OFFICE EQUIPMENT: The Colonel Plugged 'Em

No one paid him to do it, but Lieut. Colonel Oliver North gave what was probably one of 1987's more successful celebrity endorsements. The product: Schleicher & Co. paper shredders. After North told congressional investigators of his "shredding parties," in which he reportedly used a Schleicher Intimus 007 S, the West German firm was flooded with inquiries. Schleicher's 1987 sales jumped by as much as 20%.

Secrecy, it seems, is everywhere at a premium. Schleicher sells to schools as well as corporations in 110 countries. The company can even boast that the Intimus 007 S is Ayatullah-proof. By converting a piece of paper into 10,000 flakes, the machine makes it impossible to reassemble shredded documents, as the Iranians did after the U.S. embassy was seized in 1979.