Packard Joins in ‘Family Salute’ to North

As a restive crowd downed the final hot dogs and waited for the featured speaker, Orange County Congressman Ron Packard took a stab Sunday at explaining the special appeal of the guest of honor: former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North.

“I’ve never felt he was a criminal by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve always considered him a patriot,” Packard said.

“Obviously, he didn’t keep all the rules, but the intent was there . . . I think there are a lot of Americans who have always considered what he did . . . the appropriate thing to do.”

Packard (R-Carlsbad), along with Reps. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) were among nearly four dozen members of Congress who lent their names and support to a “Family Salute to Oliver North” in this suburban town 20 miles west of Washington. Packard, however, was the only congressman who attended.

Under crystal clear fall skies and a yellow-and-white striped tent, a crowd of perhaps 500 conservatives from throughout the country heard North, the central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, exhort them to press on with the goals of former President Ronald Reagan.

“The left and the media and the intellectual elite of this nation are telling us that the battle is won,” North told the crowd. However, he added, “we can’t walk away . . . just because the musician in Moscow has changed. . . . The fact is, (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev doesn’t want to scrap communism, he wants to save it.”

In an address that continued for nearly an hour, North offered a litany of conservative thought, attacking the news media, big spenders in Congress, and most of all the continuing influence of global communism.

The United States, North warned his appreciative audience, “is still a country at risk in a dangerous world.”

It was North’s first major address in the Washington area since he was convicted by a federal jury on May 4 of three felony charges stemming from his role in the Iran-Contra affair. North aided in a plan to secretly sell arms to Iran to raise funds for the anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua.

North had campaigned for both Cox and Rohrabacher in their campaigns last year, and both have said his support was a factor in their election to first terms in Congress.

Packard, whose district includes the southern section of Orange County, said he believes the county has a particular affinity with North and his cause.

“I think it’s the nature of the area. We’re a very conservative county,” Packard said.

“We dropped the ball as far as Congress is concerned. . . . The Contras were our only hope,” he added. “Now there’s a well-entrenched Sandinista government (in Nicaragua). Well, Oliver North did what he could to change that, and I did what I could to change that, and neither one of us was successful.”

Sunday’s event, which included a barbecue as well as North’s speech, was sponsored by the Legal Affairs Council, a conservative legal action group, and the Conservative Network. It was held at the headquarters of the Legal Affairs Council, which has raised about $300,000 for North’s legal defense.

Sunday’s affair, however, was not intended to make money. “We wanted to make the price such that families could afford to attend,” said Michael Boos, spokesman for the council. Boos said the event probably grossed $10,000, but cost several times that to stage. He would not disclose North’s speaking fee.

The maximum ticket price of $30 was not a factor in Peter P. Vizel’s decision to attend. President of American Marketing Concepts in Beverly Hills, Vizel, a Romanian emigre, flew in for the event from California.

“I’ve been behind Ollie from the beginning,” Vizel said. “If he did everything that he was accused of doing, he should not only be president of the U.S., but king of the world. How could one man do all that with all those people above him?”

One North supporter whose name was conspicuously absent from the list of congressional sponsors was that of Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).

Dornan, who sat with North’s family during the reading of the guilty verdicts in May, said last week that he was not participating because of an old dispute with the president of the Legal Affairs Council, Richard A. Delgaudio, over the unauthorized use of Dornan’s name in a fund-raising letter.

Said Boos, the council’s spokesman, “I think it’s probably a misunderstanding.”