Curmudgeon that I am, here's another view - Oliver North doesn't deserve to lick the boots of these WWII heroes, and shouldn't have been speaking at that event.
North will always be remembered for bringing in drugs that poisoned Americans, raising money for illegal adventures to bypass the Boland act and violate Congressional law, shredding documents, lying to the country, and repeating things such as this emotional "amid this despair" script not a word of which was likely written by him.
He and Poindexter were convicted of felony obstruction of justice and destruction of documents, and would be in jail except for the fix by a federal judge, who ruled they were protected in their lies to Congress from further prosecution.
Not one of those WWII fellows would be caught dead doing what North and the other spooks were doing.
This little emotional piece is no doubt developed by our new Minister of Propaganda, Poindexter himself.
A review of North's book from the Army War College:
carlisle-www.army.mil
It was "...questionable for a Marine officer, whose professional ethic places great emphasis on honesty and truth-telling, to lie purposefully and substantively ...
"Lieutenant Colonel North may have become so swept up in the high stakes game he was playing that some basic values became obscured--including those he was serving to defend. Some critics have claimed of North that in his zeal to promote democracy abroad, he subverted it at home, specifically in subverting some of the fundamental tenets of the professional military ethic ... he lost sight of his loyalty to American institutions and the Constitution. "
"Though he arrived in Washington in 1981 as an obscure staffer, he very quickly became involved in high-level activity, and he remained at the NSC for five and a half years--until he was summarily and publicly relieved of his duties by the President. During that period, he played an influential role in counterterrorist activities, Middle East hostage release efforts, national planning for command and control contingencies for nuclear warfare scenarios, the activity of the Kissinger Commission on Central America, and the development of the Iran initiative in which the United States, in clear violation of the stated national policy of not negotiating with terrorists, secretly traded arms for the release of hostages. Perhaps most critically, after the CIA terminated its support in adherence to the 1984 Boland Amendment, he became the person who kept the contra resistance alive through financing, international liaison, political support, and his own inventive determination. In the process, he coordinated with heads of state, international arms dealers, a wide variety of American government agencies, and a host of shadowy figures from the intelligence community. Oliver North became a big-time operator. He reveals all these details in recounting the life and times of "this lieutenant colonel," as he referred to himself in the hearings before the combined Senate and House select committees investigating the Iran-contra affair:
I'm not in the habit of questioning my superiors. If [Admiral Poindexter] deemed it not to be necessary to ask the President, I saluted smartly and charged up the hill. That's what lieutenant colonels are supposed to do. . . . And if the commander in chief tells this lieutenant colonel to go stand in the corner and stand on his head, I will do so.
In the course of telling his story, North understandably concentrates on the trauma of having his personal life made mercilessly public and of being minutely dissected by the extended investigations and his trial, all under the burning white light of intensive media attention. Of the sixteen charges in his indictment, he was convicted of three: helping to obstruct Congress; destroying, altering, or removing documents; and accepting gratis a security system installed at his home. While he indicates he was dismayed at the verdict, he earlier made it clear that he had in fact done what the prosecution described. He also, of course, emphasized that he believed he had good reasons to do those things.
One aspect of his discussion of the trial strikes a painful note that will make his audience wince, whether they condemn him or idolize him: he suggests that the all-black jury found him guilty simply because he was white (p. 398), even though his own narrative includes in detail how he had done precisely what the three charges claimed. When in 1990 the courts on appeal reversed one conviction and vacated the other two, thus erasing the felonies from his record and allowing his Marine Corps pension to be restored along with his right to vote, it was not because he had been wrongfully convicted in view of the facts. The judges concluded that critical evidence against him was tainted as a result of his compelled testimony under limited immunity before the congressional committees. In the book North bitterly recounts the unfairness of the congressional hearings and especially the use in his later trial of information revealed in the hearings, but ironically the congressional hearings in the end freed him from any legal punishment for his actions.
North's story raises troubling questions about loyalty, morality, and professional conduct. Some will ask whether military officers should serve in positions of governmental authority outside the military (such as the NSC). What moral guidance emerges from the professional military ethic that can and should be applied to officers seconded to other government agencies? Is there ever justification for an officer to lie? When should an officer question orders? Given that an officer is willing to give his or her life for the nation, should the officer be willing to sacrifice honor as well? Must moral principles sometimes be violated in order to achieve critically important ends--are "dirty hands" sometimes unavoidable?
North gives us a complex, perhaps inconsistent view of lying as he relates the dramatic events of his NSC service. He accuses President Reagan, with some bitterness, of not being honest about the Iran-contra affair--what he knew and when he knew it. He also observes critically that while he admired the President's accomplishments in office, President Reagan "knew where he wanted to end up, and he didn't care much how he got there" (p. 409). North believes he was used as a scapegoat: "By the summer of 1987, the White House was willing to give up just about anyone or anything that would permit the upper echelons of the administration to survive" (p. 353). While North was willing to take the blame for Iran-contra, he makes it clear that he was not willing to go to jail for the Commander-in-Chief.
The issue of honesty arises again in North's criticism of Bud McFarlane's actions. When McFarlane, as the President's National Security Advisor, received pointed queries from the congressional intelligence committees about NSC support for the contras, long before the scandal broke, according to North, "Bud invoked his own form of executive privilege. He lied" (p. 316).
North notes as well that Admiral Poindexter, as had Bud McFarlane before him, purposely lied in written letters to Michael Barnes, chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and to Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In those letters the Admiral reiterated assurances, blatantly untrue, that the NSC, and Oliver North in particular, were not involved in providing support to the contra resistance in Nicaragua. Later, when the covert operations were on the verge of disclosure, the NSC falsified the chronology of events in the Iran initiative when it submitted reports to Congress. According to North, "In changing the chronology and in destroying the superseded Finding [which revealed that arms were traded for hostages], Bud and the admiral had taken steps to preserve lives and to protect the President" (p. 315). Lieutenant Colonel North appears to have no quarrel with these falsifications, other than the "unfortunate" fact that they were discovered.
North relates another of the less flattering episodes that arose during the committee hearings: his attempt to backdate checks and letters to conceal the fact that a costly security system was installed at his home at someone else's expense (it is illegal for government officials to accept such gifts). He makes no attempt to justify his actions, though he does make it clear that "the system" was at fault for not providing his family the security it needed. The incident suggests that North might have set aside the moral discrimination between truth and falsehood that served him well as a midshipman at the Naval Academy and as a young Marine officer.
North details a number of additional instances in which he himself acted with less than complete honesty. He aided in falsifying the chronology of events submitted by the NSC in November 1986, as the Iran initiative came unraveled. He also misled members of the House Intelligence Committee that month at a meeting in which he denied his role in support of the contra resistance. In that instance, he admits, "I look back on that meeting today knowing that what I did was wrong. I didn't give straight answers to the questions I was asked" (p. 322). (Members of the committee later characterized North's answers more straightforwardly as "lies.") When these passages are compared with others in North's book, it becomes difficult to determine what circumstances, in North's view, justify lying. At one point, North talks about his false identity, that of "Mr. William P. Goode," which he used to travel to secret meetings with Iranian representatives and contra contacts. On one occasion when he landed at Heathrow, "the ever-vigilant and humorless British customs officials" questioned him in great detail about his baggage, his business, and his cover story. North relates the incident jokingly; it does not seem to register upon him that however standard such an exchange may be for an espionage agent, it may be questionable for a Marine officer, whose professional ethic places great emphasis on honesty and truth-telling, to lie purposefully and substantively to officials of a friendly nation. Lieutenant Colonel North may have become so swept up in the high stakes game he was playing that some basic values became obscured--including those he was serving to defend. Some critics have claimed of North that in his zeal to promote democracy abroad, he subverted it at home, specifically in subverting some of the fundamental tenets of the professional military ethic. North may have become so concerned about protecting foreign agents and contacts that he lost sight of his loyalty to American institutions and the Constitution.
He also reveals that he was willing to tell his Iranian contacts almost anything: "Later, in the midst of the inquisitions, I was asked whether I had any qualms about lying to the Iranians. The answer is no. My only reservation was that one of my lies might be discovered, and that the hostages would pay the price. I lied to them not because they were Iranians, but because lives were at stake" (p. 297). North does not appear to recognize that in addition to lying he was seriously misrepresenting American policy and that such misrepresentation could have unforeseeable and dangerous results; he falsely claimed his information came directly from the President. At one point, he reveals part of his reasoning:
Unfortunately, everything I told the Nephew [the Iranian government contact] about our attitude toward Saddam Hussein was a lie. I say "unfortunately" not because I lied to the Iranians, which I did whenever I thought it would help, but because our government's attitude toward Saddam Hussein should have been more along the lines I described. (p. 286, emphasis added) " |
