REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Poindexter Image Goes From Jaunty to Steely

Former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter smiles rarely and takes notes often at his Iran-Contra trial.

Because he has not testified yet, the jury must rely a good deal on its mental snapshots of his image as he sits at a table opposite them every day. But that image poses a riddle.

The balding retired rear admiral has grown a mustache since his days in the Ronald Reagan Administration as Oliver L. North’s boss. When he takes off his glasses, the mustache softens his manner. In fact, it lends him a jaunty, sportsman’s outdoors look, as if he were a British country squire.

But, when he puts his glasses back on, as he does often to read and take notes, his features seem to freeze into stern, steely coldness. The glasses and mustache combine to complete a look that recalls the balding, mustached old Bolshevik of Stalin’s day, V. M. Molotov.

By now, North has fashioned a public image as a Marine of great derring-do and energy; a glib patriot who could charm and tongue-tie doubting congressmen with ease; a fervent worker who knew how to get things done, no matter what the cost; a government official who did not hesitate to speak his mind or change dreams into action. He is a hero to many Americans and earns thousands of dollars per speech these days.

Yet, with no television cameras present, the jurors in the Poindexter trial watched a far different Ollie North for his four days in the witness box. Hesitant, forgetful, wearing a puzzled brow, North professed an extraordinary failure to remember where he was and what he did on some of the most momentous days of his life. He hemmed and hawed about what he did admit remembering.

Prosecutor Dan K. Webb accused North of trying to protect his old boss. Yet North’s replies were not always helpful to Poindexter. In bringing up the charge that Poindexter conspired with North to hide what had happened in the Iran-Contra affair, defense attorney Richard W. Beckler asked North: “Do you remember Adm. Poindexter saying, ‘Let’s keep this from Congress?’ ”

“I do not recall him saying that.”

“Because nobody said that, isn’t that right?”

“I do not recall what anyone did or did not say.”

North sat stiffly upright throughout most of his testimony, frequently asking that he be allowed to refresh his memory by consulting his testimony in his own trial or to Congress. He would then go through the transcripts methodically, his fingers seeking pages almost daintily.

But his memory did manage to eke out some replies when he felt pressed by an angry Judge Harold H. Greene or badgered by prosecutor Webb. And, in one moment most damaging to Poindexter, he admitted under blistering questioning by Webb that, following his old boss’s instructions to take care of a group of congressmen, he had marched into the White House Situation Room and lied to them.

The courtroom drama starred two federal judges one morning. Judge Greene presided, as usual, but a colleague, U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin, sat in the witness box. Sporkin was testifying about his dealings with the White House during his days as general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.

After the oath, Sporkin was asked his occupation. “U.S. district judge,” he replied.

“Similar to Judge Greene?” the prosecutor asked.

“Well,” Sporkin said, “nobody is similar to Judge Greene. I would like to aspire to be Judge Greene.”

That drew a pronouncement from Greene: “He’s a very truthful witness.”

After Sporkin completed his testimony, Greene released him and said: “Next time you need a witness to stand in, Judge Sporkin, I will be glad to reciprocate.”

But Sporkin looked up to the bench and told Greene: “It’s better up there.”

The 67-year-old Judge Greene, known best for breaking up the AT&T; telephone monopoly in a celebrated antitrust case, dominates proceedings. He is somewhat avuncular, a pleasant, good-humored jurist who leans back in his chair with an elfin slip of a smile on his round face. Yet, if annoyed, he can whip everyone back into line with scathing wit. There is no doubt who’s in charge in his courtroom.

Greene clearly does not like slick lawyers who try to confuse jurors. The judge took over the questioning himself when defense attorney Joseph Small drew replies from a specialist that made it seem that Adm. Poindexter had used his computer for less than a minute on the day he is accused of deleting more than 5,000 messages from it.

“I’m not going to let you mislead the jury,” Greene said. His questions then established that it may be possible to destroy a multitude of messages in less than a minute because computers work so fast that they measure time in nanoseconds, otherwise known as split seconds.

There was little doubt that the judge often lost patience with North as a witness. “Please just answer the question,” he admonished him one day. “For a man who quibbles over whether something happened in May rather than June, you do embroider other answers. Just answer the question.”

At other times, the judge made his point by feigning infinite patience. When defense attorney Beckler asked for a few moments delay, Greene retorted: “I have a lifetime appointment. If necessary, I can listen to Col. North until my term runs out.”

The judge has trouble hiding his feelings. When North, whose testimony sometimes contradicted testimony he had given elsewhere, said: “All the testimony I have given before every tribunal has been accurate and true,” Green’s eyebrows arched noticeably. But he said nothing.

By most accounts, Fawn Hall, Col. North’s secretary, was the most glamorous figure in the Iran-Contra affair, and she held the attention of every juror as she testified in the Poindexter trial. She is a thin, very pale young woman with a bounty of long blond hair like that of the medieval princesses in the illustrations for old Sir Walter Scott novels.

Speaking so rapidly that the judge had to slow her down to let the court reporter catch up, Hall told her well-known tale of helping North shred and steal government documents as authorities closed in on him at the end of the Iran-Contra affair. Also, she delivered a few rapid-fire tributes to the patriotism of her old boss.

After she had completed her testimony, Judge Greene told her that she would no longer be needed at the trial.

“You’re free to do whatever you want,” he said, “within reason.”