THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 2, 1994 TAG: 9409020728
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WARREN FISKE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
Sooner or later, most debates about Oliver L. North seem to boil down to a five-word question: Did he lie to Congress?
Robert Frank, a retired Norfolk businessman, states with certainty that North lied under oath. And that, in Frank's mind, makes North particularly contemptible. "Me, I think most politicians are crooked," he says. "But they don't stand up and put their hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth to Congress."
Virginia H. Cox, a Bedford County homemaker, has a different impression. There have been "a lot of misquotes about the fact that he lied to the congressional hearing when actually, he didn't," she says. "I think that's been proven, anyhow."
Herbert Block, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist for The Washington Post, on Wednesday drew a caricature of North wearing a badge that said, "Guilty, Lying to Congress."
North, in a campaign pamphlet defending his role in the Iran-Contra affair, answers whether he lied to Congress with a resounding "No."
So what is the truth? Did North lie?
An examination of Iran-Contra records shows that, yes, North did lie to Congress during an informal meeting in 1985. But contrary to public perceptions, he never lied under oath. He was never charged with perjury. And he told the truth during six days of nationally televised testimony before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees in 1987.
As North presses his Republican campaign for the U.S. Senate this fall, perhaps no other question has cut closer to concerns about his character than his past honesty with Congress. If people are confused, that's because the complex answers have been overshadowed for years by impassioned debate over ideology, following orders and semantics.
North's trouble with Congress began in mid-1986. Congress had passed the Boland Amendment banning financial assistance and military advice to Nicaraguan Contras fighting a communist dictatorship in their country. North, working for the White House in the National Security Council, covertly sought to help the Contras by seeking contributions from private individuals and other nations.
That summer, articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post began to expose some of North's activities. Seeking to get to the bottom of the matter, 11 members of the House Intellgence Committee informally met with North in the White House Situation Room on Aug. 6.
North assured the panel that he had not violated the Boland Amendment in any way, according to subsequent testimony by Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, D-Ind., the chairman of the committee. North denied raising money for the Contras or giving them any legal advice.
North denied having contact with retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, a private Contra fundraiser who was frequently in touch with North. He said he had only a causal relationship with Robert Owen, a courier North hired in 1984 to apprise him of the Contra's needs.
Committee members left the meeting persuaded that North was telling the truth and dropped their investigation.
Although North admits that he was "evasive" at the meeting, he quibbles with the description that he "lied." Claiming a rusty memory, he declined to discuss specific things he told the committee.
"Lie is too strong a word," he said in a recent interview. "I certainly was misleading because I didn't tell them everything I knew... I said, `How could I be running a war from the White House in a country that's 1,400 miles away?"
In his autobiography, North wrote: "That morning, in the Sit Room, I tried to avoid telling outright lies. But I certainly wasn't telling the truth. I knew that truthful answers would have destroyed the Nicaraguan resistance."
North says that he was under orders from his boss, former NSC Chief John M. Poindexter, to conceal his covert activities from Congress. He says he was troubled by the prospect of lying and unsuccessfully tried to convince his superiors to thwart the meeting by claiming executive privilege on behalf of President Reagan.
"I look back at that meeting today knowing what I did was wrong," he says now. "The best thing would have been not to reply. I should have told John Poindexter that I just couldn't go through with this."
North stresses that he was not under oath at the meeting and thought that his comments to the committee were off-the-record.
Asked if a lie is more acceptable if it's not under oath, North says: "Let's not get down to a theological discussion of how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. What I did at that meeting was the very best I could do under dangerous circumstances."
North blames the media for dwelling on his veracity and spreading false information about him. "The frustrating thing to me is that I'm now 51 years old, and one single moment of those 51 years - in which no one has otherwise questioned my honor or discourse - is now the subject of extraordinary scrutiny," he said.
Among the falsehoods the media has spread, North says, is that he was indicted for lying to Congress. "I was never charged with lying to Congress."
Technically, North is correct. The word "lie" was not used in a 12-count indictment that was subsequently lodged against North. He was indicted for "obstruction of Congress" as result of his misleading statements in the Aug. 6 meeting. A U.S. District Court jury found him innocent of that specific charge in 1989.
North was also acquitted on three counts of issuing false statements to Congress and one count of obstructing Congress stemming from letters he helped his superiors draft in 1985 denying any White House activities in helping the Contras. Jurors said they were convinced that North was following orders in each instance.
The jury, however, did convict North of three felonies: aiding in the drafting of false chronologies about the Iran-Contra diversion that were submitted to White House and congressional officals; concealing and destroying documents; and accepting an illegal gratuity in the form of a $13,000 home security system North received from an arms dealer.
Those charges were eventually overturned on appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Judges were concerned that prosecutors based their cases on testimony North gave while under immunity from criminal charges in the televised congressional hearings of 1987.
North disdains rehashing the controversy, but his campaign advisers acknowledge that it's an important issue and say they plan to launch a vigorous defense of North's actions in coming weeks.
"We're going to run at Iran-Contra, not away from it," said Mark Goodin, a senior adviser to North. "The bottom line is, what Ollie did saved lives and restored democracy to Central America."
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES BIOGRAPHY
IRAN-CONTRA< by CNB