Oliver North's Blank Check

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At each turn, North's flamboyance was offset by a passion for secrecy. From the National Security Agency he obtained top-secret encryption devices to create a secure communications link to the private operators in his contra- supply operation. The report suggests that Poindexter sought to keep Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger -- and sometimes even the President -- in the dark about North's activities. This secrecy was compounded by the lack of any governmental supervision or internal review of the NSC operation. The result, says the commission, was an "unprofessional" program that failed to achieve even its own objectives: "Repeatedly, Lieut. Colonel North permitted arms to be delivered without the release of a single captive."

Although North has yet to tell his story to any Iranscam investigators, his memorandums are eloquent testimony to the fantastic nature of his activities. Those efforts were both macro and micro: he supervised the raising of millions of dollars in funds from South Korea and Taiwan while organizing numerous drops of munitions in Nicaragua. A hand-drawn chart that was found in North's office safe shows the complex path of money from private fund-raising organizations to various shadowy corporations. The chart suggests a link between two fund-raising organizations run by North's ally, Conservative Carl ("Spitz") Channell, and such corporations as Lake Resources, Udall and Trans World Arms, all of which have been connected to the contra-supply effort. Between the fall of 1984 and the end of 1986, North helped raise tens of millions for the contras.

A colleague describes North as a "crisis junkie," and his twin programs toward Iran and Nicaragua provided plenty of outlets for his considerable energies. Indeed, his contra-supply operation provided the means for his involvement in the arms-for-hostages dealings. In November 1985 a plane that North had scheduled to carry arms to the contras was pressed into service to make a delivery to Iran. From that time on, North basically used the existing contra logistical network to help ship arms to Iran. It was the linking of the two -- a violation of the cardinal intelligence rule against mixing operations -- that brands North as an amateur in the minds of experienced intelligence officials.

Like the President he so admired, North was obsessed with getting the hostages home. From the beginning of his involvement with the hostages, North crafted elaborate proposals on how to free the "LebNap victims," as he once called them. These sometimes included equations computing the means and number of weapons that would be required for the release of one American citizen. He noted in one memo to Poindexter, "1 707 w/300 TOWs = 1 AMCIT."