Iran-Contra Hearings: A Behind-the-Scenes Report : Gallery Spectators and Bit Players Relish Their Roles in Historic Drama as It Unfolds Daily on Capitol Hill

A pair of pink-clad high school history teachers from Ossining, N.Y., stood in line with the hundreds of tourists who wait every day to get into the Iran- contra hearings.

Finally Lauren Carminucci and Mirla Morrison were led into the Senate caucus room--the same place where the sinking of the Titanic, the Teapot Dome scandal, the McCarthy communism hearings, the Kefauver expose of organized crime and the Watergate investigation all made history.

“I sat down and said to Mirla, ‘This is the most exciting thing I have ever done in my life,’ ” Carminucci said, seated in the very rear of the room where, with a little stretching, she could see the presiding senators and the backs of witnesses’ heads.

The hearings are exciting, all right. Part of the excitement is trying to figure out exactly what the witnesses, the lawyers and the members of Congress are talking about.

Just who are Mooey and T. C.?

Answer: Mooey and T. C. are the same person (Robert Owen), and he is the one who testified about flying to a clandestine meeting at a Chinese grocery store.

Of course! But is Mooey from Country Two?

What is Country Two?

Answer: Saudi Arabia.

Spectators run the gamut from groups of high school students to an older man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a lei to actors Kirk Douglas and Lloyd Bridges. Douglas and Bridges apparently bypassed the public lines: Douglas walked in with columnist Tom Braden and Bridges was escorted by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), thus avoiding what Bridges might have called “Seat Hunt.” For such public observers, the code names for people and countries, as well as the odd revelations, poems and famous quotations help break up the tedium of long, complicated testimony.

People who attend or work at the hearings almost universally admit to a unique thrill of being a part of an important event. Even the stenographers feel they are “a small but essential part of history,” said Dennis Dinkel, who, along with his partner, Daniel Dotson, chain smoke away their exhaustion the moment the hearings adjourn. Said Dotson, “Your friends call and say they saw you on television.”

Like almost everybody else, Dinkel and Dotson have a favorite witness. They liked former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane.

“We like the one who talked the slowest,” Dinkel said.

“I don’t know if the hearings are heating up or cooling down,” said Brent Groce, a graduate student in international business at the University of South Carolina, who waited in line 1 1/2 hours to watch the standard 30 minutes of testimony before being ushered out so the next group of 25 spectators could be admitted.

Rosemary Ledwidge of Birmingham, Mich., waited in line for one hour and 40 minutes before she got in, only to have the hearings adjourn 10 minutes later.

“That was short,” she said on her way out, admitting that she did not hear anything particularly interesting. “But it’s better than nothing. It’s historic. I was a political-science major in college and this is the type of thing I enjoy.”

What did Lt. Col. Oliver North (referred to in testimony as B. G., for Blood and Guts) buy at the Parklane Hosiery store on July 20, 1985, with a $20 travelers’ check given to him by contra leader Adolfo Calero?

“We have stockings, leotards, tights and some ballet shoes,” a spokesperson for Parklane Hosiery said, asking not to be named. Camera crews and reporters flocked to the Parklane Hosiery store nearest to North’s home after the purchase was revealed on a huge chart that showed he cashed other travelers’ checks from Calero at food stores and gas stations.

Nobody with Parklane Hosiery knew anything about what a man named Blood and Guts might have bought there . Parklane Hosiery does not sell weapons, the spokesperson said, “not unless you wanted to strangle somebody with panty hose. For that I guess he would want our ‘Sheer and Silky’ hose 009 with Lycra.”

The check spent at Parklane Hosiery was one of more than 100 given to North by Calero, also known as Sparkplug.

“I was surprised,” Calero testified under oath, “to learn my name was Sparkplug. I’ve always thought of myself as calm.”

The hearings provide senators and congressmen on the investigating committee with a golden opportunity to gain national recognition, the way Harry Truman did during the investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack and Howard Baker did during Watergate. Already Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), who has successfully cultivated a low profile during his 23 years in Congress, has received “thousands of post cards from all over the country,” now that he is co-chairing the investigating committee, said Hamilton’s press secretary, Jerry Cacciotti.

The other co-chairman, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), has been deluged with mail, too. During the Watergate hearings, Inouye was a junior senator and seated at the end of the table, where the glare of television lights permanently damaged the retina of his left eye.

Now that he chairs the Iran-contra hearings on the alternate weeks when it takes place on the Senate side of the Capitol, the lights are bothering Inouye again. So one day he wore dark glasses, which prompted an avalanche of critical mail, some saying he wore them to hide the fact he was asleep, others saying he looked like a mobster. So he reluctantly took them off and tries to shade his eyes any way he can, sometimes donning a visor.

Former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane received “many hundreds, if not thousands of telegrams,” during and after his testimony, according to his attorney, Leonard Garment. “And there’s not a single negative telegram.

“I didn’t tell him how to dress. I didn’t tell him how to talk. I didn’t tell him how to walk,” Garment said. “He didn’t need it.” The McFarlanes are in China now and are not keeping up on the hearings, Garment said.

For sheer variety and color, many enjoyed Owen’s testimony about his trip to the Chinese grocery store. Owen, a former Senate aide and public relations employee, acted as The Courier (T. C.) for Blood and Guts (B. G.), flying to various places to pick up money from contributors to pass on to North to help the Nicaraguan rebel forces. Describing his trip from Washington to New York, Owen said he went to a Chinese market and used the code name Mooey.

A man at the store “went behind the counter, rolled up his pant leg and pulled out a wad of $100 bills,” Owen testified. “He gave the whole wad to me. I didn’t know how much I was supposed to get but I thought I better count it anyway. It was 95 $100 bills.”

At various junctures, Owen quoted Thomas Paine (“These are the times that try men’s souls”) and Thomas Jefferson (“I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man”). The Jefferson quote is hot; Calero used it, too. Owen read a long poem extolling the virtues of North, revealed that his (Owen’s) wife is pregnant, repeatedly noted he was out of a job and said that he and North used to joke about going to jail.

Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) remarked to Owen that “most people who are engaged in legal activities do not joke about going to jail. When did you first come to realize that you were engaged in criminal conduct?”

Stokes continued that line of questioning until Owen’s lawyer, Leonard Greenbaum, jumped in and told Inouye that he objected.

Inouye replied, “I must apologize. I wasn’t paying attention.”

When Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) asked Calero if a certain shipment of arms had come from Country Four, Calero replied, “I don’t know what Country Four is. They came from Europe.”

Committee members decided to assign foreign countries numbers because they did not want to harm relations by having them officially mentioned in congressional hearings. But everybody knows, or is supposed to know, that Country One is Israel, Country Two is Saudi Arabia, Country Three is Taiwan and Country Four is China.

There is historical precedent for strange behavior during investigations in the Senate caucus room. On May 1, 1933, during a recess of a Senate Banking Committee investigation into Wall Street practices, a circus midget seeking publicity slipped into the room and sat on the lap of banker J. P. Morgan. Thinking she was a friendly child, Morgan put his arm around her as photographers clicked away and said to her, “I’ve got a grandson bigger than you.”

“But I’m older,” she replied.

“She’s 32,” said her agent, standing nearby.

Despite the committee’s request that the photographs not be used, many newspapers did run them.