ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: FRIDAY, October 28, 1994                   TAG: 9410280073
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: KEITH MONROE LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HALLOWEEN COMIC STRIP CONJURES UP SKELETONS IN NORTH'S CLOSET

Starting Monday, Oliver North has another six-day engagement in the Doonesbury comic strip. As usual, he'll be co-starring with his head of security, a.k.a. Duke. It is probably only a coincidence that the Duke and Ollie Show returns on Halloween.

This time the dynamic duo are out to deal with a ``small crisis'': allegations - reported in the Roanoke Times & World-News, The Virginian-Pilot and The Washington Post last weekend - of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan rebels during the Iran-Contra affair of the Reagan administration.

The stories recounted notes in North's own handwriting that suggest he was aware that the Contra rebels smuggled drugs to help finance the guerrilla war North was sustaining from his staff position on the National Security Council.

North says he alerted the appropriate authorities, but the newspapers found no evidence he notified either the Drug Enforcement Agency or Customs, or that he cut ties with those suspected of such activities.

In the Doonesbury version, when the names of the traffickers are revealed, Duke realizes he knows them. But only socially, he hastens to add. North professes shock at learning of their nefarious deeds. ``I thought they only smuggled guns,'' he says in the cartoon.

So how do Duke and North go about doing damage control? They scramble to conduct a ``media protective reaction strike.'' That consists of ignoring the issue and hitting the press for raising it because of an elite, liberal media bias.

Sounds good. But as the week ends, the current residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. are left wondering why, if the media is so liberal, the Democrats have gotten worse press than their conservative predecessors.

Keywords:
POLITICS 


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