North Defense Rests as He Admits Act of ‘Stupidity’

Oliver L. North, concluding his defense against charges arising from the Iran-Contra scandal, wearily admitted Thursday that he had committed an act of “stupidity” in helping his secretary remove top-secret documents from the White House.

Looking wan and tired, North rested his case after six days of sometimes grueling testimony about his role in arranging the 1986 sale of U.S. arms to Iran and supplying aid to the Contras in Nicaragua at a time when such assistance had been banned by Congress.

Defense attorney Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. finished his presentation without further questioning of North, indicating that the eight-week trial is nearly over. U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell said the jury will begin deliberations next week after testimony from prosecution rebuttal witnesses and closing arguments by both sides.

North, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and former White House aide, is charged with 12 felony counts stemming from the Iran-Contra scandal. The charges include lying to Congress, accepting an illegal gift, destroying official documents and tax fraud.

If found guilty on all counts, he faces up to 60 years in prison and $3 million in fines.

In his defense testimony, North characterized himself as the scapegoat in the Iran-Contra affair. He said he had explicit authorization from his superiors, and presumably from then-President Ronald Reagan, for his actions.

As he completed 13 hours of intense cross-examination Thursday, North was asked by prosecutor John W. Keker why he had not ordered Fawn Hall, his former secretary, to return the documents she was smuggling out in his presence on the day he was fired.

“I’m not trying to make excuses for stupidity, because there are none,” North said evenly. “But I was with an attorney friend who had told me I should get something to protect myself. So I didn’t tell her to take them back.”

North reiterated that Sullivan, whom he hired as his attorney a week later, promptly insisted on returning the 168 pages of sensitive documents to the White House. Those documents included some files that North had removed a few days before his secretary’s action.

North said all of the material eventually was returned to the White House.

In his final hours on the stand, the 45-year-old defendant denied repeatedly that he had obstructed a presidential inquiry into the Iran-Contra scandal by lying to then-Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III during an interview on Nov. 23, 1986, two days before Reagan fired North from his job at the National Security Council.

After the defendant left the stand, CIA clerk Maurice Sovern testified that daily logs of William J. Casey, the late CIA director, showed that Casey had 157 telephone conversations and 26 personal meetings with North between January, 1984, and November, 1986.

Sovern’s testimony was designed to shore up North’s defense that his secret activities in support of the Contras from 1984 to 1986 had the blessing of Casey and some other senior Reagan Administration officials.

North’s denial that he had tried to mislead Meese and other Justice Department officials contrasted with his frank acknowledgement last week of having lied to Congress. North said he had received instructions from his superiors that secret Contra fund-raising efforts were “not to be shared” with Congress for fear of jeopardizing a rebel resupply mission as well as the lives or reputations of Central American government officials who were helping him.

“I tried to be as straightforward as I could during this free-flowing dialogue of four hours,” North said of his interrogation by Meese and other top department officials.

North acknowledged that he had shredded a number of documents the day before the interview with Meese.

“I may well have destroyed some documents that focused on Central America,” North said. “I didn’t think that was relevant to what Mr. Meese’s people were looking for, which was Iranian arms sales.”

When Keker kept pressing North about notes taken by former Meese aide John N. Richardson that conflicted with North’s recollection of what he had told Meese, the judge mildly rebuked Keker, much as a referee would admonish a prizefighter in the ring.

“Just try to find out what Col. North told the attorney general,” Gesell told Keker. “The jury is entitled to hear that.”

Keker asked North if he had expressed surprise and disappointment to learn that Meese’s aides had found a key memorandum revealing that proceeds from the Iranian arms sale had gone to the Contras.

“I was disappointed that Mr. Meese found this memo,” North replied with a tight smile. “I don’t think I said ‘surprised’ . . . I certainly understood there were secrets within secrets, and this was the biggest.”

Brandishing a copy of Richardson’s notes, Keker then asked North if he recalled telling Meese that aside from North and his National Security Council superiors, Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter, no other U.S. officials were involved in the covert activities.

“No, I don’t remember telling them that or not telling them that,” North said in a tired voice. “I don’t remember a lot of this.”

Two days after North’s session with Meese, the attorney general told a news conference attended by Reagan that North was the only U.S. official who knew everything about the arms-sale diversion and that criminal laws may have been violated.

“It was one of the most shocking things I’d heard in my life,” North testified.

But the news conference, North said, “was part of pointing the finger at Ollie North . . . which was, I must say, the way it was supposed to be.”