Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 31, 1994                   TAG: 9401310047
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

NORTH BLAMES REAGAN FOR HIS LIES TO CONGRESS

North, seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate seat held by Virginia Democrat Charles Robb, acknowledged on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that he had lied to members of the House Intelligence Committee in 1986 about reports North was involved with assisting the Nicaraguan Contras.

North denied to the lawmakers then that he was assisting the rebels. In fact, at the time the White House staffer was running a clandestine operation to keep the Contras supplied with weapons during a congressional ban on U.S. military assistance.

"I was asked questions that I had been told from the president of the United States could never be revealed, OK?" the former National Security Council aide said in explaining why he lied.

"Who made you do it?" host Bob Schieffer asked.

"Well, the president of the United States," North replied. He noted that Reagan had secretly requested money for the Contras from the government of Saudi Arabia - and that Reagan told his top advisers such assistance should never be revealed.

In the interview, North played down his misstatements to the House members when they met in the White House Situation Room on Aug. 6, 1986.

North called it "an informal, off-the-record" discussion and said "we ought not to have those kinds of informal meetings."

"If the Congress wants to get the straight answers, what they ought to do is bring people up there, have them raise their right hands just like I did and expect that they will tell the truth," North added Sunday. "That's what I'm going to expect as a U.S. senator."

The Aug. 6 meeting was "a situation nobody should ever have been put in" and "I was the first person in the history of America to ever be charged with lying to the Congress," North said.

North has said repeatedly on recent television shows that he never lied to Congress while under oath.

He was not under oath when he lied to the House committee in 1986. He admitted during his 1987 sworn testimony to Congress and at his 1989 criminal trial that he had lied. At his trial, the jury acquitted him of allegations that he had obstructed Congress.