Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990 TAG: 9003071942
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The retiree was among 14 people sent Tuesday into a pool of potential jurors that now has grown to 35 during jury selection in the former national security adviser's case.
U.S. District Court Judge Harold Greene said he expected to complete a pool by midday today of 45 people from which to select a jury of 12, plus six alternates. Opening statements are to be Thursday morning, said the judge.
Asked what last year's trial of Oliver North focused on, the Defense Department retiree, a woman who worked at the Army Materiel Command in Alexandria, Va., said it was "about the tapes. He had so many tapes he did erase, Oliver North and secretary."
In the Watergate scandal, then-President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, said she might have accidentally erased a portion of one taped conversation. The tape in question was of a conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, about how to handle the spreading FBI investigation of the Watergate scandal.
Also sent into the jury pool was a distribution clerk at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, who said he had heard that North "was going to court," but didn't know the outcome of last year's trial in which Poindexter's one-time subordinate was convicted of three felonies.
Asked whether he had heard of Poindexter, the man said that if he had, "I . . . didn't pay any attention."
Poindexter is under indictment on charges of conspiracy, two counts of obstructing Congress and two counts of making false statements. The charges relate to allegations that Poindexter covered up North's secret resupply network to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua and to allegations that Poindexter lied concerning a November 1985 shipment of Hawk antiaircraft missiles to Iran.
by CNB