NATION : Judge Ponders North’s Appeal
A federal appeals judge asked government lawyers today why Oliver L. North was not permitted to call former President Ronald Reagan as a witness at North’s Iran-Contra trial or allowed to see written answers Reagan supplied to investigators.
“You never turned over answers from Reagan to the defendant,” Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told a government attorney during a hearing on North’s appeal of his conviction.
“Why, as a matter of basic fairness,” wasn’t North permitted to examine written answers that Reagan supplied to a federal grand jury investigating the Iran-Contra affair? the appeals judge asked.
A government attorney, Gerard Lynch, told the appeals court that the former President’s written answers would not have been helpful to North.
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