OLLIE’S ACT: LESSONS FROM A MASTER OF TV

Your government--and your television--in action. . . .

The Nicaraguan contra cause was trumpeted again almost without challenge Tuesday. The Reagan Administration--said to be readying a proposal to increase controversial aid to contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua--surely was thrilled by this latest blast of contraganda.

As always, the scene was the old Senate Caucus Room where joint committees of Congress were continuing their public investigation of the Iran-contra affair.

As always, the messenger was Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, who was later followed by his former boss, Robert C. McFarlane.

As always, the method of delivery was TV.

Only Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D, Hawaii), the panel’s chairman, on Tuesday detailed his own opposition to aid to the contras.

North’s sixth and final day of televised testimony began with spectacle: a sad/comic debate on whether he would be allowed to present on national TV the slide show he repeatedly gave to potential private funders of the contras in his former capacity as a top National Security Council official.

The President’s most fervent supporters--all Republicans--said yes, hoping to get more TV publicity for the contras. Others--Republicans and a few Democrats--said no. For 25 minutes, they argued. They bickered. They blustered. Most were ridiculous. A low ripple of giggles greeted Rep. Michael DeWine (R-Ohio) when he insisted that the public was demanding to see the slide show. The camera even caught North’s wife laughing.

“This is your Congress in action,” NBC’s Tom Brokaw noted in a voice-over. “This is vintage Congress,” said ABC’s Brit Hume.

“These members have been very, very quiet,” said Cokie Roberts on PBS, characterizing them almost as infants in a nursery school. “They need to talk a little bit.”

In the inevitable compromise, North was allowed to present his slide show--but without projector and screen. For 15 minutes, he pulled out individual slides and described to the panel members--and the national TV audience--what they contained:

“Then some photographs showing the Nicaraguan resistance. It shows the young men and women who have taken up arms because they have been denied any other recourse in their own country. It shows the 57-year-old coffee farmer who . . . came home and found his entire family murdered by the Sandinistas because they gave water to a passing contra patrol. Then some photographs. . . .”

There were naturally no slides from North showing alleged atrocities by contra forces.

Nor were there any post-testimony TV interviews with anyone who was then openly critical of contra aid as a matter of policy. Nor had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS or CNN earlier put on dissenting voices to balance North’s pro-contra pleas--eloquent, passionate speeches that somehow passed as testimony.

“We been hearin’ this speech for four (actually, six) days now,” a seemingly resigned Rep. Dante Fascell (D, Fla.), who had voted for contra aid, said on CBS Tuesday. “One more time is just one more time.”

If North had been allowed to show his slides on a screen in addition to describing them, moreover, all of the networks apparently would have routinely carried that spectacle, too, live and unfiltered, as if it were legitimate testimony instead of artful propaganda.

Why was North able to give even his slideless presentation, despite the fact that those on the panel who opposed it reportedly had enough votes to block it? Because even panel members who opposed North also feared him; feared appearing to abuse, mistreat or squelch him; feared that public opinion polls were right about his enormous popularity.

“He has succeeded in getting a free ride for his case for the contras,” Hume noted Monday. Succeeded with the help of TV.

You knew that North’s detractors were in trouble last week as soon as he began speaking the language TV understands best: 30-second sound bites.

He also knew how to apply a capper. You say that the late CIA Director William Casey was a smart man? North adds: “smartest I’ve ever met.” You say the people working for North in support of the contras were patriots? North adds: “brave young patriots.”

North is the genie who refuses to return to his bottle.

“He’s punched absolutely every possible button,” Cokie Roberts said on PBS last week. “There’s not an emotional chord he’s not plucked here. The committee members recognize a good performance when they see one. After all, they’re politicians and are in the performance business themselves.”

Yes, performance. There was the earnest North. The wounded North. The fighting North. The resolute North. The sheepish North. The righteous North. The sincere North. There was North the puppy dog, obedient, loyal, soulful.

There was North the metaphor, a living, charismatic amalgamation of six days of TV-tailored symbols.

One was that daily stack of telegrams on the table beside him, a symbol of broad support that we were told transcended even the possible illegality of some of his actions in the Iran-contra affair. Some of the mail was undoubtedly the result of an orchestrated campaign, based on a look at California’s Trinity Broadcasting Network. Its viewers were urged to write letters of support to North, urged to do that during a program on which one TV preacher labeled congressional opponents of North as “traitors.”

Another obvious symbol was North’s Marine uniform and his rows of ribbons and medals. There were the flattering TV angles of North, too, mostly full front or half-profile, enhancing his all-Americanism look while almost always hiding his pugilist-like flattened nose.

Because of the position of the witness table in the caucus room, moreover, North always seemed to be looking upward, almost worshipful, as if in separate communication with deity, as if the Lord were on his side.

Never were the symbols more evident than in North’s questioning by Senate Chief Counsel Arthur Liman.

It was apple pie versus bagels and cream cheese.

North was lean and trim, Liman jowly and double-chinned. North was Huck Finn and Jimmy Stewart fused into one, saying he thought that diverting funds from Iran to the contras was a “neat idea”; Liman the abrasive, obnoxious Eastener, who gave another pronunciation to North’s “neat idear.”

North had a wife named Betsy, as in Betsy Ross. You imagined them living behind a white picket fence. Liman looked sweaty and stealthy, from his hooded lids to his futile attempts to hide his baldness.

North was in a profession where men fought and died for their country. Liman was the heavy-browed Ayatollah of law, in a profession known for charging high fees.

And so it went for Oliver North, as he spent six days being a self-proclaimed living, breathing badge for a cause.

The story about the CIA’s plot to humiliate Fidel Castro fits here. The Samson-inspired plan was to deprive Castro of his beard, thereby reducing his influence by subjecting him to ridicule in Cuba and the Third World. Today, it sounds foolish.

One more example of the symbol being mistaken for the man.