The Nation - News from April 11, 1988

The White House attorney who offered the only known legal justification for Lt. Col. Oliver L. North’s secret Contra aid operation was fired last September for failing to disclose that he had flunked four bar exams, sources said. The White House Intelligence Oversight Board discharged Bretton Sciaroni, its counsel, for not telling the panel when he applied for the job in 1984 that he had recently failed two bar exams in California and two in the District of Columbia, the sources said. Revelations about Sciaroni’s test failures emerged last June when he acknowledged them in testimony before the House-Senate Iran-Contra committees. Ken Patrich, Sciaroni’s attorney, said the board knew Sciaroni had not passed a bar exam and made it a condition of employment that he pass such an exam. He later passed the Pennsylvania bar exam.