Waite Denies He Knew of North’s Dealing

Breaking his silence over reports linking him to the U.S. arms-for-hostages deal, former hostage Terry Waite said Sunday he knew nothing about it and denied that he had carried a U.S. transmitter when taken captive.

“If any bugging device had been on me, I would be a dead man,” the Church of England envoy said.

But Waite, who came close to tears after describing torture at the hands of his suspicious Islamic captors, acknowledged that he was used at times by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North.

In an interview laced with jokes and without a trace of bitterness, Waite blamed no one for his nearly five years in captivity.

“I took the decision to go back for the sake of the hostages . . . I don’t blame other people,” Waite, 52, told the British Broadcasting Corp. in his first interview since being released Nov. 18.

Waite was seized in Beirut in January, 1987, while trying to secure freedom for U.S. hostages. At the same time, North was arranging secret shipments of arms to Iran in exchange for the release of Americans held by pro-Iranian Shiite Muslims in Lebanon.

Some reports have said that North, who served as a national security adviser in the Reagan White House, supplied Waite with a tiny transmitter that could have revealed the hostages’ location if the envoy was taken to visit them.

In an evening interview with the BBC, Waite choked with emotion and looked away as he showed the floral-patterned blindfold he was made to wear every time someone entered his room and a chipped magnifying glass he used for reading during his four years of solitary confinement.

“I can hardly look at these things,” he said, coming close to tears. “I’ll put them away.”

But the bearded, 6-foot-7 envoy chuckled and said his captors tried to disguise him as a woman in the early days. “Can you believe it? They covered my head completely and put on a long black gown.”

On another occasion, he nearly suffocated when the kidnapers moved him stuffed inside a refrigerator, he said.

News reports have said that Waite should have known about North, whom he met perhaps a dozen times. There has been speculation North encouraged the impression that Waite was securing hostages’ freedom as a cover for the arms deals.

“I think there was an element of use (by North) certainly,” Waite said. “I don’t think that’s the whole story by any means.”

Waite said he believes that two American hostages, Father Lawrence M. Jenco and the Rev. Benjamin Weir, were freed in September, 1985, and July, 1986, as a result of his efforts. But he said he was “not quite so sure” about David P. Jacobsen of Huntington Beach, Calif., a university administrator freed in November, 1986.

During his first months in captivity, Waite said, his kidnapers beat him on the feet, bound him, kept him blindfolded, threatened him with death and staged a mock execution the last time they interrogated him.

“They said, ‘Face the wall.’ I did and then . . . I could feel a pistol against my head. I was blindfolded. They said, ‘Anything more to say?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ I said my prayers . . . and then they put the gun down and said, ‘Later.’ ”

Waite, his wife, Frances, and their four adult children had been staying at Queen Elizabeth II’s Scottish estate, Balmoral, for rest and privacy. They returned to their home in London over the weekend.

The last American hostage in Lebanon, reporter Terry Anderson, was released soon after Waite. Two German relief workers remain in captivity.