A

NORTH, OLIVER 1943-

MARINE OFFICER, NATIONAL SECURITY
COUNCIL STAFFPERSON

Iran-Contra

Of all the individuals charged in the Iran-Contra scandal none gained more notoriety or prominence than Oliver North, a career marine officer who had been detailed as a staff assistant to the National Security Council (NSC), ironically against his wishes, at the beginning of the first Reagan administration. Fearing at first that this assignment would harm his career, North came to see his work in the NSC as an opportunity to become a central figure in the crusade against communism revived by Reagan. He envisaged a once-in-a-lifetime chance to help set his nation's course straight again in the wake of what he perceived as the erosion of the American creed after Vietnam and Watergate. A former Catholic altar boy, North epitomized the patriot of the "my country right or wrong" variety in opposition to the flabby liberalism he believed responsible for America's decay. As such he was lionized by conservatives, and the image he projected at the IranContra hearings catapulted him into folk-hero status. Yet he was subsequently charged with felonies and came also to symbolize the dangers of ideological zealotry wedded to the considerable power of the presidency. Because he was more than willing to put his—and the president's—personal crusade ahead of the U.S. Constitution, his name became synonymous to many with power's legendary propensity to corrupt. Owing to the legal finesse of his lawyer, however, coupled with his popular support, and the unwillingness of liberals and conservatives either to crucify or to martyr him, North was able to have all charges dropped and to become a wealthy and potent force in the new Christian right.

Background

North was a product of middle-class, small-town America, spending his formative years in the village of Philmont, New York, just south of Albany in the Hudson Valley. The son of a World War II veteran and a strict, religious mother, North has been described as an exceptionally dutiful son and straight-arrow youngster. After spending a year at a state teachers college in 1962, the young North enrolled in a special summer program run by the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, after which he applied to and was accepted at the U.S. Naval Academy. Six months into his first, or "plebe," year he was seriously injured in an automobile accident which very nearly derailed his career plans. Placed on probation during his recuperative period, North demonstrated the drive, discipline, and single-mindedness to repair his injuries that would later characterize his work in the NSC. Against great odds North was readmitted to Annapolis where, once back on track for his commission, he drove himself beyond the demanding and stressful pace expected of all midshipmen. "Ollie was all blood, sweat and tears," said one of his classmates, in no small measure because the Naval Academy class of 1968, and especially those opting to become marines, fully expected to go to war.

Vietnam

Graduates of the Naval Academy during the Vietnam War years had more occasion, perhaps, to view themselves as a separate breed than had earlier classes, quite apart from the military traditions and rituals designed for that purpose. As their contemporaries at civilian colleges were taking to the streets to condemn the war and oppose the draft, the professional military underwent a dramatic plunge in prestige unprecedented in American history, and the military found its values under siege. Like many who responded by forming tighter bonds with their comrades-in-arms, North tended to tar all war pro-test with the brush of disloyalty and anti-Americanism. Feeling unjustly scapegoated for the war, bridling that his patriotism was equated with jingoism, North viewed the antiwar movement as deeply disloyal and symptomatic of a profound political and social malaise. Blaming liberals for this wrong turn, North and many others in the professional military deepened their commitment to what they saw as traditional conservative values and determined that their tours in Vietnam would reflect their devotion to God, country, and duty. In the process they hoped to shame those they labeled "peaceniks" by example.

NSC

North served with distinction in Vietnam, being decorated for valor under fire with the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts. He returned to an America where the military's prestige had all but collapsed, and where the public mood all but negated any future overseas deployments. A warrior without a war, he settled in for barracks life. In the late 1970s he was chosen to attend the Naval War College, where he earned the notice that would cause him to be assigned to the NSC. North resisted this posting at first because he knew that the Marine Corps general staff looked down upon officers who spent too much time in the company of civilian politicians, and he feared the NSC assignment would dim his hopes for further promotion. At the same time, he had been heartened by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, who promised to "turn America around." When shortly after his election Reagan declared Vietnam a "noble cause" betrayed by disloyal Americans who had all but made the world safe for communism, North came to believe that he could play some role in returning America to what he believed was her time-honored course. When Reagan indicated that he would do all in his power to overthrow the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua and to stop the leftist insurgency in El Salvador, North threw himself into his new duties with all the enthusiasm of the past.

Secret Work

A workhorse, North initially did much of the scut work in the NSC avoided by others. By dint of long hours and devotion to detail, North made himself the de facto executive of the president's cabinet-level advisory council. The master of all details, North became chief expediter of a covert operation involving the NSC, CIA, Department of Defense, and a private enterprise for profit, the aim of which was to circumvent the will and laws of Congress forbidding the expenditure of public funds to overthrow Nicaragua's government. Two separate amendments to omnibus spending bills (named after their author, Rep. Edward Boland [D-Mass.]) to this effect had been passed and signed, though reluctantly, by President Reagan. Believing their desire to rid the Western Hemisphere of Marxists a better measure of their patriotism than rigid adherence to the law, North and his coconspirators created an "off-the-shelf" program to sell arms to Iran, which the United States had labeled a "terrorist state," and used the proceeds secretly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. This is what Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh called the "operational conspiracy" not only to violate the Boland Amendments but to defraud the government of the United States as well.

North's Responsibility

When the Iran-Contra scandal broke in the fall of 1986, North was prepared to shoulder the burden of responsibility, because, he said, he believed himself to have been carrying out orders legitimized by presidential authority. But after the infamous press conference of 25 November 1986 wherein Attorney General Edwin Meese declared the affair a "rogue" operation run illegally, North took the Fifth Amendment at every legal proceeding until Congress granted him immunity to testify before its joint special committee investigating the scandal. At the nationally televised hearings North, resplendent in his dress green uniform, combat ribbons prominent, proved himself to be a media super-star. Though his testimony indicated both widespread conspiracy and lawbreaking at the highest levels, North cast himself as a loyal foot soldier serving his commander in chief. Said the colonel, "I'm not in the habit of questioning my superiors…if the Commander-in-chief tells this lieutenant colonel to go stand in the corner and stand on his head, I will do so." While North's performance was given stellar ratings by the television critics, who immediately dubbed the widespread adulation of North as "Olliemania," this statement was particularly galling to many career military officers who believed they owed their allegiance first to the Constitution, as their oaths of office dictated. As Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate committee, said in his final remarks, "members of the military have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders." If North's testimony was true—that both Reagan and Casey had approved the operations, then they, and North, had knowingly violated at least the spirit of the law and the Constitution. North did not deny breaking the law but said he had done so in the name of promoting democracy abroad. Even so, Rep. Henry Hyde, a conservative Republican from Illinois, was moved to say that North's performance was the most stirring patriotic display "since the first time I saw Jimmy Cagney singing 'Yankee Doodle Dandy.'" Syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan said that North was "a patriotic son of the republic," who, faced with a choice of betraying his cause or lying to Congress, chose the "path of honor."

Bad? or Merely Bad?

Was North an overzealous patriot or a Machiavellian plotter? There was much in the public record to cast doubt about his character. While he admitted to lying before Congress and to shredding and falsifying documents to achieve a "higher purpose," his career seems to have been checkered with other untruths as well. Among other things, he failed in his NSC application to disclose a hospitalization for psychiatric reasons shortly after his return from Vietnam. NSC officials said that had they known this they would have denied clearance for North to serve. Many public statements that North made about his service in Vietnam, about his personal relationship with Reagan, about missions and exploits supposedly carried out in Central America, the Falklands, and the Middle East, have been flatly denied by Reagan administration officials and his military superiors. Either North's clandestine operations had a longer history than the Iran-Contra affair or he invented them to bolster his public persona. There is little doubt that North chafed at the debacle of Vietnam. As an anti-communist zealot, he wished to refight that war and recoup on new battlefields the honor lost in Indochina. Blaming liberal lawmakers for abandoning American troops and allies, North rationalized that Congress was the enemy, against whom any maneuver was justified.

On Trial

Shortly after the Iran-Contra hearings ended, North (as well as Adm. John Poindexter, Gen. Richard Secord, and Albert Hakim) was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., charged with sixteen felonies. North was ultimately found guilty on three and ordered to pay heavy fines, which were easily payable given the huge fees he was commanding on the lecture circuit. For a time his Marine Corps pension was jeopardized (he had resigned his commission after being indicted), but that was saved when a federal appeals judge overturned his, and the others', convictions on the grounds that their immunized testimony before Congress could not be used against them in court. No longer bearing the burden of felony convictions, North immediately entered the world of politics, where he set his sights on becoming a United States senator from Virginia.