THE IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS : Lectures and Challenges : Mitchell Emerges as Key Questioner

He lectured Oliver L. North, pestered John M. Poindexter and challenged Richard V. Secord.

And Wednesday, as the long-running Iran- contra hearings labored tediously toward an end, Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) performed the congressional equivalent of a strip search on the attorney general of the United States.

The senator, a former district attorney and federal judge, got Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to painfully acknowledge that he had not gotten the truth out of the key players in the Iran-contra affair, including his old friend, CIA Director William J. Casey. Then he led Meese to acknowledge that he had not taken notes in several conversations with principal figures as he conducted his fact-finding mission for the President.

Among them was Poindexter, then national security adviser, who has since taken responsibility for approving the diversion of money from secret Iranian arms sales to the anti-Sandinista insurgency in Nicaragua.

‘Hard to Accept’

“Giving you every benefit of the doubt, I think it’s difficult to understand. . . . It’s just very hard to accept,” Mitchell told the nation’s top law enforcement officer, who turned out to be a bewildering witness.

Ever affable, ever patient, ever accommodating, Meese left the committee with his humor intact and the credibility of his investigation--though battered--still standing.

Only Mitchell had notable success in crystallizing the flaws critics had found in the hurried investigation that Meese conducted before his stunning disclosure of the fund diversion to the contras.

Indeed, the 53-year-old senator, little known to the public before the nationally televised hearings began, has emerged as the most consistently effective questioner among the 26 members on the House and Senate committees investigating the affair.

He had one of the toughest and most-prized assignments in his role as a principal questioner of fired White House aide North.

After angry exchanges between the committees and North’s lawyer, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., as well as an outpouring of support for the combative Marine lieutenant colonel, Mitchell created a moment of high drama during the hearings when he gave North a courteous lecture on patriotism.

“Of all the qualities which the American people find compelling about you, none is more impressive than your obvious deep devotion to this country,” Mitchell told North. “Please remember that others share that devotion and recognize that it is possible for an American to disagree with you on aid to the contras and still love God and still love this country just as much as you do. . . .

“Debate this issue forcefully and vigorously, as you have and as you surely will, but please do it in a way that respects the patriotism and the motives of those who disagree with you, as you would have them respect yours.”

Although little noticed beyond the Senate club, Mitchell’s political star was rising long before the Iran-contra hearings.

He was chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and as a result of his success there--the Democrats regained the majority in 1986--was named deputy president pro tempore of the Senate.

Now the talk in Senate corridors is that Mitchell might even aspire to succeed Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) as Senate majority leader in the next Congress. Until now, it has been widely assumed that the job would go to Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, the chairman of the Senate’s Iran-contra panel.

Mitchell was brought to the Senate by another foreign policy crisis born in Iran. He was a United States circuit judge in May, 1980, when Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance resigned in protest of the Jimmy Carter Administration’s attempt to rescue the hostages seized in the American Embassy in Tehran.

When Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Me.), Mitchell’s friend and mentor, was appointed secretary of state, Mitchell was appointed to the Senate.

In 1982, Republican strategists considered him their top-priority target. But Mitchell, who had once lost a race for governor, astounded the experts by winning by a huge margin.

Changes Campaign Style

“He was a totally different person than he had been in the gubernatorial race,” said a longtime friend. “In that race, he had been stiff, humorless, hopeless--but, when he ran for the Senate in 1982, he was positively garrulous.”

In his early years in the Senate, though, he was a model of New England reticence, and his emergence in the Iran-contra hearings has surprised even some of his longtime admirers.

When he finished his questioning of Meese on Wednesday, Mitchell was as circumspect as he had been philosophical after his questioning of Oliver North.

Meese’s fact-finding undertaking in November, he told interviewers, was carried out “in a rather careless manner.” Still, he said, he had not found grounds to challenge its basic integrity, and he would not apply the word “cover-up.”

“I think,” he said, “that it was really careless without real thought to the implications of what was going on.”

Although the hourlong exchange with the attorney general was gentlemanly, Meese was irked and, for one of the few times during his two days of testimony, let his irritation show when Mitchell several times observed that the account was “hard to accept.”

Evidently considering it unseemly to lecture the attorney general as he had North, Mitchell ended with sarcasm.

“I want to commend you for your condemnation of lying to the attorney general and lying to Congress and I will see if, in closing, I can’t get one more condemnation from you. . . . Can I ask you if you would not also condemn the destruction of documents by government officials?”