FAWNING UPON OLLIE
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard watches
Fawn Hall giving evidence to the congressional committee
Washington THE National Security Council must have been an incestuous sort of place. Fawn Hall was secretary to Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, her mother was secretary to Bud McFarlane, North's direct superior, and they all adored each other. When this Contra cabal was not in session Fawn would often be out with her Nicaraguan boyfriend, Arturo Cruz Jr, one time Trots- kyist at Sussex University and now a consultant to the Contras. His father was a director of the United Nicaraguan Opposi- tion at the time. In fact Arturo Cruz Sr was being slipped $7,000 a month by Oliver North to make sure he continued to lend his reputation and his sensible banker's face to the Contra movement.
But no, said Fawn, she didn't know anything about the Contras, she 'was just a secretary.' Instructed by her lawyer, Plato Cacheris, to look pretty and plead ignor- ance, she told the congressional committee n was a policy of mine not to ask questions.' But her testimony told another story. She worked devotedly for 12 to 14 hours a day trying to keep up with the astonishing Colonel North as he arranged for the invasion of Grenada, the mining of the Nicaraguan ports, the interception of the Achille Lauro hijackers, and the bomb- ing of Libya. When the FBI was on North's trail last November she not only joined in the 'shredding party', shoving secret docu- ments into the machine so impetuously that it jammed, but even took it upon herself to include telephone logs that might have compromised General Secord and other Contrapreneurs. She also redrafted a series of documents after North had expunged passages sug- gesting he was helping the Contras. Four days later, in tears that her 'dream boss' had been suddenly fired from the NSC, she realised she had forgotten to shred the original versions of the altered documents. So she smuggled them out in her boots and down her back. Yes, she admitted at the end of the day, she was a 'true believer', and 'sometimes you have to go above the written law'. Her testimony leaves little doubt that Oliver North can be prosecuted for ob- struction of justice, but she fiercely de- fended his motives against suggestions of venality. First we learnt that the Contra leader Adolfo Calero, dipping into the $32 million he got from Saudi Arabia, gave North $98,000 in traveller's cheques for a hostage rescue operation. The cheques began to surface with North's signature at Giant Supermarkets, Farragut Valet, Park- lane Hosiery, and $100 went on snow tyres. `When was the last time it snowed in Nicaragua?' asked Senator Rudman.
There could be an explanation. Fawn Hall borrowed three $20 cheques one Friday night because the banks were closed and says she later paid it back. But then came admissions by Albert Hakim, the Iranian born businessman who controls the remaining $8 million profits from the Iran arms sale, that he set up a $200,000 trust, known as the 'belly-button' account, for Oliver North's family in case the colonel was killed on his trip to Teheran in May 1986. North returned alive: the fund con- tinued. It is still disputed whether the money was for North alone, or a sort of insurance for all the members of the Iran-Contra team. But Hakim later tried to set up a phoney real-estate deal by which $70,000 could be passed to North's wife, Betsy, to pay for the education of their children. The money never changed hands but she did make a trip to Philadelphia to meet the go-between.
Several Republicans accused the melif- luous, smiling Hakim of trying to manipu- late North. 'You literally wanted to have him in your hip pocket,' said Representa- tive Michael DeWine. Hakim replied that although he bribes routinely in Iran he is clean in America, and that in any case he worships Oliver North: 'the radiations of love penetrated my system,' he said. Arthur Liman, the Senate council, quipped that 'it must have been love at first sight' since Hakim had only met North twice when the telly-button' account was first created.
The Democrats are incensed that at one stage Hakim, whom they can barely bring themselves to think of as an American, was negotiating directly with the Iranian de- legation for the release of US hostages. Worse, he was being pressed by North to `meet a deadline . . because the (Novem- ber 1986) elections were coming up'. Worse still, in order to achieve this election surprise North and General Secord were promising the Iranians that the US would defend Iran against the Soviet Union and would try to topple President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. 'That we find . . . a Lieutenant-Colonel, who everyone sug- gests is second only to the President of the United States, committing this country, its power and majesty, to defend Iran, is just unbelievable,' growled Daniel Inouye, the impeccable Senate committee chairman, almost losing his temper for the first time in these hearings.
The thrust of the investigations seems to have shifted in the last two or three weeks.
Instead of regarding Oliver North as a misguided patriot and a scapegoat for the president, the committee is tending to focus on North himself, who is coming across as a much more cunning, complex and inscrutable man than he seemed at first. He is a compulsive fibber, dropping the name of the President with childlike abandon, and even testifying under oath that he was once a pre-medical student at the University of Rochester when in fact he studied English at Brockport State. Yet he seems to mesmerise everyone who comes before him. While some of the witnesses in the hearings have taken swipes at each other, all have lavished praise on Oliver North. So have his superior officers, his own support staff in the NSC, the private benefactors to the Contras, the Contras themselves, the families of the American hostages in Beirut.
When he comes before the committee in late July, turning the hearings into a national spectacle they have so far failed to be, he may make an extraordinary impress- ion. With the kind of energetic, passionate appeal he once made so successfully to Contra donors, an harangue laced with biblical quotes, patriotic clichés, warnings about communism in Central America and reproachful tales about the stab in the back in Vietnam, he may arouse more sympathy than many of his inquisitors, notably, the odious Senator Rudman. If North can persuade the nation that he is not in fact a thief, and if the special prosecutor, Lawr- ence Walsh, pushes his case too vindictive- ly, there could be a serious backlash. If the very numerous but largely inarticulate conservatives in America rallied around Oliver North and defended him, and what he stands for, with the same tenacity shown by the liberal intelligentsia in pursuing him, then this country might end up as bitterly divided as France in the Dreyfus Affair.
The signs are that Walsh is going to try to convict as many people as possible. The Wall Street Journal reports that he is twisting a conspiracy charge so that partici- pants in a 'continuing criminal enterprise' can be 'liable even if they weren't aware of the precise nature of the violations by the co-conspirators.' That would include Bud McFarlane, to name but one, who may have crossed the line on Contra aid while National Security Adviser, but who is so obviously a decent man that I cannot imagine America would have the stomach to see him crushed. However, by going for the throat, Walsh is ensuring that the whole dispute will have to be resolved by the Supreme Court, since his victims will fight back. A conspiracy charge depends, presumably, on a violation of the famous Bovine Amendment, properly called the Boland Amendment, that at different times and in different ways restricted aid to the Contras. The administration's first defence is that it did not apply to the NSC, where North, McFarlane et al were work- ing. The second defence was that if it did apply then it was patently unconstitutional since it takes away the president's power to conduct foreign policy.
But though the Supreme Court may rescue McFarlane and the others, as well as knocking Congress out of the cat seat, it is hard to see how anything can save Oliver North.
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