Secretary for Secord Tells Panel She Helped Shred His Papers : Says She Acted on His Orders ‘After News Broke’

A secretary to retired Maj. Gen. Richard Secord told investigators that she helped shred note pads and telex messages for a private network aiding the Nicaraguan rebels shortly after the Iran- contra scandal broke, testimony revealed today.

The secretary, Joan Corbin, said she did not know why she was being asked to destroy the documents but said, “I guess it was after the news broke on the television and the newspapers, is the only reason I could--I knew of.”

The Iran-contra panels, which are in recess until June 22, released testimony of Corbin and Shirley Napier, who also worked for Secord. Both women have been granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.

Knew Principal Figures

Corbin outlined for investigators in a deposition given on April 10 how she worked for Secord’s company, Stanford Technology Trading Group Inc., as a secretary and came to know several of the principal figures in the Iran-contra scandal.

In early December, she said, she was asked by Secord to begin destroying documents, including telexes and shorthand notebooks, old phone book message pages and Rolodex cards, which included the name of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North.

Corbin told investigators she had been asked to shred papers occasionally in the past, but never the amount of material that she helped destroy last December.

Corbin said the shredding took place over a two- or three-day period and she destroyed documents such as phone messages.

Code Name ‘Mr. Good’

She also said that North’s secretary, Fawn Hall, occasionally called Secord’s office and, using the code name for North, would say, “Mr. Good would like to speak to Mr. Secord.”

Secord, the first witness at the Iran-contra congressional hearings, testified that only old phone logs were shredded and that nothing was destroyed to obstruct the investigation.

Napier told of flying to Miami in August, 1986, to pick up $16,000 in cash and taking it to the White House complex, where she turned it over to Hall.

“I did not count the money in the (Miami airport) lounge because it was crowded,” she said. “I went to the ladies room and counted the money, and there was $16,000. . . . It was all in twenties and under.”

Napier said when she gave Hall the money, they exchanged a few words.

“It was either, ‘Did you go to Miami and get this?’ or ‘Did you go down there today?’ I don’t remember exactly what it was, but that was the extent of our conversation.”

When she testified before the joint House-Senate committee investigating the Iran-contra matter last week, Hall said she had no memory of getting the package from Napier or any conversation indicating that it contained money, but she did not deny that it could have happened.

Napier said when Secord returned to the office and found out she had been ordered to go to Miami and get the money for North, “He was a little upset . . . that I had been involved in it.”

She said she was never told what the cash was for.