North Says Reagan Knew of Funds Diversion : Iran-Contra: Ex-White House aide charges in his memoirs that the former President lied in effort to protect himself from disgrace.

Former White House aide Oliver L. North charged Saturday that President Ronald Reagan knew the secret that lay at the heart of the Iran-Contra affair--the diversion of money from Iranian weapons sales to the Nicaraguan rebels--and lied about it to protect himself from disgrace.

But North, in excerpts from his memoirs released on Saturday, offered no concrete evidence to support his charge and conceded that he never spoke to Reagan about the diversion.

“President Reagan knew everything,” North wrote. “ . . . I have no doubt that he was told about the use of the residuals for the Contras and that he approved it. Enthusiastically.”

The former National Security Council aide wrote that he believed that Reagan knew about the diversion of the money in 1986, when he approved the secret sale of thousands of U.S. anti-tank missiles to Iran. “And now, five years later, I am even more convinced,” North wrote.

The use of profits from the secret arms sales to fund the Contras after Congress banned U.S. aid to the rebels was at the heart of the scandal that rocked the Reagan Administration in 1986 and 1987.

Some members of Congress said then that Reagan might face impeachment if he were found to have approved the secret operation.

Reagan denied any knowledge of the diversion--first in public statements and then in sworn testimony in the trial of his former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter, in 1990.

North himself testified in 1987 that he “assumed that the President was aware of what I was doing and had, through my superiors, approved it.” But at the time he said he could not be certain.

In the excerpts from his book, “Under Fire,” published this week in Time magazine, North made no major new charges about the affair. He says little about the role played by President Bush, who was then vice president.

But he expressed more bitterness than before about Reagan’s refusal to take responsibility for the scandal and charged that the White House deliberately deflected attention from Reagan’s role to his own.

“The Administration chose to focus almost exclusively on the diversion, and there was certainly a lot to be gained by presenting it that way,” he wrote. “This particular detail was so dramatic, so sexy, that it might actually--well, divert attention from other, even more important aspects of the story, such as what else the President and his top advisers had known about and approved.”

In late 1986 and early 1987, when Reagan’s complicity in the diversion was being debated, several “people around the President” came to North and urged him to testify that Reagan was innocent, he wrote.

“Nobody from the Administration ever asked me to tell the truth,” he wrote. “The only message I heard was ‘exonerate the President.’ ”

He said that former Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt and an unnamed aide to Bush both suggested that he waive his Fifth Amendment rights and absolve Reagan of responsibility. He added it was unclear whether they were official emissaries from Reagan or Bush.

North wrote that Texas entrepreneur H. Ross Perot approached his lawyer, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., in December, 1986, with a similar proposal. “Look,” North quoted Perot as saying, “why doesn’t Ollie just end this thing and explain to the FBI that the President didn’t know? If he goes to jail, I’ll take care of his family. And I’ll be happy to give him a job when he gets out.”

North also wrote that Reagan’s own last words to him may have been part of a plan to persuade him to take the blame.

On Nov. 25, 1986, a few hours after the White House announced that North was being fired over the Iran-Contra affair, Reagan telephoned his cashiered aide.

“Ollie,” Reagan said, according to North, “You have to understand, I just didn’t know.”

“He could have said, ‘Ollie, why didn’t you tell me about the diversion?’ or ‘Ollie, believe me, I didn’t know what was going on.’ Instead, it was, ‘You have to understand, I just didn’t know,’ ” North wrote. “Maybe what the President was really trying to tell me was: Look, Ollie, you and I know better, but the line we’re putting out is that I didn’t know, so please go along with it.”

North also said that then-CIA Director William J. Casey was more deeply involved in the secret operation than previously known. He said Casey, who died in 1987, knew about the diversion and advised him on his efforts to arrange secret funding for the Contras.

North was convicted in 1988 on three felony counts stemming from the scandal. After one of the counts was overturned and two others were set aside because of questions over the prosecution’s evidence, special prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh dropped all charges against him last month.

North’s two superiors at the NSC, Poindexter and Robert C. McFarlane, were also convicted of crimes. Poindexter’s conviction is under appeal.