Dornan Urges President to Pardon North

Declaring that Oliver L. North was the “fall guy” for former President Reagan’s “gutless advisers,” an angry Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) on Wednesday urged President Bush to formally pardon North, the central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

“Jimmy Carter pardoned draft dodgers, and they can all vote and run for office. . . . I serve with some of them in Congress,” Dornan said as he stood outside the U.S. Courthouse here and made public a letter signed by 58 members of Congress calling for a North pardon.

Dornan, who sat with North’s wife, Betsy, and the family’s clergyman during North’s sentencing, spoke to reporters moments after U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell fined North $150,000 but spared him a term in prison. Nearby, about 30 North supporters carried placards urging a presidential pardon and expressing sentiments such as “Oliver North, American Hero.”

Dornan said he was surprised by the leniency of the sentence, which includes a requirement that the 45-year-old former Marine lieutenant colonel and White House aide perform 1,200 hours of community service in an anti-drug program.

As a result, Dornan said he would not immediately forward the congressional letter to the White House, but wait to give the President a chance to react to North’s sentencing “without whatever pressure a letter from 58 congressmen applies on the executive branch.”

However, a White House spokesman said there would be no reaction, and that a North pardon has not been discussed.

North should be pardoned, Dornan said, to permit him to run for federal office, should he choose.

While expressing continued admiration for Reagan, Dornan told reporters that he believed the former President reneged on an implied promise to pardon both North and his one-time boss, former national security adviser John M. Poindexter.

At a meeting between Reagan and congressional Republicans in late 1987 or early 1988, Dornan said, he stood in line behind Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) as Hyde greeted the President. “Henry said, ‘Mr. President, some fine day before you leave office, preferably Veterans Day . . . do you think you could find it in your heart, sir, and go down to that Vietnam memorial and pardon two courageous people who have served their country so well, Adm. Poindexter and Col. North?’

“And the President said, to the best of my recollection, ‘Well, Henry, some fine day that just might happen.’ ”

Dornan said, “I took it as a promise. . . . I thought the President would do just that. We’re all shocked that he didn’t.”

Spokesmen for both Reagan and Hyde said they personally were unaware of the incident and could not immediately confirm that it occurred.

A member of the House Armed Services Committee, Dornan has long criticized congressional efforts to restrict military aid to the Contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. North was convicted of three felonies in connection with his efforts to funnel to the Contras profits from secret arms sales to the Iranian government.

“I believe he was a fall guy,” Dornan said of North. “I warned Ollie North that the White House would break him. . . . I said to Ollie North, ‘Ollie, they are giving you too much responsibility. . . . You are wearing too many hats.’

“Instead of doing anything” about problems in Central America, Dornan said, “the moderate, gutless advisers to President Reagan . . . turned Ollie and Poindexter loose on their own. . . .

“This man was pushed to the point of (making) minor mistakes because the White House was relying on the only man of action there,” Dornan said, “while (former Reagan adviser) Mike Deaver was running around like some sleaze-ball trying to block people of substance from getting to President Reagan and telling him to go on television on Central America, not on tax reform. . . .”

In addition to Dornan, those who signed the letter urging a North pardon included Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita), C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad).

NORTH SENTENCED. Suspended term, $150,000 fine. Part I, Page 1