No Liman Fireworks : Moment of Truth Turns Into Soft Soap

WASHINGTON — For 2 1/2 days, the whispers in Lt. Col. Oliver L. North’s examination chamber and through the corridors of Congress persisted: The moment of truth would arrive when the spit-and-polish young warrior came eyeball to eyeball with the fabled Arthur L. Liman.

Thursday afternoon they met--the brash lieutenant colonel with the chestful of medals and the New York lawyer with the reputation for surgically dismembering arcane plots such as the Iran- contra affair.

Pyrotechnics inevitably followed. But they came from Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., North’s own attorney.

Role of Superiors

Liman focused on the role of the former White House aide’s superiors, including President Reagan. After fencing with North through the early afternoon, he undertook to shamelessly soft-soap him into passing the buck up the White House chain of command.

He called attention to the decorations on North’s uniform and to North’s commitment to the Naval Academy’s honor code. He gravely observed that neither his five-year tour of duty in the White House nor the rabid investigation of the Iran-contra affair had “destroyed those values.”

“You still have those values, don’t you?” Liman intoned.

“I’ve never called myself a hero,” North replied. “Those words were used by other people to describe me. I am grateful for those words, but I have never called myself such.”

Civilian Control

In a hushed hearing room, Liman opened the door wide and encouraged North to declare his belief in firm civilian control of the nation’s military. He gave him the opportunity to disagree with his secretary, Fawn Hall, who had told investigators that she felt called to respond to a “higher law” in destroying documents when the scandal began leaking out.

Contentious though he was at moments, Liman oozed sympathy for North’s predicament as the fall guy. He apparently accepted at face value North’s declaration that he was willing, until the prospect of criminal charges loomed, to accept the role of a scapegoat.

“For whom were you going to be the scapegoat?” Liman asked.

“For whoever necessary,” North replied. “For the Administration, for the President, for however high up the chain they needed someone to say: ‘That’s the guy that did, and he’s gone. And now we’ve put that behind us and let’s get on with other things.’ ”

Basic Account Unshaken

But as Liman’s first session examining North ended, the lawyer had not shaken him from the basic account he gave at the outset: That he had asked his former boss, National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, to authorize the diversion of Iranian arms sale proceeds to the rebels in Nicaragua; that he had assumed that President Reagan had known, but that he was later assured by both Poindexter and the President that Reagan did not know.

Until the moment arrived for Liman’s eagerly awaited examination, North had weathered the long interrogation with his image as the can-do, you-fix-it-Ollie Marine intact.

But delivering a carefully crafted opening statement to the panel Thursday morning, he made it clear that he still considers the odds hopeless against him. There crept into the square-jawed, straight-backed Marine image a trace of self-pity and bitterness that had not surfaced in his answers to lawyers’ questions.

‘Strange Process’

“I believe that this is a strange process that you are putting me and others through,” he declared. “Apparently the President has chosen not to assert his prerogatives, and you have been permitted to make the rules. You called before you the officials of the executive branch. You put them under oath for what must be collectively thousands of hours of testimony.

“You dissect that testimony to find inconsistencies and declare some to be truthful and others to be liars. You make the rulings as to what is proper and what is not proper. You put the testimony which you think is helpful to your goals up before the people and leave others out.

“It’s sort of like a baseball game in which you are both the player and the umpire. It’s a game in which you call the balls and strikes and where you determine who is out and who is safe. And in the end you determine the score and declare yourselves the winner.”

From all appearances, North and Sullivan expected Liman to confront North with the relentless kind of examination that has made him one of the country’s top trial lawyers.

Leaps to His Defense

Sullivan, a partner in one of Washington’s top criminal defense firms, leaped to North’s defense the moment it appeared that Liman was trying to rattle his client.

“Let’s get to the substance of these hearings,” he shouted. “Get off his back.”

Twice Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate investigating committee, interceded to restore order with his gavel and Olympian baritone.

“Counsel, I’m certain you’re aware of the rules as well as anyone of us,” he warned. “First of all, I would hope that you will address the chair, and secondly, we’d like to get the business on the road ourselves, and, thirdly, our public address system, I believe, is working very well. You need not shout, sir.”

Sparks Dissipate

With Sullivan subdued and Liman trying a more sympathetic tack, the sparks dissipated.

The room rocked with laughter when North described shredding documents while Justice Department officials sat 10 feet away.

His description evoked the image of Peter Sellers’ inept movie sleuth, Inspector Clouseau. But Col. North did not laugh.