Hard Fall for a Man of Action

By Richard Stengel.

As soon as he enters a room, he already seems to be planning his exit. His eyes dart impatiently, purposefully. He carries a battered briefcase, shuns neckties and favors turned-up-at-the-collar trench coats. His face is boyishly handsome, and his nose shows evidence of having stopped a few punches during a college boxing career. Not much given to small talk, he speaks in clipped, direct phrases. The word action crops up often in his conversation: "action officers," "action plan," "action" used as a synonym for operation. The word itself is an easily deciphered clue, for Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, 43, the man at the epicenter of the Iran arms earthquake, considers himself the quintessential man of action. He is the very definition of gung-ho, and it was that spirit that may have taken him too far.

His title at the NSC was innocuous: deputy director for political-military affairs. But North's derring-do style and can-do effectiveness put him at the center of a series of strategic covert actions: he helped plan the mining of Nicaraguan harbors by CIA agents; his office was the nerve center for the invasion of Grenada; he masterminded the hijacking of the plane carrying the Achille Lauro terrorists; and he has been the principal adviser behind a private network designed to fund and arm the contras. "His role was to go right up to the limit of the law," says an Administration official familiar with North's activities. "He lost sight of the dividing line."

While the extent of North's role in shipping weapons to Iran and diverting the profits to fund the contras remains unclear, the operation reflects the contours of his personality: a love of clandestine operations, a fevered patriotism that leads him to act first and consider consequences later, an enthusiastic determination to put ideology into practice, and a shrewd ability to cover his tracks -- up to a point. Says a White House official: "He was a big believer in plausible deniability."

Born in San Antonio, North attended school in Philmont, N.Y., and later entered the U.S. Naval Academy. At Annapolis he was known as a "tough kid," and was brigade boxing champ. "Reckless? No," says an old classmate. "Wild? Yes. He liked to have fun." After graduation, North joined the Marines and went to Viet Nam, where he led a platoon and engaged in counterinsurgency warfare. He was wounded in combat, later winning a Silver Star and a Purple Heart.

After returning home, he worked on policy and planning at Marine headquarters. During the aborted 1980 mission to free the U.S. hostages in Tehran, North led a detachment of Marines who were poised in Turkey to assist the rescuers. A year later, while studying at the Naval War College in Providence, he came to the attention of Navy Secretary John Lehman because of a paper he wrote extolling the modern military uses of the battleship. Lehman pushed North onto the NSC staff, where he quickly became known as an ardent Reaganite. He was an obsessive worker; starting at 7 a.m., he was often in his spartan office in the Old Executive Office Building 17 hours later. He toiled away on weekends and spent little time with his wife and four children.

But it was in the field, not behind the desk, where North thrived. For some in the NSC, North was a modern musketeer living out foreign-policy fantasies. In the summer of 1984, as congressional aid to the contras was being cut off, North journeyed to a rebel camp in Honduras. "I told them I'd be personally responsible for seeing they got what they needed," he reported to a friend. He radiated impatience with bureaucratic desk jockeys and always seemed to be on the move. Once, after arranging to meet someone for a drink, he showed up 45 minutes late, barked, "Okay, bottoms up and pay the bill," and abruptly announced that he needed a car and driver for a trip to the airport -- and fast.

Though North once cracked that the Ayatullah Khomeini was "an old man who watches Donald Duck movies," he prided himself on his ability to deal with revolutionaries, saying he could talk their language. He apparently also spoke the language of the President, who last week described him to TIME as "an American hero." North claimed to be in that select company of White House aides who could call the President directly.

But is North such a wily renegade that he could in effect sting Khomeini and funnel millions to the contras without informing his superiors outside the NSC? "They knew what the guy was doing," says a North acquaintance. "How do you think a lieutenant colonel would pull off that kind of stuff?" Others are not so sure about that. "You think it's inconceivable that Ollie did all this on his own?" says a White House official with no great affection for the colonel. "Then you don't know Ollie North. He can fix you with those innocent blue eyes and tell the biggest lies with a straight face." North claims that he twice offered to resign this year when congressional inquiries into private contra funding discomfited the White House.

North is now persona non grata at the White House. Last Wednesday he surrendered his pass, and the next morning was ignominiously turned away at the gate. His office has been sealed by the FBI. If it is established that North was behind the arms sales, he may be prosecuted for violation of the Arms Export Control Act, which requires congressional notification of all American arms transfers. A friend of North's recalls that the Marine often joked about the possibility of being jailed or court-martialed. For Ollie North, it was all in the line of duty.

With reporting by David Beckwith and Strobe Talbott/Washington