Shredded in Presence of Probers, North Says : He Claims Justice Aides Read Files as He Destroyed Records

WASHINGTON — Even as Justice Department investigators were combing his records only a few feet away last November, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North continued methodically shredding the documents that could have provided the blueprint of his secret projects at the White House, North told congressional investigators Thursday.

“They were working on their projects,” North said dryly. “I was working on mine.”

North’s testimony added to the criticism of the Justice Department’s preliminary investigation of the Administration’s sale of arms to Iran and military support for Nicaragua’s rebels at a time when U.S. government assistance was banned. Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland denied North’s account.

Eastland said he talked “in detail” with John Richardson and William Bradford Reynolds, the two Justice Department officials who scoured North’s office. “It is their firm recollection,” he said, “that at no time did Oliver North shred any documents or turn on the shredding machine.”

In his third day of testimony to congressional investigating committees, North said the shredding that began in his office on Nov. 21 lasted far longer than previously thought--right up until the morning he was fired on Nov. 25. But he persisted in his assertion that there was nothing wrong with destroying the sensitive documents.

“That’s why the government of the United States gave me a shredder,” he said.

At that time, North said, he was planning to “go quietly” as the “scapegoat” whose dutiful silence and destruction of crucial evidence would protect his superiors. But once he heard that his fate might include a criminal investigation, he said, “my mind-set changed considerably.”

“None of us--at least, certainly not me and no one I ever talked to--ever imagined that we had done anything criminally wrong,” North insisted. He is now under investigation by an independent counsel who is pursuing charges that he secretly supported Nicaragua’s rebels during the two-year period when U.S. aid was banned and that he destroyed evidence.

North began his testimony with a spirited and emotional defense of Administration foreign policy and his role in it. The session also was marked by a series of outbursts from his attorney, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., who at one point shouted: “Get off his back.”

When Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the Senate investigating committee, admonished Sullivan to control his outbursts, Sullivan shot back: “I’m not a potted plant. I’m here as the lawyer. That’s my job.”

North also frequently interrupted the questioning to set the record straight on a variety of small points. For example, he emphasized that he had never referred to himself as a “hero”--a term coined for him by the President.

Testimony on Secrets

Sullivan warned that his client was “looking for tricks” as Senate committee counsel Arthur L. Liman began what is expected to be a hostile round of questioning. Liman’s interrogation was interrupted as the panels went into closed session to hear North’s testimony regarding classified material, and it will resume this morning.

North insisted that he had to shred sensitive memos, computer messages and phone logs to preserve “the integrity of activities and operations, the lives of people who were out there.”

“Are you saying, colonel, that you thought allowing the attorney general of the Untied States, or his representatives, to see documents would jeopardize lives?” Liman said.

“Revelations regarding those documents would destroy lives,” North countered.

Under questioning, he conceded that protecting the Administration from political embarrassment was another reason he destroyed documents.

Just 10 Feet Away

The former member of the White House National Security Council staff said Reynolds and Richardson were no more than 10 feet away on Nov. 22 as he openly loaded documents into his shredder. While they were searching his records, he said, he was doing his own inventory of his files, looking for material he wanted to destroy.

“They were sitting in my office reading,” he recounted, “and I’d finish a document and say, ‘We don’t need that any more.’ I’d walk up and I’d go out and shred it. They could hear it; the shredder was right outside the door.

“That’s a pretty high-speed shredder,” North added. “It eats ‘em pretty quick.”

It was on that occasion, however, that the Justice Department officials found a memo referring to the diversion of Iran arms sale profits to the contras . North testified that he had shredded four other such memos.

Even before North’s testimony, critics had questioned whether the Justice Department’s internal investigation had been thorough and professional. Neither Reynolds nor Richardson has experience in criminal inquiries.

Assumed Reagan Knew

Under questioning about the central issue in the Iran-contra affair, North has said repeatedly that he acted under the assumption that President Reagan was aware of the diversion of funds from Iran to the contras but subsequently learned otherwise from the President himself.

Liman hinted, however, of circumstantial indications that information about the diversion may have reached Reagan. That came as he questioned North about the frequent meetings the NSC aide held with the late CIA Director William J. Casey, one of the President’s closest advisers and confidants.

For example, North acknowledged under questioning that as he and Casey plotted to keep the operations secret, Casey said nothing to contradict his assumption that Reagan knew of the diversion. North also said Casey did not warn him against preparing a series of memos for the President describing the diversion.

Presidential Approval

Although the memos contained blanks asking for an indication of presidential approval or rejection of North’s plans, the one surviving memo contains no indication of whether Reagan saw it. North testified he never learned whether the memos reached Reagan.

North said he provided secret military assistance to the Nicaraguan resistance on the understanding that members of the President’s staff were not restrained by a law passed by Congress in October, 1984, prohibiting U.S. intelligence agencies from aiding the contras.

He could not explain why Robert C. McFarlane, his boss until the end of 1985 in his position as the President’s national security adviser, held an entirely different view of the law, known as the Boland amendment. McFarlane has testified that the Boland amendment did not permit NSC staff members to provide military aid to the contras.

North said he relied chiefly on the legal opinion of Casey, a lawyer, who told him that the law did not apply to him. North said he frequently urged his superiors to get other legal opinions but that they failed to do so.

Sought to Comply

“We sought means by which we could comply with Boland and still keep the Nicaraguan resistance in the field, politically viable, and support it diplomatically and politically throughout the world, and I think we found it,” North said.

He also said he did not believe the Boland amendment prohibited members of the White House staff from soliciting money for the contras from other countries such as Saudi Arabia. “I sincerely believe that the President of the United States can send his emissaries anywhere in the world to talk to anybody about anything,” he said.

North insisted that he would not have assisted the contras if he thought he was violating the law. He said he disagreed with the statement of his secretary, Fawn Hall, that there are times when a public servant must go “above the law.”

The much-decorated Marine offered new details on how top Administration officials scrambled to protect themselves and their President as it appeared last October that both the secret sale of U.S. arms to Iran and the diversion of profits to the contras were about to become public.

‘Clean Up the Files’

North said that Casey, who died in May, told him to “clean up the files” and decided that “there had to be somebody to stand up and take the rap.” The CIA director “did not think that I was senior enough to do that,” North said, and he suggested that North’s boss, John M. Poindexter, who had succeeded McFarlane, be the candidate.

However, it was North who was ultimately fired and Poindexter who was allowed to resign somewhat more gracefully.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III said at a press conference on Nov. 25 that North was the only official who “knew precisely” about the diversion and that Poindexter knew only that “something of this nature was occurring.” In his testimony, North has claimed repeatedly that Poindexter authorized the diversion and was fully informed about it.

However, he said he was not bitter about his treatment at the hands of the President: “This lieutenant colonel is not going to challenge a decision of the commander in chief, for whom I still work.”

A Lengthy Statement

North opened his testimony Wednesday with a lengthy statement in which he contended that Congress “must accept at least some of the blame in the Nicaraguan freedom fighters matter.”

“Plain and simple,” North said, “the Congress is to blame because of the fickle, vacillating, unpredictable, on-again, off-again policy toward the Nicaraguan democratic resistance--the so-called contras.”

He also complained that he has been “vilified by people in and out of (Congress), some who had proclaimed that I am guilty of criminal conduct even before they heard me. Others have said that I would not tell the truth when I came here to testify.”

House Republican deputy counsel George Van Cleve noted that North had admitted to lying to the Iranians, lying to Congress and creating false accounts of his activities.

“Can you assure this committee that you are not here now lying to protect your commander in chief?” Van Cleve asked.

“I am not lying to protect anybody,” North said. “I have told you the truth, counsel, as best I am able.”