Albert, Fawn and Ollie

...His geopolitics were strictly from jingoland, however, and even if we accept his version of events, his testimony must set off warning bells...

...Most of us feel all right about a Cooper-type getting into politics...

...So how could she tell that it was improper to shred the stuff...

...R.Va...

...Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North requires an Upstairs Downstairs of his own to do justice to his pretensions, but he was attended by a chorus of New Faces of 1987...

...One looked around for Sydney Greenstreet...

...My hunch is that his appeal will be as short lived as that of most television favorites, that the more he talks, the more he will become a cult figure of the hard Right...

...Finally, though, all parties are agreed, the problem is the President...

...It will do its leader's bidding without allowing responsibility to settle—God forbid, as North might say—on the chief...

...Cavalry...

...This "action officer" is happiest when controls are loosest: Better a wink from Casey than a direct order from McFarlane, not that Ollie had any trouble interpreting orders to suit his style...

...He became the respectable character actor reduced to delivering commercials for a dubious product...

...When Colonel North set to berating legislators, he took on the aspect of a kid-on-a-white-horse...

...He spoke of himself as someone "who can take the spear"—and, yes, the nation needs such can-do men...

...Had McFarlane or Poindexter died in a timely way, OUie could have given them more credit for his accomplishments...

...Fawn Hall demonstrated that even in politics, life makes good theater...

...Should criminal charges be brought, and should a few of the people who have been lying to us get sent up the river or out to sea, that will be satisfying...

...Nonetheless, the image he projected had such deep roots in American legend that most of the audience found itself rooting as though he were the U.S...

...The approach might have been more effective had the witness not been equally assertive and categorical in at least one earlier Congressional appearance which, as he conceded under pressure, had been misleading...

...If Oliver North were the only gungho action officer in Washington, or John Poindexter were the only amenable counselor, the nation would have nothing to worry about...

...The Tsar is always good...

...He kicked up so much dust during his hours in the witness chair that his uniform must have required a daily dry cleaning...

...Undershaft "(hugely tickled)" replies, "You don't say so: What...

...Perhaps they had forgotten or forgiven the fact that this up-front officer declined to testify until he was granted immunity by the House and Senate investigating committees, and that even then he wangled his way out of the sort of extensive prehearing interrogation other witnesses were subjected to...

...One can imagine former national security adviser Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter hiding behind his pipe when Ollie opened his mouth and nodding and puffing in hopes of shutting him up—which the Colonel would naturally take as an OK to go do what he wanted to do...

...Again and again, North placed the blame for the failure of the Iran "initiative" and the contra diversion on Congress: They didn't pass the right law, so it was up to him to correct matters...

...Unlike his business partner, retired Major General Richard V. Secord, he made no bones about being in on the deal for the money...

...Normally the soap opera contingent complains when their shows are taken from them for some highminded purpose...

...Colonel North was not about to favor us with an imitation of Captain Queeg, and the committees' counsels had difficulty finding openings in the stockade of rationalizations, declamations, proclamations, and lamentations that he built around himself...

...North's insistence that he had never solicited money from anybody left the impression that he was a kind of procurer, who sweet-talked the damsel until she was ready to be taken by his accomplices...

...Unfortunately, the Secretary had to drone on about the decisiveness of the President...

...How much truth was there in North's testimony...

...It is the ruthlessness of the true believer...

...Indeed, it was a reassuring sign that despite speculation in the Leftist press, he is not nuts...

...The image was confirmed by his former bosses, Robert C. McFarlane and Admiral Poindexter...

...He remains convinced he was executing brilliant strokes of policy...

...If the kid breaks his neck, well, it'll teach him a lesson, never mind what it might do to the car...

...While the Admiral stayed on the bridge, the Colonel took shelter where he could...

...Still, Secord's explanations of where the money went were amusing in a baroque way...

...We had here a warrior who was a born performer...

...Hakim, of Iranian extraction, was the money man in the affair, an exotic operation involving numbered Swiss bank accounts, dummy corporations, little supervision from Washington, and convenient bookkeeping...

...Strong the Colonel may be, but silent is not the word for him...

...Congressional hearings, since they generally lack the scene where the criminal breaks down on the stand, can't match the satisfactions of television's courtroom dramas...

...His generous sharing of responsibility with William J. Casey, the late director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is understandable if unpleasant...

...Hall defines the trade as typing what is given to you without reading it...

...This man has God on his shoulder...

...Hall, although inimitable, brings to mind another young spark—Undershaft's 24-year-old son Stephen in Shaw's Major Barbara...

...Always, he was selfcongratulating...

...It may merely be a professional tic...

...As the ratings came in, Ollie found more and more warmth emanating from the Senators and Representatives judging him...

...the secret of right and wrong...

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Albert, Fawn and Ollie The Iran-contra hearings, the hit series of the summer television season, introduced enough characters to keep America supplied with spin-offs until the next Washington scandal...

...Eisenhower, yes, MacArthur, no...

...Sometimes, he seemed to have taken seriously Byron's line that a lie is "but the truth in masquerade...

...Could the nation count on Presidential chums of the caliber of Michael Deaver and Edwin Meese to save him from fibbing...

...Regardless of one's opinion about his candidness, Colonel North was entirely within his rights in taking the Fifth Amendment, bringing along a lawyer who kept breathing into his ear like a passionate suitor, and making the best deal for himself that he could...

...Although we admire our military heroes, the admiration is qualified...

...Secord kept advertising his patriotism...

...How could good, gray George Shultz (not, it must be said, a model of forceful stewardship) get through to the mind of this fan of old action flicks...

...From the point of view of the Admiral, whose smooth features and bland implausible manner may remind movie buffs of the late Gene Lockhart, it must have been like throwing the keys to the family car to a badgering teenager...

...We have learned from crime shows to trust a witness who is forthright, who doesn't hedge or qualify, and no doubt Abrams has learned this too...

...But what came through most resoundingly was the gung-ho, can-do image, as he told how his less can-do superiors would turn to "this kid" when they needed to get something done with no questions asked...

...North Star Now let's get to the superstar of the show, Lieutenant Colonel North, the workaholic who left the White House with a hangover...

...The Reagan Administration is a B feature...

...Absent in his case was some internal or external organ—say, common sense or respect for his country's rules and institutions or a superior who had these qualities—to keep him in check...

...Her account of stuf fing documents into her pants is a scriptwriter's dream...

...For someone who delights in secrecy, the man couldn't shut up, responding to questions that nobody had asked in a tone that jumped from querulous to patronizing to imperious, like a guerrilla fighter taking cover where he could find it...

...She called herself a "facilitator," a line of work not previously recognized by Webster's that will probably now join the language...

...Then there was Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, who came on like his last name was Ness...

...no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy...

...Poindexter's smoky account ultimately raised questions about the existence of a commander in chief...

...However, her ignorance did not prevent her from recognizing that her boss was right to do whatever it was he did...

...As for pipe-smoking Poindexter, who testified without medals, his dogged effort to provide "deniability" to his Commander in Chief on the matter of passing along "residuals" to the contras was as funny as the scene in Kind Hearts and Coronets where the dimwitted admiral imperturbably goes down with his ship...

...McFarlane's testimony that he had not given his subordinate all the authorizations to go out and be gung-ho that North claimed also sounded right...

...He gets teary at thoughts of his own patriotism and piety...

...a Wayne-type raises concern...

...At 24, too...

...His tongue had trouble shaping a mere "yes" or "no...

...in this instance they were satisfied —Ollie provided the same sort of kick...

...the Colonel plainly believed, despite protestations to the contrary, written probably by his lawyers, that he deserved a medal for getting around it...

...Why, man, you' re a genius, a master of masters, a god...

...Agreeing to be a fall guy may be heroic in the abstract, but what sane colonel wants to have to count on a Presidential pardon to stay out of jail...

...It may have some basis in fact...

...Throughout his recounting of his activities, an image of heroism collided with one of blowhardism, earnestness with evasion, zeal with zealotry...

...If after his debut under the lights Colonel North does not land a job as one of those American Express faces, he can always do commercials for chokeproof shredders: For when the Attorney General calls...

...The phrase usually applied to heroes like Gary Cooper and John Wayne is "strong and silent...

...By Poindexter's own account, his "management style" was so loose, his judgment so lamentable, that one was left with the choice of either giving him the benefit of the doubt by assuming he was lying or being dumbstruck that such a dummy could have been a national security adviser...

...most members of the committees have descended to that sort of mobpleaser in the course of campaign effusions...

...That makes good stage sense...

...Ah, the gusto with which these pois would tear into a Democratic President caught with his policies down...

...For a sympathy-seeking television personality, the General had the disadvantage of not being as young or slim or good looking as Colonel North, not to mention his having left the service under a shadow and his unfastidious choice of pals...

...Maybe he can make it in comedy...

...The bemedaled warrior of earnest mien was a big hit out there, especially among the folks who would ordinarily have been watching the soap operas the hearings displaced...

...Other witnesses professed a wondrous ignorance of the law...

...Much has been shredded, and no thirdact dénouement is promised, so we are left to speculate about this Marine, who presented a more complex figure than any that Wayne or Cooper ever played...

...There is a recklessness and rascality to him that is not Penrodlike...

...His throat-catching references to his wife or "best friend," whom the cameras caressed from time to time, and his "wonderful children" and the "great President" and "the good Lord" and the poor hostages and the courageous Freedom Fighters and something about paraplegics were the usual scraps thrown to the handkerchief crowd in the pits...

...Followers of sitcoms know they can expect some fun from pretty blonde secretaries, and Hall did not disappoint...

...Republicans of the Hatch-and-Hyde school have been wailing that the hearings may weaken the Presidency, sob...

...only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the men of business and ruined most of the artists...

...During his Hollywood career, this second-rate actor played in pictures put together by other second-raters, and he's still at it...

...How, in any case, can you trust someone who habitually prefaces his failures of memory with the word "frankly...

...But we must assume a cadre exists that despises Congress, mistrusts the press and is exasperated by the bureaucracy...

...Many Presidents have had an affinity for shaky, shady characters, but few have shown such a dependence on them in preference to counselors of intelligence, experience and good sense who might confuse the script of the movie the President thinks he is in...

...But the Colonel was being sincere...

...He has won the hearts and minds of the American people...

...He may not have known everything that his favorites, Casey, Poindexter and North were up to, but he knew enough to know he had to lie about it...

...Northern Lights Television doesn't encourage careful listening, but if you attended to what North was saying, his grin took on an eerie aspect...

...Peter Lorre was in many ways an endearing little fellow, but not somebody you would entrust with $8 million or $12 million or $30 million...

...When the name of Albert Hakim was dropped into the record, a generation of moviegoers must have thought of Peter Lorre...

...announced, in an impersonation of a theater critic, "Oliver North has carried the day...

...Also, he was an arms middleman, a line of work that isn't high on the list of professions Americans would like their kids to get into' When was the last time you saw a hero of a television series who sold guns...

...Sure, the hearings will weaken Reagan—by exposing his weaknesses...

...It remained for Secretary of State George P. Shultz to demonstrate in his days in the witness chair that service in the Marines need not prevent one from answering questions in a reasonably straightforward way...

...Pressed by his father on what, if anything, he knows, Stephen "(rising and looking at him steadily)" says, "I know the difference between right and wrong...

...In this show, though, Hakim turned out to be Mr...

...The committees were unable positively to confirm or refute the testimony of a witness possessing a knack for remembering only what he could not deny...

...And who can forget Fawn Hall, Colonel North's secretary and assistant document-shredder, and a star in her own right or wrong...

...Straight Arrow, even if he had little competition...

...His strategy wastofireasalvoabouthis splendid qualities and then hunker down behind failures of recollection and assertions that he did only what he was told to do...

...As Senator Paul S. Trible Jr...

...There was all that shredding—destroying, among other papers, the ledgers that would have shown he had not used traveler's checks from "the enterprise" for snow tires...

...North Wind Yet not everything that came out of his mouth was what we would expect from a Wayne or a Cooper...

...Toupdatea 17th-century aphorism about diplomats, "an assistant secretary of state is an honest man sent to the Hill to lie to Congress...

...His method of defense was attack...