THE IRAN--CONTRA HEARINGS : Must Respect Rule of Law, Panel Tells North : His Tactics Challenged at Iran Hearing

Members of Congress’ Iran- contra investigating committees, attempting to keep the central issues of the scandal in focus amid an outpouring of public sympathy for Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, asserted Monday that his failure to abide by legal restraints violated the nation’s most fundamental value--government under law.

“We must never allow the end to justify the means, where the law is concerned, however important or noble an objective,” Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said. “Many patriotic Americans are concerned that in the pursuit of democracy abroad we not compromise it in any way here at home.”

While North listened in silence, Mitchell asked him to remember that opponents of aid to the Nicaraguan rebels “still love God and still love this country just as much as you do. Although He is regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.”

Differences Over Policy

“And in America, disagreement with the policies of the government is not evidence of lack of patriotism,” Mitchell said.

North, the White House aide who was fired last November for his role in the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of profits to Nicaragua’s rebels, spent four days before the committees last week passionately defending his actions and insisting that his superiors were aware of everything he did.

Committee members who questioned North on Monday sought to separate the emotion generated by the charismatic Marine’s testimony from his tactics in selling arms to a terrorist nation and supporting the contras after Congress had banned U.S. aid to the rebels in 1984.

“Long after the sheer force of your personality has faded from this room. . . . I think the American people are going to be left to deal with the policy implications of what has occurred and what’s been said in this room,” Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) told North.

‘Reduced to Law of Rule’

“We have to respect the rule of law until we can change the law itself,” Cohen added. “Because otherwise, the rule of law will be reduced to the law of rule.”

Initial indications were that the lawmakers may have gained some ground with the public. By early afternoon, according to aides, Mitchell’s office had received more than 1,000 telephone calls, nearly 90% of them supporting his criticism of North. Some schoolteachers said they planned to read his statement to their classes.

But support for the former National Security Council aide remained strong. Several spectators in the hearing room sported T-shirts declaring, “I’m a North American.”

North and his wife, Betsy, waved to a cheering crowd of several dozen supporters from a Senate office building balcony during the lunch break.

North, who is scheduled to conclude his testimony today, will be followed on the witness stand by two of his former White House bosses, former National Security Advisers Robert C. McFarlane and Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter.

McFarlane, who will testify today, asked to respond to contradictions between his earlier testimony and North’s. Poindexter, who is scheduled to appear Wednesday, is thought by the committees to be the only witness who can testify as to whether Reagan was told that Iran arms sale profits were diverted to the contras.

During Monday’s hearing, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate panel, backed off from a statement the previous day that a memo indicated that Poindexter had briefed Reagan on the use of Iran arms sale profits for “covert activities.” Inouye said the memo said nothing about the use of any funds to finance such activities.

‘Have to Ask Admiral’

“I did not say the President was briefed,” Inouye added. “I said we will have to ask the admiral.”

But committee members spent most of their time responding to last week’s account by North of his role in supplying arms to the contras and to Iran.

Even such unwavering supporters of the contras as Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.), who commended North as “a very direct, sincere believer,” criticized his secretive means. Fascell objected that Congress was not informed of the Iran arms sales or of the Administration-aided network of private support for the contras.

North, Fascell declared, “adopted the values, at least temporarily, of a totalitarian government, in an effort to do what (you) feel is proper and right.”

North has insisted that his every action was authorized by his superiors and contended that nothing he did was illegal.

When asked whether the President’s policy--in particular, his support for the contras--should supersede the law, North replied: “The law is the law. . . . I continue to believe that the President’s policy was within the law, that what we did was constitutional in its essence.”

One committee member suggested that North, who was fired last November for his role in diverting Iran arms sale profits to the contras, should not be judged on his obedience to the law alone.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) quoted Thomas Jefferson as saying: “A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. . . . On great occasions, every good officer must be ready to risk himself in going behind the strict line of law when public preservation requires it.”

Several Republicans also said they hoped that North would manage to escape unscathed from independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh’s criminal investigation of the Iran-contra affair. North agreed to testify only under a grant of limited immunity, which means that Walsh cannot use any information from his testimony in building a case against him.

“I don’t want you prosecuted,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said.

Rep. William S. Broomfield (R-Mich.) added: “I don’t want to see you go to jail, because I think you’re a great patriotic American, and I’m proud of what you tried to do.”

Still, Broomfield noted that “had the Administration been more forthright, I think things would probably have worked out better. . . . Bring Congress in as a full partner in these decisions. That’s the area that probably troubles me the most about this entire investigation and what has transpired.”

Monday was the first day that North underwent questioning entirely by lawmakers themselves, rather than committee attorneys. The day evolved into a nationally televised debate with North repeatedly dismissing suggestions that Congress should rein in the President’s power and lawmakers just as often asserting that Congress has a proper role to play in foreign policy.

Said Sen. Paul S. Trible Jr. (R-Va.): “All this demonstrates to me the sheer folly of conducting the people’s business without checks and balances.”

North came back: “The President has the authority to do what he wants with his own staff. There is no doubt that the President wanted the policy of support for the Nicaraguan resistance pursued, and I did so to the very best of my abilities.”

House Majority Leader Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) noted, however, that Reagan has claimed that he did not authorize the diversion of funds to the contras. He suggested that there is “a deep defect and flaw in that policy apparatus if in fact the President did not know and these policies were carried on by his subordinates without his authority.”

North countered: “If the President sees fit to make changes in the order of his staff, the structure of his staff, the activities of his staff, then it is within his purview to do so. . . . I did not believe then and I do not believe now that it is within the purview of the legislative branch of our government to mandate those kinds of changes.”

But Foley added: “I would remind you, colonel, that the National Security Council itself and the staff that served it was created by law, by statutes not just by the President, but by the Congress.”

Others noted that North’s success in pleading his own case to the public does not necessarily mean that people endorse the policies for which he stands. Few foreign policy questions are more divisive than aid to the contras, an issue on which Congress has reversed itself several times over the last few years.

North Gets a Lecture

Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), lecturing North, quoted former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as saying: “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

In a democracy, Sarbanes said, “reasonable people can differ on the substance of policy. In fact, that’s the essence of democracy. In the thing we fault in the totalitarian regimes, which we are opposed, is the fact that they don’t permit those differences and establish a system for resolving them peacefully.”

Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) told North that he and the Reagan Administration had made a fundamental error in trying to carry out a policy of support for the Nicaraguan resistance without the endorsement of the American people.

Rudman, himself a supporter of contra aid, cited polls showing that a majority of Americans, including many who see the Marxist Nicaraguan government as a threat to democracy in this hemisphere, oppose aiding the opposition. He noted that Reagan has been unable to turn opinion around despite six years of continuous public appeal.

Congress cut off aid, he said, in direct response to public opposition. “I want to point out to you, Col. North, that the constitution starts with the words, ‘We the people.’ There is no way you can carry out a consistent policy if ‘we the people’ disagree with it, because this Congress represents the people.”

Rudman added: “The American people have the constitutional right to be wrong, and what Ronald Reagan thinks, or what Oliver North thinks, or what I think, or what anybody else thinks means not a whit if the American people say, ‘Enough.’ ”

Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.) said North had violated a principle laid down by the President in a radio speech on Dec. 6, 1986: “We live in a country that requires we operate within rules and laws. All of us. Just cause and deep concern and noble ends can never be reasons enough to justify improper actions or excessive means.”