Ollie Oops
Blanton, Peter Kornbluh, Malcolm Byrne, and Tom
Ollie Oops He says he’s exonerated. 7be record says he’s a crook. Peter Kornbluh, Malcolm Byrne, and Tom Blanton t least until the appearance of “Oliver NorthA The Movie” or “Oliver North-The...
...At the same time, I asked him if I could go ahead and shred the PROF notes and phone logs...
...It’s as though Ernest0 Miranda had claimed that the Supreme Court gave him a character reference when it threw out his famous confession for crimes because the police had not read him his rights,” declared The New York Times...
...I'm leaving,' " North recounted...
...government arms-for-hostages deals with Iran, Reagan administration officials panicked...
...In case you too are beginning to buy all this, it’s worth recalling the ugly details once more-just for the record...
...No one even stood trial for providing illegal assistance to the contras...
...But during the hearings North took personal responsibility for his own actions...
...is that correct?’ NORTH: “That is correct...
...North then attempted to create a false paper trail about payment for the fence by twice driving over to a Best Products store at a nearby mall to type letters on a display model typewriter...
...But under questioning by Chief Counsel John Nields, he stated: ‘‘I do not deny that I engaged in shredding on November 21 .” North explained that his shredding had begun in October, after an airplane carrying illicit weapons for the contras was shot down over Nicaragua...
...Of all the issues of impropriety that came up during North’s Iran-contra testimony, the security fence scheme is the one to which he most readily admitted...
...NORTH: “That is true...
...The security system . . . was installed by Mr...
...Exonerated...
...North was convicted in May 1989 of three federal crimes...
...is that correct?’ NORTH: “I have...
...and Count 10, accepting an illegal gratuity in the form of a $13,800 security fence paid for by Richard Secord with monies raised from the arms sales...
...North called Robinette, who sent him two backdated invoices...
...Oh-and get a good agent...
...And North was not the only one to slip by...
...On each of these charges, North-the man designated as the principal “fall guy” in the Iran-contra scandal, the one who volunteered to “take the spears in my chest”-had been grilled during the 1987 hearings by the lawyers and members of the select committees conducting the Iran-contra investigation...
...officials believed at the time that the shipment consisted not of missiles but merely of oildrilling equipment...
...When Robert McFarlane, North’s immediate superior and the senior oficia1 responsible for the Iran-contra initiatives, told Judge Gesell on September 14 that North’s congressional testimony had had “a very powerful impact,” Walsh reluctantly threw in the towel, dropping all charges...
...The CIA was directly involved in that mission, providing a proprietary airline to ferry the weapons and interceding with Portuguese officials who had refused to grant transit rights to the plane until they knew its precise cargo...
...I'm not going to help anymore in this...
...He acknowledged I should go ahead and do that, and I did so...
...Robinette...
...I believe I probably-Colonel North probably opened the fivedrawer safe and began to pull items from it, and I joined him in an effort so that he would not have to-wast[e] his time shredding...
...George Bush intoned that “the system of justice is working...
...True to form, he offered a lengthy justification for his actions: Abu Nidal had “targeted me for assassination” and the U.S...
...But a year later, two Reagan appointees to the U.S...
...The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Archive...
...VAN CLEVE: “And they were intended to create a record of an event that never occurred...
...Count 6: The chronologies In November 1986, amid daily headlines about U.S...
...VAN CLEVE: “I think I understand the reason for your hesitation...
...Robinette with General Secord’s money, or the Enterprise’s money, or Mr...
...The shipment was illegal...
...Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit outvoted a Carterappointed justice to rule that, because North had testified under immunity before Congress in 1987, Judge Gerhard Gesell had to conduct a witness-by-witness, line-by-line review of the testimony to determine if any of the 67 witnesses had been influenced by North’s immunized statements...
...VAN CLEVE: “And you’ve admitted that you lied in creating false chronologies . . . is that correct...
...That move made it all but certain that Admiral John Poindexter’s 1990 convictions on five counts will be similarly overturned...
...I am here to tell the truth, even when it hurts...
...In the end, no one culpable in Iran-contra is likely to spend a day in prison, except possibly Thomas Clines, a former CIA operative who was sentenced to 16 months for tax evasion-reinforcing the A1 Capone rule that you can get away with anything as long as you don’t screw with the IRS...
...I have admitted to that...
...As Denise Anderson, foreman of the jury, told reporters, “Basically, on the counts of ‘not guilty,’ he was following orders...
...True North Toward the end of his appearance before the Irancontra committees, North was questioned by Republican Counsel George Van Cleve, who reviewed his transgressions: VAN CLEVE: “And you’ve admitted that you’ve lied to the Congress...
...But when the charges against North were dropped, the forces of revisionism immediately went to work...
...North, Poindexter, McFarlane (who continued to play a role in the Iran initiative after resigning from the National Security Council), and others frantically began to construct cover stories...
...He confessed to “making a serious, serious judgment error in what I then did to paper it over...
...The primary goal of the president’s men was to keep the lid on the most sensitive chapter of the Iran operations-the November 1985 shipment of HAWK anti-aircraft missiles from Israel to Iran...
...Oliver North got away with a lot...
...the CIA’S participation took place without a Presidential Finding, which, according to the 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act, is required for any covert operation...
...But North’s own words allow history to judge him, even if the legal system won’t...
...government wouldn’t expeditiously install a security system, so North turned to Secord for help...
...You’ve certainly admitted that the documents themselves were completely false...
...Fawn Hall, North’s secretary, testified that on November 21, after Attorney General Edwin Meese initiated what he called an “informal inquiry,” massive shredding began: “To the best of my recollection it was early evening...
...And he got up and left...
...So by giving limited immunity for his testimony in 1987, Congress in effect let North off the hook for the crimes he testified about...
...Out of 12 counts, the jury found North guilty on three: Count 6, “aiding and abetting” the administration’s effort to deceive Congress by writing false chronologies about the arms-for-hostages initiative in Iran...
...Okay...
...Are you saying that you decided it was appropriate to put out a false version of the facts," North was Count 9: The shredding No one disputes that a “shredding party,” as North described it to McFarlane, took place in the Old Executive Office Building, Room 302, as the Iran-contra operations began to unravel...
...Later, during his trial, North called himself a mere “pawn” and pointed his finger at higher-ups in the Reagan administrationin fact, members of the jury later told the press that they acquitted him on nine charges not because he was innocent but because they believed he was authorized...
...And continued to work on this version because believed that that's what needed to be put out, because that's what Mr...
...Albert] Hakim’s money,” North admitted to the committee...
...McFarlane had given me...
...Indeed, because of the type of legal loophole that conservatives deride for springing common criminals, North has gotten off for crimes that he proudly admitted to carrying out...
...Count 9, altering and destroying documents by shredding...
...to 1,200 hours of community service...
...No one,” notes Jeffrey Toobin in Opening Arguments, his book about the North prosecution, “was convicted of diverting money from the Iran arms sales...
...is that correct?’ NORTH: “That is correct...
...he emerges from the scandal legally guiltless, a national celebrity able to rake in $25,000 for a short speech...
...North claimed that he shredded documents “almost every day” as part of his covert operations...
...is that correct?’ N0RTH:“No...
...in each case he had openly admitted doing all these things, albeit with various justifications...
...Peter Kornbluh, Malcolm Byrne, and Tom Blanton t least until the appearance of “Oliver NorthA The Movie” or “Oliver North-The Senate Campaign,” it will be hard to top the absurdity of North standing on the marble steps of Washington, D.C.’s federal courthouse last September after the dismissal of all charges against him, proclaiming himself “totally exonerated...
...I then tried to paper over that whole thing by sending two phony documents back to Mr...
...General Secord said, 'That's not true...
...They are phony...
...I did probably the grossest misjudgment that I have made in my life...
...Ironically enough, the same balance of powers that he so heedlessly tampered with saved his neck in the end...
...Count 10: The security fence In the summer of 1986, a colleague of Secord’s, Glenn Robinette, a retired CIA technical expert, installed a $13,800 security fence around North’s home in Great Falls, Virginia...
...Thanks to Congress’s ineptitude, the lesson of Oliver North’s case for future would-be government crooks is this: Just do it...
...North subsequently gave those letters to Robinette...
...I am not here to make excuses for anything that I did...
...The Washington Times celebrated the event as proof that the Iran-contra scandal was the result of a congressional “fishing expedition to find something, anything, that could cut into then-President Reagan’s popularity...
...When North was fiied from the NSC on November 25, 1986, he realized, as he later explained to Congress, that “I had accepted something that I had not paid for” and that this “just didn’t look right...
...In July he was fined $150,000 and sentenced Peter Kombluh, Malcolm Byme, and Tom Blanton are senior analyst, director of analysis, and deputy director of the National Security Archive...
...As he pulled documents from each drawer and placed them on top of the shredder, I inserted them into the shredder...
...During the hearings, North said that, in the middle falsifying chronologies, Secord grew exasperated...
...The quantity of documents was so great, Hall testified, that the shredder jammed and a technician from the NSC’s Crisis Management Center had to be called in to fix it so the destruction could continue...
...To bury this political bombshell, U.S...
...Alt that point I began to, one, recognize that I would be leaving the NSC, because that was a purpose for my departure, to offer the scapegoat, if you will, and, second of all, recognizing it was coming down, I didn’t want some new person walking in there opening files that would possibly expose people at risk...
...The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal used the opportunity to bash Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh and to cast the prosecution of other Iran-contra actors as “a Kafkaesque ritual” comparable “to what used to happen to people in the Soviet Union...
...VAN CLEVE: “And you’ve admitted that you created false documents that were intended to mislead investigators with respect to a gift that was made to you...
...officials put together a series of chronologies entitled "U.S./lranian Contacts and the American Hostages" that included in the final version the patently false story that U.S...
...I have accepted the responsibility for those things that I did...
Vol. 23 • November 1991 • No. 11
