The Man Who Ran the Show

For months the story had been coming out in fragments, pieced together by investigators from closed-door testimony and messages; the public saw the major players only as disembodied words on paper. But last week the Iran- contra affair finally put on flesh and acquired a breathing presence. A stocky, round-faced figure appeared on the TV screen to state in effect: I was there, it really happened, and this is what I did.

That was perhaps the major impact of Richard Secord's testimony, which occupied the entire first week of public hearings by the joint congressional committee investigating the most explosive political scandal in a decade. Testifying primarily in the unemotional tones of a math professor but occasionally displaying flashes of deadpan wit and, under cross-examination, an acerbic temper, the retired Air Force major general described for four days how he organized and ran a private network that at the Government's behest secretly supplied arms to the contras in Nicaragua and later to Iran. Much of the story had been told before, most notably in the scathing February report of the Tower commission. But for the first time, the public was hearing it as a consecutive narrative from the lips of a major player -- a very self- confident participant who testified voluntarily, without immunity from prosecution, on the frequently stated conviction that he had done nothing wrong.

In detailing the elaborate private network that was set up by Oliver North to funnel arms to the contras and initiate the failed weapons-for-hostages deals with Iran, Secord painted a picture that was far more horrifying than he seemed to realize. It showed the scope of the Administration's deceit in circumventing the congressional ban on military aid to the contras and the depths of its hypocrisy in violating the Government's proclaimed policy against dealing with terrorists. Secord also showed, again with little awareness of its significance, how dangerous it can be when the Government seeks to avoid constitutional constraints by allowing a group of freewheeling private operatives to conduct a secret foreign policy with American weapons and funds.

Among the most important of his revelations:

-- Secord heard from North that Ronald Reagan knew about the diversion of profits from the Iranian arms sales to the contras. North told Secord that "in some conversations" he had mused to the President about the irony of having the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini unwittingly finance the Nicaraguan guerrillas. But given North's reputation for embellishing or even inventing conversations between the President and himself, should what he told Secord be believed? "I did not take it as a joke," said Secord. Nonetheless, he said he was "skeptical" about North's report of the conversations, because "it did not sound like the kind of conversation you would have in the office of the Commander in Chief." Reagan, questioned by reporters at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, growled, "I did not know about" the possibly illegal diversion.