THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 25, 1994 TAG: 9410250314
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EDWARD POWER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 447 lines
``Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'' - Matthew 5:10. One of Oliver L. North's favorite passages in the Bible.
To look upon the career of Oliver L. North - political, military and otherwise - is to walk within a vast hall of mirrors: At this turn there's North the family man, born-again Christian, patriot with a sermon. At that turn, there's North the gun-running, Nicaraguan Contra supply master, ``blood-and-guts Ollie.'' At another bend, this one shadowed in special-interest small print, there's North the charismatic, mass-mail fund raiser, supposedly penning hundreds of thousands of personal notes, autographing photos, soliciting supporters to send him $25 this month, $100 next.
Quick. Which image is it of North in the next mirror? Who, the images themselves seem to demand, is Oliver North now?
If it seems a simple question - almost irreverent in its simplicity - it is nonetheless the question that has underpinned North's entire bid for the U.S. Senate seat of Charles S. Robb. It is the question his arch critics pose when they recount alleged instances of North's lying to the public. It is the question many of his former Marine colleagues seem to be nervously scouting out, like edging about a booby trap, when they are asked to square his seat-of-the-pants Marine Corps exploits with his carefully orchestrated political ones.
And it is, almost defiantly so, the question North himself invites anew each time he talks about a government official who doesn't understand what it means to take an oath before Congress, each time he smears an opponent's military record, each time he charges a political opponent with lying.
Who is Oliver North now?
Perhaps it is the conviction with which North's supporters answer that question that explains the millions of dollars in contributions he has received for his Senate bid, and the public devotion that, according to the most recent poll, now has him in a near dead heat with Robb.
But if, as the polls say, about 37 percent of Virginia's voters already view Oliver North in the light he would like them all to, his preferred image is not the only one at hand.
Visit the Family Cafe in Stafford, Va., and you get one picture of North: a regular family man who,in the five years that he lived around there, fit in well among the God-fearing citizens, the duck hunters (``Sportsmen For North''), and the Patsy Cline fans.
``If he did half the things he's accused of doing, then he should be president,'' as one Stafford man put it. ``It'd take an awful smart person to do all those things.''
Go back further in time and one gets, from former military and National Security Council associates, a more confused picture of North:
One unidentified Marine officer who served with North over 10 years told Playboy magazine in a 1988 profile of North that ``He was good in combat, outstanding as an instructor at Quantico, terrific on Okinawa when he was running the Northern Training Area; I remember once I literally put my life in his hands when he taught me how to rappel out of a CH-53 helicopter. We were hovering 100 feet over the Okinawan jungle, and he hooked a snap link to my line, checked the knot, and out of that chopper I went. He was cool and competent, and if he'd screwed up that day in 1974, I'd be dead. It's as simple as that.''
But another view also emerges: By June 1986, for example, former NSC head Robert McFarlane was sufficiently alarmed about North's stability to note in a memo to his successor, John Poindexter: ``In Ollie's interest, I would get him transferred or sent to Bethesda (Naval Hospital) for disability review.''
And then there are those such as former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.
On Oct. 6, responding to reports that North claimed a large role in planning the invasion of Grenada during the Reagan administration, Eagleburger characterized North as a ``pipsqueak lieutenant colonel'' and said he doubted North's role could have been as prominent in White House affairs as North has claimed.
North, said Eagleburger, has ``no moral character whatsoever'' and ``wouldn't recognize the truth if it hit him over the head with a baseball bat.''
Who is Oliver North now?
``Oliver North,'' said the unidentified Marine quoted in the 1988 profile, ``is a tremendously complex man.''
AS UNIMAGINABLE AS THE fall from grace may have been for U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb, equally improbable has been the political ascent of Oliver L. North.
While there are those who say North has always had the traits that have enabled him to succeed as a politician, his life really divides into two distinct periods: his career in the Marine Corps leading up to his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal - and everything that came afterward.
Born in 1943 in San Antonio, Texas, Oliver Laurence North grew up in the northern New York village of Philmont. He was the eldest of four children and was called ``Larry'' to distinguish him from his father, Oliver Clay North.
Young Oliver was actually the third in his family to bear that name: in 1906, Oliver North, then 20, was listed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as having arrived in Philadelphia aboard the vessel Merion. Interviewed by immigration officials, grandfather North stated that he had paid his own passage to America, had $75 in his pocket, was a printer and was traveling to the home of his uncle, ``Mr. P. Wright,'' in Norfolk, Va.
Later on, grandfather North ran a wool-combing mill in upstate New York, a business that his son - Ollie North's father - would eventually enter after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Before entering the family business, young Ollie's father had served as a decorated lieutenant colonel in Patton's Third Army. The young North's mother, Ann, who sometimes worked as a substitute teacher, was a devout Catholic.
The Norths set out to mold their son Larry in the finest traditions of American youth: he became a Boy Scout, an altar boy and a member of the school track team. While he has never been described as a gifted student or athlete, the young North worked extremely hard - a habit that he established early on and that many people have said both served him well and sometimes nearly drove him to the brink of exhaustion. Even in recent weeks, as North has campaigned like a marathoner, aides reportedly forced him to take a day or two of rest for fear he would suffer physical burnout.
After graduating from high school (classmates there had voted him both ``nicest-looking'' and ``most courteous''), North enrolled at the State University of New York at Brockport. There he studied English and education while training with the Marine reserves. It turned out that a classmate's father was the soccer coach at the U.S. Naval Academy, and with the man's help North was able, after his sophomore year, to engineer a transfer to Annapolis, though he was compelled to start over as a plebe.
In 1964, North and four other Naval Academy plebes were driving late at night outside Corning, N.Y., when their car collided head-on with a tractor trailer. The car's driver was killed, but North was asleep in the back seat and escaped with back and knee fractures. Because of the accident, North missed months of school and had to begin his plebe service again the following year.
Concerned that lingering symptoms of his injuries might affect his career in the Marines, North took up boxing to build his strength and stamina. His coach, Emerson Smith, once recalled that North had few boxing skills ``but plenty of drive.'' In what has since become an infamous matchup, North, in his junior year, got into the boxing ring with James Webb, who later became a well-known novelist and served briefly as secretary of the Navy.
With pro boxer Rocky Marciano officiating the championship fight, and 1,500 fans about evenly split between North and Webb, the contest began.
An account of the fight describes Webb as having been more skillful in the ring, but the scrappy North eking out a win on points. Webb may still feel the sting of that defeat: On Oct. 12, Webb criticized North in a press conference saying that, ``Over the years, many people who have known Oliver North well have marveled at the exaggerations and misrepresentations he has brought to the public arena.''
North later countered by recalling his defeat of Webb in the ring and remarking, ``How old are these sour grapes - 26, 27 years?''
Boxing - and the Webb fight in particular - ultimately played a critical role in helping North secure a Marine Corps commission. For when questions finally arose about the lasting effects of his car wreck injuries, North went before a board and played them a film of the fight. His gamble worked. In June 1968, at the age of 24, Oliver North entered the Marines as a second lieutenant.
AFTER GRADUATION (his class yearbook said North ``expertly concealed his scholarly attributes from all but the Bull Department''), North barely had time to complete basic training in Quantico, Va., and to propose to and marry his sweetheart, Frances Elizabeth ``Betsy'' Stuart, of Falls Church, Va. By that December, he was off to Vietnam.
North served in South Vietnam as an infantry platoon commander from Dec. 3, 1968, to Aug. 21, 1969. In that time, he performed aggressively in combat, winning a Silver Star, two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He left Vietnam in late November 1969 for an assignment as an instructor at the Marine Corps' Basic School. From 1969 to 1973, North remained at the school in Quantico. In 1971, he was promoted to captain. And in 1973 and 1974, he served on Okinawa as officer in charge of the Northern Training Area, a jungle-warfare school.
It was when North returned from that posting that rumors began to circulate about his emotional state. While the exact details of what happened have never been fully disclosed, media accounts have said that North was found one day in a state of high anxiety and that he was threatening to commit suicide with a only that he spent 22 days at the Bethesda Naval Hospital beginning in December 1974, and then returned to full duty. North has refused to publicly release his Marine records from this period.
North spent the next four years as a manpower analyst at Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, and then in June 1978 he was sent to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he was promoted to major and served as a battalion staff officer for two years.
After being admitted to the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., North caught the eye of soon-to-be Navy Secretary John Lehman. One associate recalled how North, while at the naval war college, had written a paper about the recommissioning of World War II battleships. As coincidence would have it, the recommissioning of old battlewagons, such as the Iowa, turned out to be a pet project of Lehman's.
The secretary of the Navy later recommended North to Richard Allen, then national security adviser, who was looking for young military officers to assist with Capitol Hill briefings. On Aug. 4, 1981, North was assigned to duty with the National Security Council.
``He was just a military grunt,'' Allen told Life magazine in 1987, recalling North's arrival on the NSC. ``(He was) hired to hold charts and carry briefcases for those going to the Hill. That was it.''
At least for a time.
In 1983, when Robert McFarlane helped create a new political-military section on the NSC, North began to take on greater responsibility - and a higher rank. On Oct. 1, 1983, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
As the NSC's deputy director for political and military affairs, North did nothing to allay the impression that he was the Reagan Administration's covert operations specialist; meanwhile, he took on responsibilities for combating terrorism and for supporting anti-communist insurgencies. He has claimed a key role in planning the invasion of Grenada, the bombing of Libya, and in the mining of Nicaraguan harbors, not to mention his infamous role supporting the anti-communist Contra rebels. In Washington, North would eventually come to be described as ``the world's highest-ranking lieutenant colonel.''
If North's actual influence on Reagan Administration policy is still a matter of debate, it is clear that, within some circles, he did gain high favor in those days. McFarlane spoke of him almost as a son, and the late CIA Director William Casey valued his services. Even Ronald Reagan saw fit to praise North as ``a national hero,'' though Reagan has distanced himself from North as the latter has become controversial in his Senate campaign.
But there are others who, even in the heady, seemingly omnipotent days of the NSC, were less taken with North and his penchant for intrigue.
Secretary of State George Shultz, for one, reportedly grabbed the young Marine aide by the arm once after he learned that North had made unauthorized contact with the Israeli army. ``Don't you ever dare to get involved in diplomatic matters agin,'' Schultz reportedly chastised North.
By June 1986, even McFarlane was sufficiently alarmed about North's stability to write the memo to his successor, John Poindexter, recommending that North receive a disability review at Bethesda.
MEANWHILE, NORTH WAS GETTING ever deeper into the Iran-Contra arms dealing. It was an enterprise that would eventually catapult him onto the national scene as a uniform-clad, televised symbol for all that was right or wrong with government, depending on which ideological wing one was championing.
The beginning of North's undoing was what he would once describe as a ``neat idea.''
Retaining private arms dealers, North got them to sell U.S. weapons to Iran in return for the Iranian government's pledge to help free American hostages in the Middle East. Sold at inflated prices, the weapons became the source of profits that were then secretly funneled to the Contras.
News of the Iran-Contra dealings began to leak in late 1986, and North became involved in a massive cover-up. In the early 1980s, Congress had passed the Boland Amendments, cutting off financial aid to Nicaragua's Contras in their country. When congressional investigators visited the National Security Council, North altered documents and gave assurances that the spirit of the Boland Amendments had not been breached. To this day, North insists that although he was not ``fully explanatory'' to Congress, he never lied outright.
But a congressional committee investigating North found otherwise. The panel, in a 1987 report, said North ``by his own (subsequent) testimony . . . lied to the members of the (House) Intelligence Committee'' in their initial investigation.
Asked during nationally televised hearings in 1987 whether he had made ``false statements'' to committee members, North responded: ``I did.''
Long ago shredded and lost are North's financial records of the sale of arms to Iran, and of contributions to the Contras. Prosecutors have suggested that North himself may have profited from the affair, noting that in 1985 he paid $8,038 in cash for a used car. North testified that he had been saving the money for 20 years and kept it in a strong box bolted to a closet floor in his home.
North did accept a $13,000 home security system from arms dealer Richard Secord, in direct violation of federal laws barring government employees from taking gratuities. As the scandal unraveled, North wrote backdated letters to indicate that he paid for the system.
In 1989, a federal jury convicted North of aiding in the obstruction of Congress, receiving an illegal gratuity and altering, destroying and concealing documents. A divided appeals court overturned the verdict on a technicality a year later. It ruled prosecutors could not prove that they hadn't relied on information North gave Iran-Contra investigators in 1987 - information North had given while under immunity.
North said in a June 1993 interview with The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star that he regrets his ``mistakes and lapses of judgment.'' But he asserts that he was caught up in his zeal to fight communism.
``I know the difference between right and wrong and I call tell good from bad,'' he wrote in his autobiography, ``Under Fire.'' ``But I also know the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are between bad and worse. That was the choice I faced. . . .
``I never saw myself above the law, nor did I intend to do anything illegal.''
WHO IS OLIVER NORTH NOW?
If one listens to Ralph Reed, executive director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, North is an ``American hero.''
Or to Richard A. Viguerie, a Republican fund-raiser: ``True conservatives have been searching for a leader since Ronald Reagan left office. In terms of leadership, we haven't had a person with all the excitement and gravitas of Reagan. Ollie is filling that position. He has that star quality.''
But listen to Donald Moseley, a former GOP district chairman from Southside Virginia, and one hears a different story. North, Moseley has said, is an ``admitted liar.''
North's own characterization of himself is slightly less exuberant than Reed's and Viguerie's, and outright dismissive of Moseley's.
Rather, North has promoted an image of himself as an agent of change - part of a new generation of Republican leaders who would recommit the party to the Reagan mantra of no new taxes and a strong national defense. North also avidly supports term limitations and has promised not to serve more than 12 years if he's elected to the Senate.
North has said he sees America ``heading with a socialist agenda at the top of our government and being supported by a majority in both houses of Congress. I think these guys want to turn the clock back to the Lyndon Johnson era of big government, higher taxes and greater intrusion into the daily lives of American people.''
Acknowledging a friendship with religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, North has said, ``I am not anyone's single-issue candidate.'' But North's strongly conservative underpinnings emerge when he's asked to outline his position on abortion.
On the question of voting ``whether public funds ought to be used for abortion,'' North stated last year: ``Do you have any doubt as to how I'm going to vote on that? I will vote against it, and there's nothing that will change my mind.''
North's conservative agenda also has, in his stated view, made him a target for what he terms ``the liberal media.'' North himself is wary of reporters. The media ``can't stand the fact that I am innocent in the eyes of the court,'' he once said.
In granting a newspaper interview last year, North left no doubt that it would be a one-shot deal if he did not like the resulting article. ``I have Irish Alzheimer's disease,'' he told a reporter. ``I never forget someone who says something bad about me.''
SINCE HIS DEPARTURE FROM the Marine Corps, Oliver North has seen his financial fortunes change dramatically.
After retiring from the Marines on an annual pension of $23,000, he has amassed, according to estimates in May 1994, assets of between $2.3 million and $4.8 million.
His income, in large part, is due to book royalties and speaking fees. North is the author of a best-selling book, ``Under Fire,'' that recounted his travails in the service and during Iran-Contra. Last fall, he published a sequel, ``One More Mission,'' which recounted his experiences in Vietnam and which became a Book of The Month Club selection. Before his Senate bid, he was a busy orator on the national trail, collecting a reported $25,000 per speech.
Aides describe North as a ``corporation.'' And while North is reluctant to reveal his exact wealth, he has acknowledged that his activities ``have helped me financially to get my wife and my children secure.'' North and his wife, Betsy, have four children.
North is also the chairman of Guardian Technologies International Inc., a manufacturer of body armor. The company, based in Sterling, Va., claims accounts in 26 states and several foreign nations.
In 1990, he and his family moved from Great Falls to a $1.17 million, 194-acre estate in Clarke County, about 35 miles northwest of Washington. North has said the estate is part of a family trust owned by his in-laws.
North also is an extraordinary national fund-raiser. Since 1988, he has raised more than $40 million for conservative causes he has headed.
His mammoth legal bills from Iran-Contra have been paid, thanks to at least $13.7 million raised nationwide by the North Legal Defense and Family Safety Trust Fund, which was terminated in 1993.
North was asked last year whether he thought it was right to publicly solicit money for his legal expenses while he was privately becoming wealthy. ``Not one single cent of the North defense trust ever went into my pocket,'' he insisted.
North is past president of the Freedom Alliance, a group that has raised more than $7 million in recent years for conservative causes. In newsletters, he has lashed out at President Clinton's efforts to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. He has criticized federal funding of the National Endowment for the Arts and has called for boycotts of companies that cut financial support to the Boy Scouts of America to protest the group's ban on gay and atheist members.
While the Freedom Alliance continued with its fund raising, North started a political action committee called V-PAC in late 1991. The group's stated purpose was to raise money ``in support of, or opposition to, candidates or ballot issues.'' Of the $890,000 the committee had raised by last May, only about $50,000 had been contributed to federal candidates and about $20,000 more to state and local Republicans seeking election in Virginia last year, including Gov. George F. Allen.
North aides have acknowledged that the mailing list North cultivated over the years has been the base of his record-breaking fund raising. His campaign spent nearly $500,000 a month during the first quarter of 1994 on direct-mail activities, according to federal disclosures. Out of every $1 it received in contributions, the campaign was spending nearly 50 cents sending out more mail. More recently, from July 1 through September 30, the campaign spent more than $1.1 million a month on the mailings, according to campaign finance reports.
North's pitches seem to have a special effect on elderly people. ``That's true in most direct-mail enterprises,'' said Viguerie, who has managed much of the campaign's direct mail this year. ``People over 55 have the most disposable income.''
But Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, has said that direct mail ``fools a lot of elderly people into thinking they are receiving personal letters. This is why I think direct mail is the most corrupt of all campaign fund-raising endeavors.''
Mark Merritt, North's deputy campaign manager, has said the North organization is not any more reliant than its competitors on contributions from the elderly. ``It cuts across the board.''
North himself seems to have no trepidations at all about such targeted fund raising.
``Money,'' he wrote last March, ``is the ammunition of political warfare.''
WHO IS OLIVER NORTH NOW?
``Oliver North is a tremendously complex man.''
``(He) wouldn't recognize the truth if it hit him over the head with a baseball bat.''
``If he did half the things he's accused of doing, then he should be president.''
``. . . expertly concealed his scholarly attributes from all but the Bull Department.''
``He was good in combat, outstanding as an instructor at Quantico. . . .''
``. . . hired to hold charts and carry briefcases for those going to the Hill.''
``. . . the world's highest-ranking lieutenant colonel.''
``. . . pipsqueak lieutenant colonel.''
``. . . a national hero.''
Who is Oliver North now?
More than ever - more even than that indelible moment when North stood and swore an oath before Congress - answering the question of who Oliver North is comes down to careful deduction, a winnowing of fact from fiction.
For it may be that North's life - like a hall of mirrors - is surrounded by so many conflicting images that one is forced, in the end, to simply preserve some impressions and discard others.
But selective impressions also invite a danger - that one accepts only those traits which validate one's own viewpoint. And when that happens, one begins to see people not so much for who they are, but for who they aren't.
In the Senate campaign, it has meant that some voters reject North as a villain because of his identification with right-wing causes and leaders. Or it has prompted an opposite, and equally passionate, reaction.
As one North supporter, fund-raiser Richard Viguerie, has put it: ``He's a hero because of the enemies he has.'' MEMO: The above profile was written using reporting that has appeared in The
Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star since 1993. Among The
Virginian-Pilot/Ledger-Star reporters whose work the writer drew from
are Margaret Edds and Warren Fiske. In limited excerpts, their writing
was lifted directly from previously published reports. The writer also
drew from reporting that appeared in a 1987 Life magazine article, in a
People magazine article the same year, and from a 1988 article in
Playboy magazine.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo by BILL TIERNAN
Oliver L. North has been Marine and arms dealer; villain and hero;
political star and fund-raiser. Next, he hopes, is U.S. senator.
LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE photo
The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Oliver L. North,
autographs a baseball for a supporter at a campaign stop in Roanoke
this month. A supporter of term limits, he has promised not to serve
more than 12 years if he unseats Sen. Charles S. Robb. Polls show
North and Robb in a near dead heat.
SENATE RACE PROFILES
Oliver L. North
Today
J. Marshall Coleman
Monday
Charles S. Robb
Wednesday
Color photos
J. Marshall Coleman
Charles S. Robb
KEYWORDS: BIOGRAPHY PROFILE
CANDIDATE U.S. SENATE RACE
by CNB