IN THE NATION; Colonel North's Last Stand -... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=...

9/23/2008 05:39

July 15, 1987

IN THE NATION; Colonel North's Last Stand

By TOM WICKER

LEAD: The North hearings came to an end not with a whimper but a bang. The attorney Brendan Sullivan interrupted Chairman Daniel Inouye's closing statement to make a
last effort to divert attention from Colonel North's actual deeds to something more savory - in this case, the colonel's new-found public support.

The North hearings came to an end not with a whimper but a bang. The attorney Brendan Sullivan interrupted Chairman Daniel Inouye's closing statement to make a last effort
to divert attention from Colonel North's actual deeds to something more savory - in this case, the colonel's new-found public support.

Senator Inouye had mentioned the Nuremberg trials that followed World War II, pointing out that the U.S. had tried to extend to other nations its military doctrine that officers
need not obey - in fact have a positive duty not to obey - unlawful orders.

Mr. Sullivan gratuitously objected to what he said was an implied linkage of Colonel North to the Nuremberg war crimes trials. But Mr. Inouye had not linked the colonel
personally to those trials; he had only made the point that it is not a sufficient legal defense for any U.S. military officer to say ''I only followed orders.''

It was Colonel North, advised by Mr. Sullivan, moreover, who had tried to establish that particular defense of his actions - insisting at every turn that he had only followed
orders, although he never raised the question whether they were lawful orders.

Mr. Sullivan claimed to be outraged; more likely, he had recognized as a good lawyer that Mr. Inouye was about to shred that part of Colonel North's defense based on his
claim merely to have followed orders.

The attorney may also have been upset because he foresaw that important points in the colonel's testimony were soon to be contradicted by Robert McFarlane, the former
national security adviser, who made a second appearance before the committees after Colonel North left the witness chair.

Mr. Sullivan's outburst was also preceded by Co-chairman Lee Hamilton's withering and inexorable destruction of Colonel North's claims to have done nothing improper. In
perhaps the most forceful statement of the hearings, he pointed out that Colonel North's ''good intentions'' had led him into actions that damaged the President, forced
Congressional investigation, ''probably damaged the causes you sought to promote'' and brought about ''serious damage to our national interest.''

Secret arms sales to Iran, he con-tinued, contradicted public policy, repudiated President Reagan's pledge not to make concessions to terrorists, involved a democratic nation in
dealings with a terrorist state, deceived U.S. allies and damaged the credibility of the nation in the Middle East and throughout the world.

The covert operations in which Colonel North participated, Mr. Hamilton said, had not been subject to necessary checks and balances and had been designed to do secretly
what Congress had tried to prevent, as well as what the Reagan Administration had assured the world it was not doing. And the policy the colonel had tried to defend was
''driven by a series of lies'' - to ''friends and allies,'' to Congress and to the American people.

These late developments overshadowed both the colonel's final testimony and the earlier efforts of a number of Republican committee members to show that the hearings had
been unfair to Colonel North. Representative Michael DeWine of Ohio, most obnoxiously, made the charge specific in an exchange reeking with his eagerness to get on the
North bandwagon.

In fact, it was the fairness of the committees and their procedures -with the complicity of admiring television shots and comment - that gave Colonel North the opportunity, on
which he expertly capitalized, to come across as a selfless patriot acting only in what he considered the national interest.

No one interrupted the colonel's frequent speeches on patriotism, Middle East policy, Central American policy, the need for covert action and secrecy. No one stopped his
repeated criticism and belittling of Congress. No one tried to force him to answer ''yes'' or ''no'' rather than so often giving long, discursive, often self-serving responses.

The committee tolerated Mr. Sullivan's frequent objections, although most would have been more appropriate in a court proceeding than in a Congressional hearing. He was
given ample leeway for the whispered advice that guided the colonel's answers to the most difficult questions. Republican partisans and North protectors on the committee
were neither silenced nor restrained.

Colonel North will be lucky if he's treated half so well by the special prosecutor he has yet to face.

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