THE IRAN--CONTRA HEARINGS : Who Was Rogue Elephant, Who the Second Banana? : Dramatis Personae: a Cast Change

John M. Poindexter was supposed to be the incarnate White House staff man--the dutiful second banana who does everything for the boss except make decisions, taking no risks, and finding his reward in a private pat on the back.

Everything fit the image: the ever-present pipe, the glasses, the Ph.D. from Caltech, the gentle manner and the ego that easily accepted a place in the background.

He was, a former Navy boss wrote in an efficiency report, “a brilliant and very effective aide, totally loyal and trustworthy, a thorough briefer who rarely injects his own viewpoints.”

But the picture presented in the last two days of Congress’ Iran- contra hearings is a far different one.

‘Take the Spear’

At the climactic moment, it was Poindexter who stepped forward to “take the spear,” attesting that he--not President Reagan--was responsible for diverting Iran arms profits to the contras.

It was a dramatic turnabout. The two central characters in the convoluted affair, Poindexter and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, had undergone a seeming role reversal that perplexed interrogators and taxed the theories of how the disaster’s ingredients had been concocted.

Investigators are, for now anyway, confronted with a drastically altered picture of both men.

At the outset, North was supposed to be the “rogue elephant,” the “loose cannon,” a Rambo operating by rules he made up as he went along; and it was North who had supposedly been designated to fall on his sword if the affair became known. Poindexter had appeared to be the careful bureaucrat in the staff role as an extension of the Boss himself.

A Much Shorter Leash

The picture emerging in recent days, however, portrays an Oliver North who operated on a much shorter leash than had been supposed, and a Poindexter who took the risky and perhaps disastrous decision to keep the big secret from the President.

Clearly, some members of the congressional committees investigating the affair continued to have doubts that the entire diversion decision rested so completely on Poindexter’s shoulders.

The frustration surfaced in sharp exchanges with Poindexter’s lawyer, Richard W. Beckler. He complained that lawmakers and Senate committee counsel Arthur L. Liman had been unfair by expressing skepticism at Poindexter’s account. He tried without success to fend off hypothetical questions and repeated excursions through Poindexter’s story.

An irritated Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) lectured the attorney on committee rules and made it clear he had his doubts.

‘Withheld Information’

” . . . When we sit here and listen to your testimony, in which you tell us that you have either withheld information from, misled, or misinformed the Congress of the United States, that you have withheld information from the President, that you have either withheld information from, or misled, or misinformed the highest ranking Cabinet members of the United States, that you have withheld information from your most trusted deputy . . . I don’t think it is improper for any member of this panel to characterize that testimony as being incredible, mind-boggling, chilling. I think they are all proper.”

Although North was steadfastly loyal to Poindexter in his own appearance before the panel, he had planted a seed of doubt in advance about the admiral’s acceptance of responsibility.

Earlier, North said, he had assumed that Poindexter was forwarding his memoranda proposing diversion of money for the contras on up to the President. Moreover, he said, when a plan was devised for him to be the “fall guy” if the plot became public, the late William J. Casey, director of the CIA, suggested it might be necessary to have a scapegoat of greater stature than a Marine lieutenant colonel.

Traces of Irritation

Unlike the combative North, who seized the offensive, the inscrutable Poindexter contented himself with detailing his role and showing only occasional traces of irritation with interrogators and with public accounts of his testimony.

Explaining again his destruction of the “finding” in which President Reagan approved the sale of arms to Iran in December, 1985, Poindexter said accounts in recent days have borne out his concern that the document would be misinterpreted as approving a straight arms-for-hostages swap.

“On ‘Nightline’ last night,” he said, “the moderator said that I had testified that it was simply an arms-for-hostage swap arrangement,” he said. “That’s not what I testified, and that’s not what happened.

“When I saw that finding, on the 21st of November of 1986 . . . I didn’t go through a long, orderly thought process as to what to do with that. At that point, I was damned annoyed. I was still annoyed that I had been pressured in getting that signed before it was fully staffed, and so without thinking about it, I tore the finding up.”

It was an action that seemed as unlikely for the consummate staff man as the decision not to tell the President that the Nicaraguan contras were the beneficiaries of profits from the arms sale.