Ollie North’s Fortune Turns in Atlantic City

Oliver North, the most highly publicized Marine since Lee Harvey Oswald, has finally met his match.

Sure, Ollie made Congress roll over and play dead. Yes, he made fools of the men sent to investigate him. And, indeed, he has even stymied the judicial system for months and months.

But now it has come to an end. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission says Ollie cannot speak in Atlantic City. Because Ollie might give the place a bad name.

Atlantic City.

If this catches on, Ollie could be in big trouble. Because these days he spends his time flying around the nation giving speech after speech for a reported $25,000 a pop.

And even though he faces 14 felony counts, which could earn him 85 years in prison and fines of $4 million, he flies in private jets and rides in limousines surrounded by a retinue of bodyguards.

I caught his act during the congressional hearings last year. It was the hottest ticket on Capitol Hill. Tourists lined up for hours to get in to see Ollie. Congressmen arranged seats for honored guests. And Ollie stood there day after day giving autographs.

Oh, sure, others have raised negatives about Ollie before. Constantine C. Menges, a special assistant to the President for national security affairs from 1983 to 1986, wrote an article for the Washington Post last month titled: “The Sad, Strange Mind of Col. North.”

In it, Ollie is described as a habitual liar, a man who “often found some insidious way to discredit” rivals and a man who was “regularly exaggerating and reshaping events, and was increasingly seeking to impress people through ‘personal hype.’ ”

Menges quotes another colleague, Jacqueline Tillman, as saying: “I’ve worked here at the NSC (National Security Council) for some weeks now with Ollie North and I’ve concluded that not only is he a liar, but he’s delusional, power-hungry and a danger to the President and country.”

But how many autographs does Jacqueline Tillman give? And what kind of speaking fee does she get?

In June, I was in California and caught one of Ollie’s speeches in Long Beach. For $250 you could eat dinner with him. For $500 you could eat dinner with him and get a bottle of wine. And for $1,000 you could eat dinner with him, get a bottle of wine and have your picture taken.

Seventy-five people paid $1,000 to have their pictures taken with Ollie North.

Me, I didn’t pay anything and got to stare at him from the rear of the room. He spoke for 30 minutes. And while Ronald Reagan might not think the Soviet Union is still an evil empire, Ollie North still does. He spent almost his entire speech bashing the Soviets and telling us how if we don’t fight the communists in Central America, we will be fighting them in Houston. Or maybe it was Dallas. I forget.

The applause was deafening. Ollie would not take questions from the press and nobody in the audience asked him anything about his current troubles--about how he is charged with conspiring to defraud the U.S. government out of millions of dollars. And how he is charged with the theft of government property, receipt of an illegal gratuity, the illegal conversion of $4,300 in traveler’s checks, six counts of lying to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional inquiry.

In fact, Ollie spent 10 days this summer ducking a congressional subpoena for 3,000 pages of his secret notes that a Senate committee thought might have some information about drug smuggling and the Contras.

A U.S. Capitol police officer finally caught up with Ollie at a traffic light. The officer sprinted past Ollie’s private security guards and threw the subpoena into the window of the car where Ollie was sitting.

The subpoena hit Ollie in the chest. Ollie looked up at the cop and said: “OK, you got me.”

I think that cop had a hell of a lot of nerve. Treating Ollie North as if he were an ordinary human being and all.

Few people do treat him that way. Most treat him as if he were a star. USA Today made him their cover story in September, pointing out his speaking fee is “far ahead of those commanded by Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford or defeated Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. . . .”

“He loves it,” his booking agent said of the $25-grand speeches. “It’s therapy.”

And Ollie needs all the therapy he can get. Because not only is his trial scheduled to start early next year, but his bubble has finally burst.

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission said he could not speak at the Sands gambling casino in Atlantic City because Oliver North would be bad for the image of the gambling industry.

So one of the sleaziest industries in America, in one of the nation’s most rundown cities, is too good for Ollie North.

And I’m glad to see somebody still has standards.