted. Their leaders had been arrested, dispersed, or else had betrayed them; their strength had been gnawed away by hunger or lack of sleep; they hoped to reunite and recuperate in a new camp, but how to reach it they did not know. For perhaps twenty minutes, they dozed there hopelessly. Then – and I was a witness of this phenomenon – a new leader would stand forth from the ranks. He would stop a motorist, learn the road to Johnstown, call the men together, give them their instructions – and the whole group would suddenly obey a self-imposed discipline. As they turned northward at the Jennerstown traffic light, one of them would shout, "We're going back!" and perhaps half a dozen would mumble in lower voices, "We're gonna get guns and go back to Washington."
Mile after mile we passed the ragged line as we too drove northward to the camp at Ideal Park….
It seemed the ragged line would never end. Here the marchers were stumbling under the weight of their suitcases and blanket rolls, here they were clustered round a farmhouse pump, here a white man was sharing the burden of a crippled Negro, here white and Negro together were snoring in a patch of shade….In France, fifteen years before, I had seen gaunt men coming out of the trenches half-dead with fatigue, bending under the weight of their equipment. The men on the Johnstown road that day were older, shabbier, but somehow more impressive: they were volunteers, fighting a war of their own. "And don't forget it, buddy," one of them shouted as the car slowed down, "we've enlisted for the duration."
Source: New Republic, August 17, 1932.
The Bonus Army was formed because ____________.
a.
there was an enlistment bonus
b.
bonus certificates were due
c.
bonus certificates were not due but people were desperate
d.
bonus bonds were being issued by the government for war reparations
6.
Spending Spree
The $400 billion Medicare benefit is the latest in a string of big Congressional outlays.
By John F. Dickerson
When Congress voted to cover prescription-drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries, President Bush got a chance to boast of his Trumanesque buck-stopping as the nation's top executive. "We have a responsibility in Washington to solve problems and not pass them on," he said. As the largest expansion of the program since its inception in 1965, the $400 billion plan was a big solution indeed. But for a band of deficit hawks and rainy-day worriers in Washington, it was a horror – the latest evidence that in the past five years they have become voices in the wilderness. How to keep the federal budget in check – an issue that was once central to both Democratic and Republican politics – has been shunted aside, leaving fiscal conservatives fretting over how to make their case as the deficit grows to $500 billion and those in charge seem inclined only to add to it.
In addition to the new burden for Medicare, discretionary spending has increased 27% in the past two years. Much of that has gone to fighting the war on terrorism, but funds have also been spent on new benefits for veterans, subsidies for farmers and aid to low-performing schools and needy students. Pork-barrel spending is also on the rise. In the past two years, it has gone up 48%, according to one watchdog group, and politicians of both parties are quietly delighted that the public no longer seems to care. But economists are concerned that with each new trip to the trough, law-makers are accelerating the arrival of a fiscal disaster.
In the race to provide 40 million seniors with the popular drug benefit, the voices of fiscal restraint were quashed. And what about that 27% increase in discretionary spending in the past two years? Not all of it has gone to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, although it was the $87 billion additional cost of these ventures that gave voters momentary sticker shock earlier this year. A $183 billion farm bill propped up corn and peanut growers whom Congress had once promised to wean off the federal dollar.
President Bush has already passed tax cuts that will cost $1.7 trillion over 10 years, and that means there's less money coming into federal coffers in the short term. That has contributed to a debt that this year reached $6.9 trillion.
Bush's tax cuts have been such nectar to conservatives that there's little danger of a broad fiscal revolt from his base. Furthermore, embracing the prescription-drug entitlement helps build the kind of governing majority that Bush's political brain Karl Rove has long dreamed of. When they were a minority party, Republicans could preach fiscal discipline. Now that they control Congress, the White House and more than half of the state houses, they have to show that they are listening – specifically on issues like health care and education, which were once considered territory only Democrats cared about. So if a little money needs to be spent along the way to expand their base, the White House seems happy to open the store.
According to the author, how is the Bush administration justifying the increase in spending on issues like education and health care?
a.
The extra spending is expanding the number of supporters for the Republicans.
b.
Discretionary spending increases are good for the economy because they create jobs.
c.
The more money that is spent on these issues means that less money has to be spent on the military.
d.
The administration believes that the Clinton administration did not spend enough money on these issues.
7.
The Case for Controlling Handguns
David S. Anderson
OVERVIEW
In 1982, when David S. Anderson wrote the article below, there were more than 30 million handguns in American homes. The public was still reeling from the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan the year before, and the controversy over handguns reached a peak. These excerpts from Anderson's article present some solutions to the argument about guns that continues to engage many Americans.
Jean Harris, Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley generated a new national debate over gun control, and for a reason that is less than obvious. Harris, convicted of murdering Dr. Herman Tarnower with a .32 caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver, Chapman, who pleaded guilty to killing John Lennon with a .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver, and Hinckley, accused of wounding President Reagan and his aides with a .22 caliber Roehm RG 14 pistol, did not emerge from some criminal netherworld; instead all are familiar-seeming, middle-class folks.
In addition to reflecting the potential for violence in all of us, their proven or alleged crimes are disturbing reminders that the handgun is a pervasive element of American life. It makes that violent potential deadlier than ever. . . .
In the 1960s, in the wake of urban riots and perceived increases in urban crime, handgun sales increased dramatically from fewer than 750,000 in 1964 to more than 2 million in 1968, where they remain today. Most of the new sales, experts believe, were to fearful homeowners. Today about half of all American households contain some kind of firearm, and half of them are handguns. . . .
A recent issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, a scholarly journal, collects a number of articles . . . that summarize recent thinking of criminal justice experts about gun control. The points they make permit a fresh look at a debate that often deadlocks between gun foes who equate an interest in firearms with sexual hang-ups and National Rifle Association devotees who believe gun control is an effort to soften up America for Communist takeover. . . .
Articles . . . suggest that the proliferation of urban household handguns clearly increases the dangerousness of life rather than making it any safer, and not just by creating the potential for more accidents. "If current rates of handgun violence persist, the approximately 2 million new handguns sold this year will eventually be involved in almost 600 thousand acts of violent crime – a rate of involvement that vastly exceeds the corresponding rate for rifles and shotguns," write Philip J. Cook and James Blose.
Harvard professor Mark H. Moore, in a fascinating study, traces the ways a vast arsenal of guns falls into the hands of "proscribed persons" each year. Between 300,000 and 700,000 change hands in private transactions, with an unknown number winding up in the clutches of criminals. And a huge number – between 60,000 and 200,000 – are stolen. By definition, they wind up in criminal possession, and almost certainly are bound for criminal use.
But if all those criminals were denied guns, wouldn't they just use other weapons to commit crimes? Perhaps, says Cook in another study, but the results wouldn't be so deadly. "The type of weapon matters in violent crime, both in terms of its seriousness and its distribution." The number of deaths resulting from robberies and assaults would decline, he concludes, though that benefit would have its price: nondeadly robberies and assaults might increase, and predatory criminals would shift their sights from the young and strong to the old and weak. . . .
While wrangling between politicians and lobbyists frustrates efforts to enact serious gun control laws, public opinion remains fairly unified on the issue. Sociologist James Wright points out that, although most Americans believe they have a right to possess guns, they also realize that guns are dangerous and ought to be regulated by the government. . . .
Surveys agreed that between 20 and 25 percent of Americans have handguns in their homes (about 30.85 million guns), with 40 percent of those citing protection or self-defense as the reason. Analysis of the surveys also showed widespread belief that private citizens have a right to own guns, and that criminals will find ways to obtain guns no matter what. But they also indicated wide support for registration and licensing of all privately owned handguns, and a belief that such registration would not violate the individual's right to own a gun. . . .
The public support for government regulation of the gun trade might also indicate support for other sensible measures. Cook and Blose, in their article, point out, for example, that 23 states, including 64 percent of the population, now already require that police be notified and permitted to check into the background of a customer before he may purchase a handgun. Writing such a requirement into Federal law would strengthen existing legislation that prohibits sales of guns to categories of people considered dangerous. . . .
A public that favors regulating guns the way we regulate automobiles would not be likely to oppose such measures. They would constitute that politically feasible first step that, in the opinion of Cook and Blose, would cause "modest reduction in firearms violence rates." They would also give the government a handle on the problem, with the potential for more than modes reduction as time goes on.
In light of these speculations, two further points contained in this substantive volume are worth noting. The first is Moore's conclusion that since stolen handguns are such an important part of the illicit traffic, local police departments, rather than Federal agencies, are the best place to mount major efforts to control the criminal gun trade. "The best approach is likely to be high volume, relatively unsophisticated undercover investigations aided by patrol efforts and a few informants." . . .
The second point is contained in an article by Franklin Zimring, perhaps the nation's most respected authority on handguns and crime, who contemplates the future of handgun use and policy for the rest of the century. A basic problem, Zimring says, is that existing inventory of some 30 million handguns, to which another 2 million are added each year. The prospect that police will show up one day to search your home and confiscate your handguns is remote; but short of that, it's hard to see how any Federal policy can reduce the number of handguns in circulation. In fact, a Federal registration program would legitimize ownership as much as limit it. A far more powerful factor, he suggests, is public opinion. "An increase in the social stigma associated with household defense guns will influence the demand for handguns long before it affects national policy toward handgun supply," Zimring writes. Once it becomes fashionable to talk about your guns at middle-class dinner parties, he suggests, no effective limits on the supply would be possible. But should gun ownership remain a little embarrassing, a sign of an extreme personality, then some hope remains for an eventual decline.
Which prompts a final suggestion: Perhaps the people who oppose the spread of handguns should take their money out of Washington lobbying efforts and put it into television commercials. They worked quite well, after all, for antismoking groups who wanted to counter the fashionable image of cigarettes.
And the dramatic possibilities are clear: In Mount Airy, Maryland, recently, a three-year-old boy picked up the family handgun, pointed it at his mother, pulled the trigger and shot her through the chest. What might a creative ad agency do with that?
The passage states that between 1964 and 1968, handgun sales increased from fewer than 750,000 to over 2 million. According to the passage, a major reason for this increase in sales was ____________.
a.
the murder of John Lennon
b.
the increased number of stolen handguns
c.
a perceived increase in urban crime by fearful homeowners
d.
the depiction of graphic handgun violence in television commercials
8.
The Iran-Contra Affair
Jon Carroll, Ronald Reagan
OVERVIEW
On November 3, 1986, reports appeared abroad indicating that the United States had sent arms to Iran in violation of the government's policy. After many denials, President Ronald Reagan admitted the delivery of arms to Iran in the hope of obtaining Iranian help in freeing American hostages held in Lebanon. On November 25, Reagan announced that he had just discovered that money from the sale of those arms had been transferred to the contras, a rebel group, in Nicaragua. (A violation of a congressional ban on such financing.) Presented below is an article by Jon Carroll that appeared the day after President Reagan blamed the media for spoiling the plan to free the hostages. It is followed by the president's November 26 statement "serious questions of propriety."
JON CARROLL: REMEMBER THE PLUMBERS?
Remember the plumbers? They plugged the leaks in the Nixon White House. They were both secret and secretive. They planted the bug that led to the burglary that led to the arrests that led to the payoffs that led to the coverup that led to the hearings that led to the firings that led to the resignation that toppled the house that Dick built.
Cultural fallout from the event included events as diverse as the acting debut of G. Gordon Liddy and the founding of the Betty Ford Center.
So now we have the New Improved Plumbers. They don't have a cute name anymore; they have a nice bureaucratic title: the National Security Council.
But, like the Plumbers, they deal in paranoia. They don't trust anyone but a few presidential aides. They don't trust Congress; they don't trust the CIA; they don't trust the Defense Department; they don't trust the State Department.
They lie; they sneak; they deny.
Most of all, they don't trust the Constitution. The system of checks and balances central to the American government is perceived as a nuisance. They'd rather make policy by themselves; so much easier, so much more . . . efficient.
And when they get in trouble, they blame the press. Just like the original Plumbers.
So here's what the New Plumbers did. They shipped arms to Iran, despite our policy of not dealing with terrorists, despite our support of Iraq in its war with Iran, despite everything.
Then they got found out. So Larry Speakes, designated mouthpiece, announced that "speculative" press reports "dashed our hopes" of freeing more hostages.
Why? Surely not because the government of Iran was upset. The publicity for them was golden. The revelations proved that the American government was duplicitous; that it lied to its own people.
Not only that, it proved that terrorism does in fact work; that kidnapping Americans is a great way to get weapons and money. And it strengthened Iran's position within the Muslim world as a heroic nation capable of bending the mighty American Satan to its will.
No, the only folks hurt by the press revelations were the New Plumbers. Their ability to arrange secret deals was reduced; their accountability was increased. No wonder they were upset.
The Nixon plumbers, it turned out, were a bunch of insecure, brainless, creeps. The New Plumbers are the same, except more powerful and more dangerous.
They might have gotten their own way. They could have discussed the options with members of their own administration and with leading Republicans on Capitol Hill. They might even have carried the day; releasing hostages is a popular political stance.
But they were afraid of debate, afraid of dissent. Like their opposite numbers in the Kremlin, they prefer unilateral decisions and secret negotiations.
So once again, Americans are in the position of being ashamed of their own government. Once again, the White House stands in voluntary isolation from its own citizens. Even as it did during the Nixon years, the presidency straddles the line between farce and tragedy. Sad but true; true but sad; either; both.
THE PRESIDENT'S PRESS CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER 25
Last Friday, after becoming concerned whether my national security apparatus had provided me with a security, or a complete factual record with respect to the implementation of my policy toward Iran, I directed the Attorney General to undertake a review of this matter over the weekend and report to me on Monday.
And yesterday, Secretary Meese provided me and the White House chief of staff with a report on his preliminary findings. And this report led me to conclude that I was not fully informed on the nature of one of the activities undertaken in connection with this initiative. This action raises serious questions of propriety.
I've just met with my national security advisers and Congressional leaders to inform them of the actions that I'm taking today. Determination of the full details of this action will require further review and investigation by the Department of Justice.
Looking to the future, I will appoint a special review board to conduct a comprehensive review of the role and procedures of the National Security Council staff in the conduct of foreign and national security policy.
I anticipate receiving the reports from the Attorney General and the special review board at the earliest possible date. Upon the completion of these reports, I will share their findings and conclusions with the Congress and the American people.
Although not directly involved, Vice Adm. John Poindexter has asked to be relieved of his assignment as assistant in the Navy. Lieut. Col. Oliver North has been relieved of his duties on the National Security Council staff.
I am deeply troubled that the implementation of a policy aimed at resolving a truly tragic situation in the Middle East has resulted in such controversy. As I've stated previously, I believe our policy goals toward Iran were well founded. However, the information brought to my attention yesterday convinced me that in one aspect, implementation of that policy was seriously flawed. While I cannot reverse what has happened, I am initiating steps, including those I've announced today, to assure that the implementation of all future, foreign and national security policy initiatives will proceed only in accordance with my authorization.
Over the past six years, we've realized many foreign policy goals. I believe we can yet achieve, and I intend to pursue, the objectives on which we all agree – a safer, more secure and stable world.
In his statement, how does President Reagan respond to the allegations of wrongdoing by his administration?
a.
He tells the American people that he is thinking of resigning.
b.
He denies the allegations.
c.
He pleads ignorance and promises further investigation.
d.
He admits he is guilty and asks for forgiveness.
