Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407220091
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
From the letter of former state GOP Chairman Donald Huffman on this page today, for example, you'd think that an exhaustive review of the record (he refers to an 118-page appellate-court opinion) shows that North is getting a raw deal from anyone who questions his veracity. Never, never, writes Huffman, was North convicted of lying to Congress, as erroneously claimed (Huffman says) in a June 22 editorial.
Now, plain-speaking folk might find the distinction a bit precious between lying to Congress and one of the charges on which North was convicted and which Huffman doesn't mention: aiding and abetting an obstruction of Congress by preparing a false chronology. If an errant teen-ager were to prepare a false chronology for a parent, our guess is the parent might consider it lying.
Anyway, if Huffman insists on fine distinctions, he should know the June 22 editorial did not claim, to be precise, that North had been convicted of lying to Congress. It said lying to Congress is among North's documented offenses, which it is. Also among North's documented offenses, we could have added, is lying to people outside Congress. Not every lie makes it to court.
In his longer piece also on today's page, Richmond lawyer Joseph E. Blackburn Jr. at least takes note of North's criminal convictions, the other two of which were for shredding documents and accepting an illegal gratuity from Gen. Richard Secord.
Blackburn fails to note, however, that the documents in question were potential evidence of criminal acts, and the Secord in question was an arms dealer with an economic interest in North's activities.
North's crimes, don't forget, were of no ordinary variety. They stemmed from his participation in a conspiracy to conduct a secret foreign policy removed from public accountability and the rule of law. More than evading congressional oversight, this was an attempt to subvert the Constitution.
As for Blackburn's assertion that North has been implicitly accused of lying at the congressional hearings themselves: Well, wait a minute. North's friends are unlikely to argue that he committed perjury. And why would North's foes? It was at those hearings, after all, that North, protected by a congressional grant of limited immunity against prosecution, admitted to misleading Congress and acknowledged other misdeeds that later led to his felony convictions.
Yes, those convictions were overturned on appeal, as is almost always noted in the same media breath as the fact of the convictions. But the reversal did not result from doubt about North's guilt. North beat the rap because an appellate court dominated by Reagan appointees decided the prosecutor had done too little to show that his witnesses had not been unduly influenced by North's own testimony at the congressional hearing.
However high-flown the legal rhetoric used to wrap it in, that's a technicality in our book if not in Blackburn's.
Perhaps it was an important technicality, if it was necessary to uphold the Fifth Amendment's injunction against forced self-incrimination.
But don't play Virginians for patsies. It was the kind of ruling that, for a bigger purpose, sometimes lets criminals go free. It wasn't the kind of ruling that exonerates or vindicates anyone, much less recommends its boastful beneficiary for high office.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB