Politics--and Poetry--Make Strange Bedfellows : Congressmen Draw Fine Line on North

Poetry met politics Tuesday when outspoken Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) decided to laud Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, who was appearing before Congress to testify about the Iran- contras scandal.

Amid questioning of North by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dornan quoted from Rudyard Kipling’s “Tommy,” written in praise of the English soldier. But, employing a bit of poetic license, he substituted “Ollie” for the original name.

“It’s Ollie this and Ollie that, an’ ‘Chuck ‘im out, the brute!’ ” Dornan intoned. “But it’s ‘Savior of ‘is country’ when the guns begin to shoot.”

After Dornan’s reworking of Kipling, however, another Californian, Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton) was ready with his own retort in verse. Dymally, asserting that there needed to be “another line,” paraphrased Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: “To thine own self be true; then thou canst not be false to any man.”

Financial Support

Somewhat less poetic--but no less supportive of North than Dornan--was Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), who announced during Tuesday’s hearing that he plans to contribute $250 to a legal defense fund for the decorated Marine officer.

Lantos, calling his remark “very serious,” said he had read that North’s colleagues from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 1968 had established the fund.

He said he intends to make “as generous a contribution” as he can and to “persuade some of my friends who can donate more to donate more.” Moreover, he said, he wanted to express his “respect, affection and admiration” for North, whom he knows socially.

Although Lantos said he abhorred the decision to sell arms to Iran, he described North as “a young lieutenant colonel of passionate patriotism, impeccable character and deep devotion to duty who nationally and globally is pilloried as an evil genius.”

He concluded: “Neither my intellect nor my heart allows me to believe it was a solo diabolical act. . . . I think it will be clear he was certainly not alone.”