North Convicted on Three of 12 Charges : Calls It Partial Vindication, Vows Appeal; He Faces 10-Year Term, $750,000 Fine

Oliver L. North, the central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, was convicted Thursday on three felony charges of altering and destroying top-secret documents, helping to mislead Congress and illegally accepting the gift of a $13,800 home security system.

The federal court jury, returning its verdict 2 1/2 years after the foreign policy scandal erupted, acquitted the 45-year-old retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel of nine other charges.

North, wearing a dark-gray suit and striped tie, sat ramrod-straight at the defense table as U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell read the jury findings handed up by foreman Denise Anderson, a hospital secretary, after the panel had deliberated 12 days.

North then rose to talk briefly with Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., his defense attorney, before walking to the gallery and kissing his wife, Betsy, who was sitting in the front row.

At a crowded press briefing two hours later, the former White House aide called the outcome “a partial vindication” and vowed to appeal the guilty verdicts until he is exonerated.

“As a Marine, I was taught to fight and fight hard, for as long as it takes to prevail,” he said, looking grim and weary. “We will continue this battle and with the support and prayers of the American people, we will be fully vindicated.”

Gesell set sentencing for June 23, when North will face a possible maximum punishment of 10 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. The judge allowed North to remain free on bond during his appeal, a process that normally takes about 18 months.

Prosecutors Satisfied

Although North was found innocent of the majority of the charges, prosecutors appeared satisfied with the outcome.

John W. Keker, an associate independent counsel and former Marine who clashed sharply with North during the defendant’s five days on the witness stand, told more than 100 reporters and cameramen gathered outside the U.S. Courthouse that “some said our system of justice could not deal fairly, if at all,” with what in essence was a power struggle between the Ronald Reagan White House and Congress.

The judgment that North committed crimes, he said, shows that “no man is above the law.”

In his brief statement at his lawyer’s office, North did not conceal his bitterness over the exhaustive scrutiny of his secret work to help the U.S. hostages in Lebanon and the rebels in Nicaragua through arms sales to Iran.

“Certainly I hoped that this battle would be behind us by now, but today’s was not a complete victory,” he said. “After more than 2 1/2 years and over $40 million of our taxpayers’ money spent on investigations, congressional inquisitions and now a special prosecutor who has likened me to Adolf Hitler, we now face many months and perhaps years of fighting the remaining charges.”

Sullivan, who called the guilty verdicts “disappointing,” asserted: “We expect to prevail. . . .”

The jurors, who heard testimony from more than 60 witnesses and sifted through 1,300 pages of trial documents, gave no detailed comments on their deliberations. But the verdict indicated that they gave considerable weight to North’s key defense argument that all of his controversial actions were taken at the behest of his White House superiors.

One juror, unemployed security guard Earl F. Williams, characterized the decision as “tough” and said that the panel had done a “lot of bickering and arguing,” accompanying their votes for conviction with a “strong prayer.”

Cleared on Nine Counts

The nine charges on which North was acquitted alleged that he made untruthful statements to Congress about his secret support for the Contras, misused a Contra “operational fund” and conspired to defraud the Internal Revenue Service through Contra fund-raising efforts.

Those counts left largely to the jury’s discretion whether North was acting with criminal intent in conducting and concealing his operations during Congress’ two-year ban on U.S. military support for the Contras, or whether he was following what he believed to be legal orders from high-level executive branch officials.

In contrast, the charges on which North was convicted were relatively simple and involved the least conflicting testimony.

Jurors convicted North of “aiding and abetting” the obstruction of Congress by drafting “false and misleading chronologies” relating to U.S. arms sales to Iran in 1985. The chronologies gave Congress a distorted picture of the sales of Hawk missiles and suggested falsely that Israel--rather than North himself--decided to funnel some profits to benefit the Contras. North did not deny that he helped prepare them.

Top-Secret Files

Similarly, the jury found North guilty of a separate charge relating to his mishandling of top-secret White House files as the Iran-Contra operation was unraveling in November, 1986, and investigators were beginning to investigate who was responsible.

At the trial, Fawn Hall, North’s former secretary, whose appearance at televised congressional hearings in 1987 created a media sensation, told jurors that she helped North remove, destroy and change National Security Council memos to wipe out clues to his covert activities.

Testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecution, Hall said that the “shredding party,” as it came to be known, took place in late November, 1986, only days before Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III went on national television to announce discovery of the fund diversion scheme.

North, during his testimony, acknowledged an act of “stupidity” in allowing Hall to smuggle some sensitive documents out of his White House office in her clothing. But he explained that he wanted documents that would show he had the support of higher officials for what he had been doing.

On the “illegal gratuity” charge on which North was convicted, witnesses testified that former Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, a middleman in the Iran operation, used arms-sale profits to pay for construction of a $13,800 security system and electronic gate at North’s suburban Virginia home.

The defense contended that North and his family had been receiving terrorist threats and that he had tried unsuccessfully to get the Secret Service and the FBI to protect his home.

However, prosecutors showed--and North admitted--that he tried to cover up the source of the gift by fabricating back-dated letters that suggested he was taking care of the expense.

The bulk of the charges on which North was cleared related to three letters and one oral statement to members of Congress in 1985 and 1986 denying that he was helping to raise private funds for the Contras or giving them military advice.

North admitted that he had helped draft misleading letters, which were signed and sent by his superior, then-National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane. But he said that he did so only because McFarlane refused to accept his advice to refuse to provide answers at all.

North also said that he understood it was the policy of the Reagan White House that such efforts “were not to be divulged to Congress.”

McFarlane, a key prosecution witness who had pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor charges, testified that he did not realize the letters were false. But even Gesell at one point questioned McFarlane’s credibility.

‘Political Warfare’

Noting that congressional inquiries were aimed at him during the 1984-1986 period in which Congress had banned direct and indirect U.S. military aid to the Contras, North said that he had been caught in the cross fire of “internecine political warfare” between Congress and the White House.

“It never occurred to me that any answers given to Congress in this atmosphere could be considered unlawful,” he told jurors several times. “I was a pawn in a political chess game played by giants.”

A year later, in 1986, North met face-to-face with a select group of House members in the super-secret White House Situation Room to tell them the same false story--that rumors he was defying the Contra aid ban were untrue.

A parade of witnesses testified in painstaking detail that while North was making these statements to Congress, he was busy meeting with private donors to raise money, poring over lists of military equipment and weapons that the rebels needed, solving logistical problems to get privately purchased supplies to them and providing them with tactical military advice in their guerrilla war against the leftist Sandinista government.

North testified that he was carrying out the wishes of William J. Casey, the late CIA director, who believed that North should replace the CIA as the chief U.S. contact with the Contras after Congress barred the CIA’s role.

The jury apparently was persuaded that North believed that executive branch officials could sanction his work.

North also was acquitted of a charge that he conspired to defraud the United States of tax revenue in a scheme that allowed donors to claim their contributions as tax deductions. Carl (Spitz) Channell, founder of a conservative tax-exempt foundation who has pleaded guilty to tax fraud, testified that he and North solicited funds for the Contras through the organization.

But one large donor, Texas widow Ellen Garwood, testified for the defense that North never advised her on tax matters and that only Channell ever asked her for money.

On another charge, the jury found North innocent of illegally converting $4,300 in Contra operational funds for his own use, cashing traveler’s checks to pay for automobile tires, hosiery for his wife and other personal bills.

North argued that he was only reimbursing himself for his out-of-pocket expenses for the Contras, and Contra leader Adolfo Calero testified that he had no doubt of North’s honesty, declaring: “I would trust Col. North with my life.”

The charges weighed by the jury represented a narrower case scaled down from the original indictment in March, 1988. Last January, independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh was forced to drop the central charges--conspiracy to defraud the United States and theft of government property--when Reagan Administration officials decided that key national security documents on those points were too sensitive to be revealed in open court.

North’s trial, in fact, was the first major case to be tried under terms of the Classified Information Procedures Act, a law enacted by Congress in 1980 to try to keep criminal defendants from practicing “graymail”--threatening to reveal national security secrets in court to keep the government from prosecuting them.

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