0llie North and the Fools on the Hill
Hume, Brit
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 20, NO. 9 / SEPTEMBER 1987 Brit Hume OLLIE NORTH AND THE FOOLS ON THE HILL How Senators Inouye, Rudman, Mitchell, Cohen, Trible et al. wound up with Mom's apple pie...
...And one committee member said privately he had tried, in his own questioning of Secord, to help prosecutor Walsh by establishing that Secord was, in a legal sense, an agent of the U.S...
...Others, like an oil import fee, I consider counterproductive...
...It is hardly surprising that North's July 6 appearance in the fabled Senate Caucus room had the confrontational aura of a high-noon gunfight...
...For one thing, the issue is worldwide, and not just a U.S...
...But that "embarrassment" has yet to come to light...
...Nuclear can replace heavy industrial oil for generating electricity...
...But they did insist on a chance to depose North privately in advance about one issue: what the President knew about the diversion of Iran arms money to the contras...
...measures...
...Finally, solving any issue of this magnitude requires trade-offs and a clear agreement on national goals...
...BBefore the end of the Iran-contra hearings, Republican Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, the Sam Spade of Capitol Hill, had discerned two new constitutional rights: that of the American people to be wrong, and that of the President to create his own political disasters...
...money and use of it for the contras, potentially, an illegal transfer of funds...
...Energy is an enormous business, and it will take years to affect the direction in which we are going...
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...While they should be done, they aren't long range solutions...
...He might have added a third: the right of congressional investigating committees to make fools of themselves...
...An almost unbelievable offer— but there is a reason...
...And then there were the traveler's checks, just over $2,000 worth, cashed by North at various establishments in the Washington area...
...Instead, I'd simply like to point out some aspects of the topic that are often overlooked...
...The weekend after Oliver North's testimony began, he charged on "Face the Nation" that a North-to-Poindexter memo indicated the President had approved the use of Iran arms funds for covert projects other than supplying the contras...
...This certainly seems to be what the public thought the Iran-contra committees had done after it had seen them and Lt...
...He also explained that he hoped to return to government as chief of clandestine services for the CIA...
...then you can replace it yourself...
...Senate Committee Vice Chairman Rudman said last winter it should only take a few months...
...Secord's partner, Albert Hakim, was questioned exhaustively about a $200,000 death benefit fund he planned to set aside for North's family, and which resulted in an aborted approach to North's wife...
...Senate Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye said it would take longer...
...But it quickly dawned on Inouye and Rudman that compelling North's testimony by contempt proceedings would take months, by which time he might be indicted...
...The committees didn't believe what he said about the money and never heard what he said about his CIA ambitions because he was never asked about them...
...But he didn't contradict them, and he didn't keep them off the evening news, either...
...problem to be solved by U.S...
...But everybody covering the hearing—myself included—used it...
...12 or 24 hour modes, and a.m...
...This caused a huge sensation on the committees (and in the media) when it came out in North's testimony...
...Whatever political qualms Rudman might have had about his role were overcome by his fierce sense of probity and his police-detective instincts...
...The effort to discredit Secord continued long after he had gone...
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...government could take to avert future shortages and gasoline lines...
...A debate that sets a framework for action...
...All three included a laundry list of steps the U.S...
...These issues are going to affect our entire lives...
...Moreover, there was no indication on the face of the document that the President had appoved anything, only the word "Done" next to North's recommendation that the President be briefed...
...Oliver North go at it for a week...
...It would, of course, answer the principal accountability question—what did the President know and when—as soon as possible...
...The committees, it seemed, were establishing that Oliver North, besides being a zealot, liar, and secret warrior, was also a petty crook...
...wound up with Mom's apple pie on their faces...
...Yet members who were keeping close track of the evidence the staff was gathering were increasingly convinced that this was not, at bottom, a criminal case...
...is not alone in this...
...Because this is a list-building promotion, we must limit this offer to a maximum of three (3) watches per household...
...But not exactly an even one...
...Add sales tax for California delivery...
...Some Republican senators thought they knew better...
...he had been through this before (in the Watergate case) and knew better...
...The money belonged to the contras, and it looked as if North had been ripping them off...
...It has never been featured before...
...Second, I'd like to point out that what's really under discussion is worldwide availability of energy—not just oil...
...Take advantage of it...
...Some members didn't want either man, especially North, given immunity of any kind, ever...
...He defended even his most brazen lies as a necessary choice between "lies and lives...
...He never needed the opening statement he would read two days later...
...after that he might still refuse...
...North wanted to make an opening statement...
...But instead of thanking him for revealing so much, theywent all out to discredit him for his insistence that he had done it all for patriotism, not profit...
...And no opportunity for Republican Senator William Cohen of Maine to exhibit his intellect, rectitude, and extraordinary squeamishness about breaches of White House-congressional etiquette...
...The obsession with profits affected, indeed infected, the committees' approach to North...
...But Arthur Liman gave perhaps his most scathing performance in attacking Secord's credibility...
...What is it we really want...
...Are we willing to burn more coal...
...The next day, however, he said it again...
...Along the way, the chairman repeatedly made accusations about the President without evidence to back them up...
...He denied all other allegations of personal chiseling with a force and conviction so strong that he got virtually no questions from the members about them...
...And North would later tell the committees that Casey envisioned Secord & Co...
...In fact, it seems highly likely Secord was trying to serve both Oliver North and CIA chief William Casey, who, it later developed, had recommended him to North in the first place...
...With a caustic, sarcastic style of cross-examination and a heavy New York accent, he would prove to be the Howard Cosell of this case—the man the TV audience would love to hate...
...those came out in a "Nightline" interview with Ted Koppel...
...When we object to the level of oil imports, have we thought through the alternatives...
...Then, on May 3, the eve of the hearings, Inouye said on "Meet the Press" that the President knew the White House staff was raising money to provide arms for the contras...
...This would make the Iran arms sales proceeds U.S...
...But more careful analysis suggests the committees left themselves wide open for the black eye that Col...
...In case anyone might miss the point, the committees had a blown-up table of the expenditures mounted on a huge slab of cardboard and placed on an easel in the Senate hearing room...
...A debate where all the alternatives are discussed...
...You might think the committees would recognize that much of what Secord said about his motives was necessary to protect a possible criminal defense, and would treat it accordingly...
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...Here were twenty-six members of Congress, attended by countless staff, seated on a two-tier, red-draped dais to watch their hired inquisitors take on a youthful Marine Lieutenant Colonel seated below, with only his bespectacled lawyer at his side...
...You have seen our ads for quality watches, optics, lamps, and electronic equipment on TV and in this and most other national newspapers and magazines...
...But I'm not going to debate these possible solutions today...
...T he obsession with disproving 1 Secord's claims about his motives may have caused the committees to miss completely the importance of part of his testimony...
...So the committees had to deal, and over the loud protests of House Democrats led by the ornery Jack Brooks of Texas, North was allowed to appear without having gone through an exhaustive sworn deposition beforehand...
...can be accepted...
...Choose from seven different melodies to wake you...
...He was a perfect choice for the backstage work but a disastrous one for the public phase of the inquiry...
...For instance, natural gas can substitute for home heating oil...
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...Certainly television had a role in magnifying and dramatizing the spectacle and in providing North the vast audience to which he successfully played...
...But it also has 4-key memory, performs chain calculations and computations with constants and powers...
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...Both Houses appointed investigating committees, but the Senate committee ended up leading the way and setting the tone for the hearings, largely because it got started earlier and was, supposedly, a non-partisan panel with Republican and Democratic staffersworking together...
...as a secret "off-the-shelf, stand-alone, self-sustaining, foreign entity" available to the Administration on a moment's notice to perform covert actions around the world...
...tonishingly aggressive lawyer gave them...
...The committees could have stopped all of Inouye's, and everybody else's, speculations by summoning North and former national security adviser John Poindexter right away, granting them limited immunity from prosecution, and demanding to know what they had told the President about the contra 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 fund diversion...
...But he described in detail a White House-run operation, funded from private and foreign monies and illicit arms sales proceeds, all of it done without notification, not to mention approval, of Congress...
...For example, Inouye claimed in April that the President's diary would "cause embarrassment," because of unspecified remarks the President had made in it...
...It's available only through us...
...Rudman and Liman emerged as the driving forces in the investigation...
...unlike Rudman, they had seen this sort of thing before, too...
...The rest, of course, is history...
...He kept saying he needed to keep the $8 million that was found under his control in Swiss banksto pay debts, and because he never knew what he and his "enterprise" would be asked to do for the U.S...
...We warrant these watches for quality, material, and workmanship for one full year (battery is excepted — you can easily change it yourself, after 18 months or so...
...With this offer, only mail orders, accompanied by check or money order (no chargecards, no phone orders...
...As the polls, the stacks of telegrams, the bouquets of flowers, the outpouring of mail to Congress all showed, the public already thought so...
...This predicament was the price of the committees' solicitude for the independentcounsel...
...His testimony was just what you might think the committees wanted...
...And after scouring all sources we decided that the XL-29 Watch would be such an irresistible offer, especially if we could "sell" it at a give-away price...
...Request denied...
...How will Mobil be affected...
...Some on the committees grumbled, but both times Walsh came to the Hill he came away with an agreement that Poindexter's and North's public testimony would be delayed...
...This is, of course, the kind of company we already are...
...or p.m...
...No exceptions, please...
...Inouye seemed content to lethim lead things, since Inouye is not known as a hard worker and Rudman's lead role gave the investigation a further imprint of non-partisanship...
...Should we use higher prices to force energy savings...
...In each case, Inouye and Rudman were appearing together and Rudman tried to soften Inouye's accusations...
...Canadian gas, French nuclear plants and Wyoming coal can all make our oil outlook more secure...
...You may, however, request up to six (6) watches maximum, if you mail your order within 30 days of the publication of this ad...
...Republican Rudman also insisted Democrat Inouye was acting without partisanship...
...Our government owes this to us...
...Inouye, his deep, stern voice resounding, invoked an obscure Senate rule, honored almost exclusively in the breach, that committee witnesses must submit opening statements forty-eight hours in advance...
...Outside, he acknowledged there was no evidence of that...
...The committees turned up phony bills and correspondence showing that North later tried to cover the whole thing up...
...Almost every Free World industrialized nation is in the same situation...
...They will affect our environment, our national security, our federal and local budgets, our trade balance and the quality of our lives for generations to come...
...What's more, doing it early might have meant no television hearings, no opportunity for Democrats to embarrass the Administration so publicly, no chance for Republicans like Senator Paul Trible, worried about re-election, to gain the spotlight and display independence and distaste for seamy doings at the White House...
...Rudman said publicly the best Walsh could hope for was an indictment based on a creative use of the conspiracy statutes, since most of the laws that seemed to have been broken were civil, not criminal...
...It would, he said in hat-in-hand visits to the Hill, make his job nearly impossible by requiring him to prove that he had gotten none of his knowledge of possibly illegal activities from North's and Poindexter's congressional testimony...
...In fact, the memo outlined some proposed covert actions, but said nothing at all about how they were to be financed...
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...Rudman is a sharp former prosecutor who loved his previous job as New Hampshire's attorney general, not least because it allowed him to ride around with state troopers on border drug busts...
...And all polls showed that majorities believed the colonel was telling the truth and that support for the contra cause was surging...
...The technology exists to convert coal to gasoline...
...government next...
...This would not have precluded their being recalled later, but it would also have taken most of the suspense out of the case by answering the question that had driven the congressional investigation from the start...
...Add $2.95 postage/insurance for the first watch and $5.90 for two to six watches...
...A Newsweek poll found that a 48 percent plurality thought the committees were harassing the colonel...
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...Now, Secord was testifying without immunity for what he might say, and as he noted more than once, there was "an independent counsel down the street trying to throw us in jail...
...But the predecessor model (XL-27, with lesser features) was listed in-our last catalog at $39.95...
...We need a national debate...
...But sensible energy policies would make our work easier and more productive...
...Third, any rational discussion of our energy future requires a long range commitment...
...That belief, however, did not stop the committees from pursuing eagerly, and displaying conspicuously, whatever evidence of criminality they found...
...North could make his statement two days—forty-eight hours—later...
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...OPEC produces 40% of the Free World's oil every day and the facts of life are such that this nation will never again be able to do without imported oil, some of it from OPEC...
...Write your name and address on a sheet of paper, and also write "Code E200...
...Tell us how many watches you want and include your check or money order...
...With Rudman's enthusiastic support, the Senate committee chose Arthur Liman, a New York criminal lawyer with an enormous reputation and extensive background in analyzing complex financial schemes, to head its investigation...
...government...
...North's purchase of snow tires brought this question from Rudman to contra leader Adolfo Calero: "When was the last time it snowed in Nicaragua...
...The committees spent hours with an ex-CIA man who installed a gate and security system at North's house at Secord's expense...
...Fortunately, or so it seemed at the time, the committees had a better reason for refusing to call the key witnesses immediately: independent counsel Lawrence Walsh pleaded with them not to...
...A debate where we must eventually agree—although it won't be easy—on where we want the United States to be twenty or fifty years from now...
...Regardless of the options chosen, there will be plenty of opportunities ahead for enterprising, flexible, efficient multinational companies who can bring consumers all over the world the energy they want and need...
...This, you will recall, was an investigation its leaders said was not about crimes, but about policy and accountability...
...Buy four (4) and you get two (2) free ones...
...North, he said, was again trying to place himself "above the law" by seeking a waiver of the rule...
...The tone of the hearings was established...
...When the committees finally got around to seeking North's testimony, armed with a subpoena and a grant of limited immunity, his lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, said no...
...North proved an overpowering witness who admitted doing only one thing wrong: a "colossal" error in judgment in trying to cover up accepting the gate and security system...
...Alarm test capability...
...It will last for at least 18 months...
...Some seem reasonable and necessary...
...But it seems to have been nothing more than the "enterprise" that Secord had talked about, although the committees had thought it was simply a euphemism for Secord's pockets and those of his associates...
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...Should we have more nuclear plants...
...A larger Los Angeles Times poll found that only six percent thought the committees were being fair, and, perhaps most startling, that same survey showed people thought Congress more to blame than the President for the Iran-contra debacle...
...It was intended, of course, to convince the public that the committees had been unfair to him...
...Current proposals, such as the decontrol of natural gas, removal of the windfall profits tax and opening up more areas for exploration have merit—but they are only stopgap measures...
...They would also make everybody's economic future infinitely more secure...
...Full-function calculator performs all "standard" operations...
...Stopgap—often politicized—measures are not enough...
...All evidence that he had, indeed, profited from the so-called "enterprise" was Needed: A national energy debate (The following is excerpted from a talk delivered by Allen E. Murray, chairman and chief executive officer, at Mobil's annual meeting in Seattle May 7) There have been many warnings of a U.S...
...Some committee members were outraged...
...Some Republicans urged this course, but there was little enthusiasm for it on the committees themselves...
...oil crisis to come, including three recent reports by the Department of Energy, the National Petroleum Council, and the American Petroleum Institute...
...Mail to: kri191 fUll List Building Division, Dept...
...It was a cheap shot, and Rudman would later say he "probably" wouldn't take it if he had it to do over...
...And Rudman gave Inouye much more than that...
...North and his asBrit Hume is national correspondent with ABC News, for which he covered the Iran-contra hearings...
...all functions...
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...XL-29 131 Townsend Street San Francisco, CA 94107 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987...
...Any energy source will help us...
...Committee leaders, by the way, would later claim that the issue of what the President knew about the diversion of Iran arms money to the contras was really not the only big issue, that the media and the White House had made it so...
...Here is the deal...
...Time may soften some of these judgments, even reverse them...
...selection...
...Some members, including Republican Dick Cheney of Wyoming and Democrat Thomas Foley of Washington, thought it was television that made the committees look so bad...
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...This was especially true in the case of two men: North and his principal collaborator, retired Air Force General Richard Secord, who was the committees' first public witness on May 5. Secord proved to be a strong witness: confident, articulate, unashamed...
...It compared the proceedings to a baseball game in which one team made all the rules and umpired all disputes...
...The bespectacled lawyer turned out to be a tiger unleashed who soon intimidated the committee and its lawyers to the point where they dared not interrupt his client's answers, no matter how far he strayed from the point...
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...But this is clearly not the outcome the committees had in mind, which is especially ironic considering that North gave the committees an extraordinarily revealing and unflattering portrait of goings on in the Reagan White House...
Vol. 20 • September 1987 • No. 9
