Oliver North: Arrogance At Work Plus Access to the President

How could a Marine lieutenant colonel almost single-handedly design and implement a covert operation that would bring the most popular President in a generation to the brink of political disaster? To begin with, Lt. Col. Oliver L. (“Ollie”) North is no ordinary Marine. Despite his rather unimpressive staff title, deputy director of political-military affairs for the National Security Council, North had exceptional White House patronage, patronage that began at the top.

Informed sources say that North met frequently with President Reagan. “Ollie would tell the President of his exploits,” explained an official. “You know, like, ‘the last time I was in Beirut . . . .’ ” This relationship, says another source, “gave North a license to act.”

It also intimidated North’s colleagues and worried his superiors. “What’s Ollie been up to now?” said one concerned senior White House official late last year, pondering after North had spoken his mind on terrorism before a group of senior Arab diplomats. North had told the somewhat amused gathering, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But I’m after people like Abul Abbas (the Palestinian behind the seizure of the Achille Lauro cruise liner) and his world is getting smaller and smaller. We’re going to get him.”

At the same meeting, North also tossed aside his prepared text, admitting that Administration policy in dealing with the TWA hijackers in Beirut in June, 1985, was a “mistake” and chastening the White House for calling it a success.

Such comments, at the very least, made North’s nominal superiors uneasy. They also prompted some to attempt to reel him in. Rodney McDaniel, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter’s deputy, tried to have North fired earlier this year. But one White House insider, with only a trace of irony, remembered that “the President thought Ollie North a genuine American hero. Left for dead on a Vietnam battlefield, Ollie was the incarnation of the hero Ronald Reagan exalted.”

Equally important, North was the quintessential “can-do” man that Reagan vowed to bring to Washington in 1980--to shake up the bureaucracy. Finding work for North at the National Security Council was natural; the NSC staff has traditionally been the President’s most flexible and responsive instrument.

At first, however, it was not easy going. From 1981 until 1983, the NSC languished under indifferent leadership. Richard V. Allen (who once told subordinates complaining about their lack of clout, “I don’t know what you’re talking about--I get to sit in on all the meetings”) and his successor, William P. Clark, were no match for the entrenched bureaucracy.

But when Robert C. McFarlane became national security adviser in 1983, things began to change. He brought with him new and more aggressive subordinates. This infusion helped the NSC staff achieve some noteworthy successes in mediating the endemic quarrels between the State and Defense departments--which is, after all, the primary duty of the National Security Council.

Continuing friction between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Casper W. Weinberger eventually wore McFarlane down and Donald T. Regan’s accession to power as White House chief of staff forced him to resign. But McFarlane was still able to bequeath to Poindexter, his hand-picked successor and former top aide, a reinvigorated institution.

Poindexter, in turn, with all his reticence in dealing with the press and Congress, took office determined to increase the NSC staff’s clout. He encouraged their already-developed enthusiasms while sharing their disdain for the carefully qualified opinions offered by other agencies, particularly the State Department. In policy matters, Poindexter’s staff became even more aggressive. And, as we now know, Ollie North was unleashed.

At the same time, the bureaucracy--as large institutions are wont to do--was slowly adapting to the new atmosphere. “Over a period of time,” explained a former career State Department official, “the White House found it possible to install people of like minds. These people were not troubled by the complexity of issues and wouldn’t always say to the White House, ‘on the other hand.’ ”

The campaign against international terrorism brought into focus much of what had changed at the National Security Council and its input to foreign policy. The bureaucracy, represented by career officials at the departments of State and Defense as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, urged restraint. They argued that a war against terrorism would complicate U.S. relations with Arab moderates, provoke reprisals against American citizens and ultimately split the Western Alliance.

But the NSC staff, newly allied with kindred spirits at the State Department, pressed ahead. And on April 15, with the bombing raid on Tripoli, Libya, their moment had arrived. Terrorists were on the run. Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi was in hiding. After some expected outbursts, criticism subsided, to be replaced by praise at home and abroad. The high-risk war on terrorism was a success and arrogance had been rewarded.

Yet the derring-do over Tripoli was not to work again. In fact, it could be argued that in this very success lay the seeds of the NSC staff’s own destruction. For it bred more of the same sort of arrogance, enabling NSC staffers to contemplate, not to mention put in writing, a “disinformation” campaign against Libya. And it was a similar arrogance that led the NSC and the White House to believe that in one weekend at Reykjavik they could achieve the kind of arms-control agreement that had eluded more experienced negotiators for 40 years.

And for all the Administration’s professed concern about arms control, the NSC’s top priorities have always been the war on terrorism and support for the contras. So it is only fitting that North should become the link between the two policies. He has, of course, long been the central Administration figure in efforts to continue funding of the contras.

Now, in the ultimate act of hubris, it turns out that a Marine lieutenant colonel serving on the NSC staff became Reagan’s chosen instrument for taming the Iranian Revolution and overthrowing the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. It was more than an epitaph for just one man when a senior White House official explained last week the reason why North could get away with so much for so long: “Ollie was the best at getting things done. Everyone else looked the other way.”