Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 22, 1994 TAG: 9410240047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But don't expect a fiery sermon when you mention his name to the Rev. Benjamin Weir, the first of a half-dozen hostages released from Lebanon almost a decade ago at least partially as a result of North's arms deal with Iran.
Weir's strongest comment about North is that he has found North's behavior "disturbing."
In a telephone interview Friday, Weir seemed hesitant to get involved in Virginia's Senate campaign, in which, he points out, he has no "direct engagement."
Weir said he "only met North once." They spoke for a few minutes about midnight one day in September 1985 shortly after Weir was released by his captors in Lebanon.
On the one hand, Weir acknowledges, North "was helpful in some ways to my wife and church officials when they were trying to understand what the U.S. government and particularly the National Security Council" were doing to help facilitate Weir's release.
On the other hand, Weir said he was "deeply disturbed to learn there had been an exchange of arms with Iran and that Oliver North had been directly involved with that. That was disturbing."
Weir, who was a missionary of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to Lebanon, had spent "long years advocating that we not supply arms to countries in the Middle East, and to Israel, in particular."
Being released in exchange for an undercover shipment of arms held a particular irony for him.
So, you won't see Weir in a North campaign ad like the one featuring another former hostage, David Jacobsen.
In the TV commercial, Jacobsen thanks North for saving his life and lauds him as "one of the finest men I have ever known."
Weir was the second of seven politically motivated kidnappings in Lebanon in 1984 and 1985.
While walking with his wife on May 8, 1984, near their Beirut home, Weir was forced into the back of a car. It was 16 months before his Lebanese Shiite Muslim captors released him in the middle of the night on a dark Beirut street.
Today, Weir says he does not know any more about North's activities "than the average person who reads the newspapers or watches TV knows."
Weir, 70, now lives in Oakland, Calif., and just three months ago retired from teaching at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. He served as moderator or president of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) the year after he was released.
Though he doesn't routinely keep up with the other hostages who were released after him, Weir said he did talk to the Rev. Terry Waite "last week for several hours."
Waite, an Anglican clergyman working for the Archbishop of Canterbury, was kidnapped in October 1987 while attempting to negotiate for the hostages' release.
Weir said Waite told him he was "deeply disappointed. He felt he had been misled and misinformed and used" by North.
Waite acknowledges working with North, but denies knowing that North was dealing in arms.
Weir also says he is disappointed by North's admissions of misleading congressmen and disturbed that so many of North's former co-workers and supervisors have "felt he was not trustworthy."
Still, Weir says, "I've not had any close long-term relationship" with North, so "I am not in any great position to comment."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB