Top-Secret Strategy

Yes, Virginia, there will be an Ollie North trial. Or at least one will start this week. But don't bet the ranch that it will go all the way to a jury verdict, or even produce much dramatic testimony.

Instead, look for constant repetition of this sequence: North's combative attorney, Brendan Sullivan, tries to introduce in evidence a secret document that supports his client's claim to have acted only under orders from higher authority or merely followed routine Administration policy regarding covert activity. Prosecutor John Keker, on behalf of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, objects, arguing that release of the document would damage national security. Judge Gerhard Gesell sends the jury out of the courtroom and summons ) opposing counsel to a conference. Perhaps the issue can be resolved there, but quite possibly the trial is suspended while the opposing sides try to work out a deal allowing a sanitized version of the document to be introduced. If they succeed, the trial resumes; if not, the proceedings are halted while Attorney General Dick Thornburgh considers whether the document can be declassified. If Thornburgh says no, the trial could end. If the answer is yes, the proceedings continue but are broken again by the same sequence the next day, and twice the following week, and so on. It becomes precisely the "cuckoo-clock trial" (interrupted every hour) that Gesell has long publicly feared.

The clock was going "cuckoo" even before the trial began. Late last week defense, prosecution and judge were locked in a quarrel over material that Sullivan may want to use right off the bat. He claims that secret documents show that Ronald Reagan and other members of his Administration -- among them Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, CIA Director William Casey and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General John Vessey -- "personally and directly" took part in arranging deals to have other countries aid the Nicaraguan contras at a time when help from the U.S. was forbidden by law; they then allegedly ordered the arrangements kept secret. Sullivan hopes to show with this classified material that North was just following orders when he lied to Congress about his contra activities.

Prosecutors insisted that disclosure of the documents would hurt national security. They offered to make available a summary of the documents, but Sullivan objected that it "omits critical details." On Friday, Gesell nonetheless accepted the prosecution's offer and, with that settled, designated Tuesday as the date for the trial to start. But the fracas exemplifies the kind of dispute that may interrupt the trial again and again.