Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 1, 1994 TAG: 9411160013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Not so.
In fact, none of the 12 indictments against North, including the three on which a jury found him guilty at the end of his 1989 trial, dealt with foreign-policy issues. Each charge dealt either with (1) willful deception of congressional and administration authorities trying to get to the bottom of the story, or with (2) garden-variety corruption.
North, moreover, was not exonerated on appeal. In overturning North's convictions on technical grounds, the appeals court did not challenge the truthfulness of the evidence against him or the soundness of the jury's conclusions.
Because of the grant of partial immunity given North by Congress - a consequence of North's pleading the Fifth Amendment when subpoenaed - prosecutors did not use any of North's sworn testimony in the Iran-Contra hearings. But despite that and other elaborate precautions by the prosecution, the appeals court said there still was a chance other witnesses' testimonies might have been affected by what North himself had admitted, in his immunized testimony to the congressional committees.
North's habit of exaggeration is well-known. He once said, for example, that terrorists had poisoned the family dog - when, according to a neighbor, it had died of cancer and old age. Similarly, the motives for many of his misdeeds seem paltrier than the grand policies he prefers to defend.
Some of the cover-his-rear record:
In November 1986, as the scandal was unfolding, North prepared a false chronology purporting to show that President Reagan had signed the necessary authorization a year earlier for the first shipment of anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. In fact, Reagan had not. For this, the jury found North guilty of aiding and abetting the obstruction of Congress.
In the same month, North began altering and destroying documents that he knew were sought by investigators, culminating with the shredding parties as administration investigators (from the Justice Department) were closing in.
In the fall of 1985 with his then-boss Robert C. McFarlane, and then alone on Aug. 6, 1986, North lied to Congress. While the lies weren't told under oath, neither were they the idle hallway chitchat that North would have us believe. To an oversight body, the House Intelligence Committee, they were formal denials of North's activities on behalf of the Contras, and they were presumptive felonies. North admitted the lies at his trial, but the jury declined to convict, presumably because it believed that North in this instance was lying under orders.
Some of the personal-aggrandizement record:
As an official at the National Security Council, North secretly accepted a home-security system worth $13,800 - from a weapons dealer, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Secord, to whom North just happened to be funneling millions worth of profitable business. North's preparation of phony documents, including backdated letters and bogus bills, to cover up the deal was a virtual confession of wrongdoing. The jury found him guilty of accepting an illegal gratuity.
In late 1984 or early 1985, North established an "operational fund" of cash and traveler's checks - through which, by North's own count, some $300,000 flowed. North was indicted for embezzling at least $4,300 of this money. At his trial, the prosecution offered circumstantial evidence that this much and more had stuck to North's fingers. (On one occasion he bought a car with cash.) North denied guilt, but admitted to having destroyed the accounting ledger for the fund. Apparently finding the evidence insufficient to establish criminality beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury declined to convict him on this charge.
In May 1986, money skimmed from arms sales was used to open a $200,000 Swiss bank account by Secord's arms-dealing business as an investment fund for the education of North's children. In the same month, North was made beneficiary of a $2 million Swiss bank account in the event of the incapacitation of Secord and Albert Hakim, Secord's business partner. North disclaims knowledge of those accounts, or any interest in getting money from them. However, North's wife met with the firm's financial manager in March 1986 to give him the names and ages of their children.
According to standards by which criminal guilt is determined, North may have squeaked through. But a Senate candidacy demands a higher level of accounting than North has given.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB