THE NORTH TAPES: PLAY IT AGAIN, OLLIE : 2 Videos Are Flawed as History, Entertainment

He walks. He talks. He charms. He alarms. Here’s another chance to O.D. on O.N.

The first two Ollie North-wows-America-at-the-Iran- contra -hearings videos are on the market, hitting the shelves, amazingly, just as the nation notes the 50th anniversary of Superman. Give them as gifts. Use them as bookends. Play them at parties. Dance to them. Romance to them.

Actually, it’s difficult imagining anyone--even fanatic Olliephiles--parting with $19.95 for MPI Home Video’s “Oliver North: Memo to History” or $24.98 for Forum Home Video’s “Lt. Col. Oliver North: His Story.” Who needs these highlight reels?

Better to wait for the Ollie book and miniseries.

If the call of the North is irresistible, though, be advised at least that MPI’s 90-minute video is vastly better than Forum’s two-hour version that’s produced in association with Turner Home Entertainment and Cable News Network.

And, by the way, what in the world is a credible news organization like CNN doing putting its stamp on a video whose very existence glorifies a pro-Ollie viewpoint and whose opening and closing all but deify him? How can CNN justify trying to cash in on the same man and marketing marvel it also covers as part of its 24-hour news mandate?

Each video consists of excerpts from the pool feed that supplied North’s July 7-14 testimony to the networks, PBS and CNN, footage whose copyright is still in dispute. Each presents the material by topic, not chronologically. Each is deeply flawed as history and entertainment. And despite the absence of narration, each in its own way celebrates North by treating his words as sacrosanct. If his testimony didn’t merit inscription in stone, apart from the other witnesses, then why these videos? Right?

In promotional material hyping “Memo to History,” MPI even declares that North’s testimony has been called “one of the major events of our time.” If not our time, at least July.

The MPI video does capture some of the combative flavor of the hearings in addition to repeating chunks of North’s most familiar testimony, whereas “His Story” is a tedious Ollie-only story, even if the colonel is your hero.

“Memo to History” initially delivers North only in short, choppy, snappy sound bites, some of which are misleadingly juxtaposed for dramatic effect, before settling into relative sobriety.

Like “His Story,” it fairly represents North’s most significant testimony. Unlike “His Story,” it also echoes some of North’s most volatile moments at the hearings. Those include his often ugly clashes with Senate chief counsel Arthur Liman and House chief counsel John W. Nields Jr. and those angry blasts by Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., North’s attorney, who admonished North’s critics to “get off his back!”

Unlike the other video, “Memo to History” also offers extended excerpts from some of the panelists. Hear Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) brand North’s testimony “chilling and frightening.” Hear House committee Chairman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) lecture North. Hear Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) assure America: “You don’t have to be perfect to be a hero.”

By squeezing in some panelists, “A Memo to History” at least acknowledges that there was more to North’s appearance than Snow White Ollie and the Congressional Dwarfs.

Not so “His Story.” Except for some questions from Nields, a sentence or two from Senate committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and one terse question from Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) early in the video, “His Story” is dead true to its title.

Verbally, no one else exists. Not the scrappy Sullivan who, next to North, was probably the most dominant figure during his client’s testimony. Not Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who used his jackhammering style to repeatedly praise North. And not any of the panelists who devoted some of their time to rebut North, such as Stokes or Sen. Warren V. Rudman (R-N.H.) or Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), whose lecture to North on the meaning of patriotism was one of the most eloquent statements of the hearings.

If there were one speech that you’d include in a time capsule as a balancing condemnation of North’s tactics, it would be Mitchell’s.

Like “Memo to History,” “His Story” naturally includes North’s best speeches, the ones delivered in a wavery, emotional, pious voice that enthralled so many Americans while angering others. And like “Memo to History,” it capsulizes the most critical elements of North’s testimony: the “neat idea” of using Iran arms sales bucks to finance the Nicaraguan contras; the alleged “fall guy” plan to shield President Reagan; the apparent exoneration of the President; the shredding disclosures; the link to CIA Director William J. Casey, and so on and so on.

Boiling more than 30 hours of testimony down to two or less is an awesome job. Yet it’s impossible to regard as complete--or even honest--any video of North’s testimony that virtually omits other significant players in the same room, one ignoring his profoundly symbolic clashes with Liman (maybe they’ll hit the lecture circuit together a la former foes G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary), one leaving out Liman’s dressing down by conservative Republicans on the panel.

What’s more, neither of these videos is an accurate reading of North if for no other reason than both were prepared, apparently, prior to vital portions of North’s testimony on the videos being later challenged by former National Security advisers Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter and by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

Such selective history may be tolerable from entertainment-minded MPI, but not from CNN, whose participation in this effort--CNN anchor Bernard Shaw is the admiring host and writer--becomes a de facto endorsement of North.

Ironically, MPI is more journalistic than the CNN-connected “His Life,” which includes North’s entire 20-minute opening statement attacking Congress as obstructionist and the hearings as damaging to the nation’s and his own interests. “It has been difficult to see questions raised about my morality, integrity, character. . . .” Then the voice cracks.

If you couldn’t handle North, though, Shaw’s opening could be lethal:

“Oliver Lawrence North, Lt. Col., United States Marine Corps. This man from Upstate New York. This man from the sweaty boxing ring at the Annapolis Academy. This decorated blood-and-guts man from Vietnam, where bullets tore flesh and men died, this family man of love and care, this man whose mortal enemy is communism and aggression. This man whose brute determination to win, forces exhaustion and the word no into submission. This man of many dos and very few don’ts. It fell to this man to become the switching point for President Reagan’s determined effort to help the Nicaraguan contras, the freedom fighters, ‘the resistance,’ as North called them.”

Whew.

A tad overblown, would you say? For further evidence of Shaw having mentally tucked himself into North’s hip pocket, though, try this finale:

“The drumbeat he heard, the drumbeat he marched to, came down the path of freedom, a path taken by fallen comrades in arms whose bed of soil is marked by these stones,” says the CNN anchorman as the camera pans the graves of American war dead.

“This man dedicated his zeal to them, determined that never again would he yield an inch to anyone, to any force in the fight for freedom,” adds Shaw as the camera pans the Vietnam War Memorial. “This wall of death, the Vietnam War Memorial, is his reminder of that cause, whether it be in behalf of hostages or people resisting tyranny. Right or wrong, he believed it when he said, ‘We have to weigh the difference between lies and lives.’ ”

Can’t wait for the Poindexter video.