Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 21, 1994 TAG: 9402210061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Foremost is North's recent assertion that he opposed and reluctantly participated in trading arms to Iran to help free Americans held hostage in Lebanon.
By contrast, the nearly seven-year Iran-Contra investigation by an independent counsel, congressional testimony by other officials involved in the scandal and North's own autobiography indicate he was an architect and zealous supporter of the arms-for-hostages deals.
On CBS's "Face the Nation" Jan. 30, North was asked why he sent arms to Iran in violation of Reagan administration policy, which North helped to write, that no concessions should be made to terrorists.
North responded that he was among those who had opposed President Ronald Reagan's selling arms to Iran to help free hostages. That answer ran contrary to congressional and court records and to North's own book - all of which portray him as an initiator and continuing supporter of the arms shipments.
Two days earlier, during a Jan. 28 appearance on ABC's "Nightline," North was asked if he thought the public hero status he gained by his televised confrontation with the House-Senate Iran-Contra investigating committees in July 1987 had in the long run created his chance to run for the Senate. North responded by claiming he had not wanted to testify at all. "And," he added, "we certainly didn't want to make it public."
North's answer contradicted congressional records that show it was North's lawyer who insisted committee questioning take place in public, once the Marine lieutenant colonel had been given immunity from prosecution for what he North's veracity, particularly when it comes to his wide-ranging activities in the Iran-Contra affair, has become an issue in his campaign against former Reagan administration official Jim Miller for the GOP senate nomination. said.
North's veracity, particularly when it comes to his wide-ranging activities in the Iran-Contra affair, has become an issue in his campaign against former Reagan administration official Jim Miller for the Senate nomination.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., has declared North unfit for the Senate because he lied to Congress during his testimony. On Saturday, Virginia Gov. George Allen, a Republican who has said he will not endorse anyone until the party convention chooses a nominee in June, urged the Republican winter conference in Norfolk to "send John Warner a senator he can work with."
On Thursday, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, who in the 1980s worked with North to help arm the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, questioned the honesty of his onetime colleague. In announcing his support for Miller, Singlaub accused North of "lying to me as he has to his other colleagues. He would lie to protect himself. He fantasized so many things."
A June Reader's Digest article titled "Does Oliver North Tell the Truth?" is being widely circulated among voters in Northern Virginia by an anti-North group. It concluded that "many [former North colleagues from the Reagan administration] now say he cannot be trusted to tell the truth - in speech or in print - about Iran-Contra or much else."
Former National Security Council consultant Michael Ledeen told the magazine that North, when he worked at the White House, "had trouble distinguishing between what was true and what he wished to be true."
Candidate North's statements in recent television appearances illustrate his credibility problem. At times, he skewed the past, or, in Ledeen's terms, described how he wished things had been in order to counter the implication of a question or fit the mood of his audience.
On "Face the Nation," North said he had not advocated trading arms for hostages, that it was Reagan who insisted on it. Reagan, according to North, said, "We've tried everything else. We're going to try this."
"He [Reagan] did it over the objections of a number of us who thought that was not a good thing to do," North said.
Until that statement, North had portrayed himself as a believer in the secret arms shipments. In his 1991 autobiography, "Under Fire," North wrote: "At the time, it seemed that selling a small amount of arms to Iran was worth the risk to try to make it all work. . . . The decision to proceed was made well above my level, but I became a willing participant."
According to congressional and court records, North was more than a willing participant. It was North who proposed in December 1985 changing from sending Israeli-owned U.S.-made arms to Iran to covertly shipping U.S. arms directly from American stocks, a plan that Reagan approved the next month. Later in 1986, when then-national security adviser John Poindexter, with Reagan's approval, halted arms shipments until all the American hostages were released, it was North who encouraged resuming arms shipments after only one hostage was freed.
North spokesman Mark Merritt said last week that "there is a [computer] note somewhere where Ollie expressed concern" about the arms shipments, "but we can't find it."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB