THE IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS : TV Sets Stay Dark as White House Seeks to Portray ‘Business as Usual’

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, as his former aide, Oliver L. North, began long-awaited testimony on the Iran- contra affair, President Reagan was meeting, as he does nearly every weekday at that hour, with Vice President George Bush and White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr.

Meetings followed with National Security Adviser Frank C. Carlucci and a special commission that presented a classified report on breaches in security at U.S. diplomatic offices in the Soviet Union. Next came a session on government waste and an unannounced conference with Cabinet members and other senior officials making up a National Security Planning Group on Korea.

Elsewhere at the White House, television sets were cold, the tennis court was hot (a senior official and his deputy used it at midday) and the President’s aides were taking pains to paint a day of “business as usual” in the executive office. Never mind that much of the rest of Washington was keeping at least an eye or an ear on North, who was finally speaking in public after seven months of silence.

Avoiding Flickering Images

“We think it’s more important to be carrying on the business of government than to be watching television,” said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. When the hearings began in May, Baker told the White House staff to go about its daily business without glancing all day long at the flickering televised images of former colleagues and other witnesses.

Although Reagan had said at the outset of the hearings that he hoped he would “finally . . . hear some of the things I’m still waiting to learn,” he refrained from turning on a television set during the morning and had no plans to keep an eye on the proceedings later in the day, his spokesman said.

“He’s very curious about it,” Fitzwater added. “He just hasn’t had a chance to watch television.”

And First Lady Nancy Reagan was spending “a typical day at home”--lunch with a friend, private appointments, paper work--and no television, spokeswoman Elaine Crispen said.

Yet the hearings permeated the atmosphere, from the television set in the back room of a guard house to the White House telephone switchboard, where operators reported an increase in calls from the public, although no pattern was detected.

“Is Ollie still on?” one official visitor asked another as they waited in a lobby to meet with Reagan aides even as Carlucci hurried through, looking neither right nor left, the very image of a busy man paying no heed to the distractions of the moment.

White House lawyers, as they have throughout the hearings, monitored the sessions and prepared a two-page summary for Reagan that would present what was described as a “straightforward” account of the testimony without any analysis of its impact. Fitzwater said no videotapes were being made for the President so that he could watch a rerun of the testimony in the White House residence during the evening.

‘He’ll Read the Newspapers’

“He’ll be given the daily summary. . . . He’ll read the newspapers, undoubtedly watch parts of the evening television shows. We’ll see the report at the conclusion of the hearings that is published by the committee,” Fitzwater said, adding that the major conclusions of each witness will be “known to everybody, including the President.”

Reagan assistants preparing for a presidential trip today to New Britain, Conn., put in extra efforts so that the journey might go off without a hitch. They provided the public with a carefully orchestrated glimpse of a President able to travel about the country despite the critical nature of the hearings.

“I’m not going to say we weren’t aware, when we were doing the scheduling, of when it would fall,” said a senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Reflecting concern that a stumbling presidential performance on the road would provide politically damaging film footage for evening news reports accompanying accounts of North’s second day of testimony today, the official said: “If it doesn’t go well, people will say the magic is lost.”