True Belief Unhampered by Doubt

By Richard Stengel

South Viet Nam, 1969. Somewhere below the 17th parallel. About midnight. It was called Operation Hot Tamale. Quietly but firmly, Second Lieut. Oliver North roused his combat-weary men from their makeshift bunks. "We have to get ourselves a prisoner," he told them. Peace talks were going on in Paris, and the U.S. was claiming the North Vietnamese were operating unofficially inside the demilitarized zone. North's superiors wanted a prisoner for interrogation.

With blackened faces, North and his men crept through the dark, scarred landscape of the DMZ but could not find a single enemy soldier. North was determined to return home with the goods. Suddenly his team spied a North Vietnamese guard across the 17th parallel, inside North Viet Nam. North did not hesitate. He and a comrade stole across the border, wounded the guard and dragged him back into South Viet Nam. Mission accomplished. Keep mum about this, the lieutenant told his troops when they got back.

Boldness. Bravery. The desire to please superiors. The ability to inspire loyalty. Confidence unconstrained by doubt. True belief unhampered by questions. And a willingness to risk the entire game on a single, even reckless play.

Viet Nam shaped North in lasting ways, and the account of his nighttime assault on North Viet Nam reveals some of the same traits and patterns that have put this much decorated war hero at the heart of the Iran-contra affair. For North, the U.S. defeat abroad and the revulsion with the war at home were searing, bitter experiences. Never again would something like that happen -- if he could help it. He was a man of action, frustrated by red tape, timid bureaucrats and waffling politicians. If you needed to get something done, do it yourself.

From his childhood days, North's sensibility was molded by patriotism and devoutness. From Viet Nam on, he saw himself as a soldier in the holy war against Communism. Yet somewhere along the line, this man whose earnest, blue- eyed features were the stuff of Marine recruiting posters went off track. He came to see every bureaucratic squabble as a battle between good and evil, and his passionate intensity began to melt his judgment. He was a man whose zealotry served his country better in war than in peace. As in Greek tragedy, the same characteristics that catapulted North to great heights sent him plunging to earth.

Much has been made about the enigma of North. But that is in large part because this earnest, magnetic, often generous man has been his own best mythologizer, telling reporters and acquaintances stories about himself that bent the truth. Blissfully free of self-doubt, he could be a victim of self- delusion. At the National Security Council, he exaggerated his closeness to the President. In running the contra supply network and the arms-for-hostages swap, he seemed to shuttle between fantasy and reality, as he devised the most bizarre schemes to reach his goals. He spoke often of duty and what was right, yet he carelessly used money from the profits of the arms sales to pay food bills and buy snow tires. "He was always starring in his own movie," said former Presidential Spokesman Larry Speakes. North was certain about his role in that melodrama: the hero who turned rhetoric into action.

Oliver Laurence North's childhood was a Saturday Evening Post cover come to life. The oldest of four children, he was born in 1943 in San Antonio, but raised in Philmont, N.Y., a hamlet in the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley, about 30 miles south of Albany. His parents, Ann and Oliver Clay North, moved to Philmont shortly after World War II to help in the family wool-combing mill. North's father had won a Silver Star as an Army colonel in World War II, and he imbued his son with a fervent sense of patriotism. Family, God and country were the watchwords in the modest, yellow frame house on Maple Avenue.

Larry North -- he was known by his middle name to distinguish him from his father and grandfather, both Olivers -- seemed the exemplar of the small-town American boy. Polite and good-natured, he could also be something of a daredevil, leaping off railroad bridges and exploring nearby caves. He was not much of a scholar; if he stood out in school, it was by virtue of diligence, not brilliance. He tried so hard, recalls one of his teachers, that "if he had an 89 average, you'd give him a 90."

North came by his religious faith early. His mother was a devout Catholic, and her son was an altar boy from about age six through his last year of high school. "He had the face of an angel," says Evelyn Ronsani, North's fourth- grade catechism teacher. "You couldn't take your eyes off him." Although not a Catholic, North's father dutifully attended Mass with the family.

In high school, young Larry was not quite the he-man Marine in miniature. His extracurriculars were less than swashbuckling -- science club, chess club, drama club, senior chorus, monitor squad. In sports, as in other things, what he lacked in natural talent he made up for in perseverance. Although his class numbered only 35, North was on neither the football squad nor the basketball team (he did sit on the bench, though, as a basketball statistician). Instead, he took up a sport in which his determination could overcome his lack of natural skills: cross-country running. "He was a plugger," recalls Russell Robertson, North's coach. "His desire pushed his ability." Always the good soldier, North was willing to sacrifice individual glory for the sake of the team. "If we needed points and would get more by putting him on the relay team," says Robertson, "we could change him around. He was the type of kid who would say, 'Fine, wherever I can help the most.' "

As a senior, North was not voted "most likely to succeed," but "most courteous" and "nicest looking." He is remembered by some as being perpetually well-groomed, even fastidious, never going anywhere without a comb in his pocket. "When Larry walked into the room, you knew it," recalls Thomas Gibbons, his former English teacher. "He had an air of self- confidence."

After graduation in 1961, North attended the State University College at Brockport, majoring in English but dreaming about a military career. He enrolled in a campus Marine officers' training course and spent a summer at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. When he returned, he was dead set on being a leatherneck, and a friend's father helped him to gain admission to Annapolis.

North's dream, however, suffered a nearly crippling collision. On Washington's Birthday weekend in 1964, North was driving home to New York with four friends. He was asleep in the back seat of the rented car they were traveling in when it plowed into an 18-wheel truck. The driver of the automobile was killed, and North suffered knee and back injuries so severe that his doctor initially thought he might never walk again. After three months in the hospital, North returned to Philmont, missing the rest of his first year at the academy. His greatest fear was that his injuries would prevent him from winning a Marine commission. At home, he devised his own peculiar rehabilitation program: he made jump after jump off the six-foot-high roof of the family garage to strengthen his damaged legs. No pain, no gain.

When he returned to Annapolis in the fall, limping in his stiff knee brace, North felt he had no time to lose. He pushed himself to the limit, studying ferociously. There was no such thing as free time; he spent school vacations getting his paratrooper's wings and learning military survival tactics.

But the way this slight distance runner chose to make his name at Annapolis was brutally elemental: boxing. Though he lacked the natural tools to excel, he worked harder than anyone else. In his third year, North fought his way into the academy's middleweight championship. At 147 lbs., he was scheduled to meet James Webb, now Secretary of the Navy. Webb was the favorite, a polished puncher; North the underdog, all blood and guts. In front of 1,500 screaming midshipmen, North won the three-round fight in a close decision. "Ollie was a Friday-night fighter," recalls his coach, Emerson Smith. "One of those guys who looks like a bum in the gym, then performs like hell on Friday night." Some of Webb's supporters begrudged North the victory and did not like the way he had played to the crowd. But the win had a larger purpose for North. He showed the film of the fight to the review board to prove that despite his earlier injuries, he was fit for the Marines. They agreed.

After graduating in 1968, North skipped summer leave and cruised down to Basic School at Quantico, Va., in his new, fleck-metal green sports car, a Shelby Cobra. North stood out right away, recalls Fellow Officer Scott Matthews. "He was hot, extremely hot . . . He was a very action-oriented individual, eager to get on with it." While at Quantico, North married Betsy Stuart in a traditional military ceremony, complete with an arch of crossed swords. He had met her on a blind date set up by his cousin when he was in his last year at Annapolis and she was working at Hecht's department store in suburban Maryland. At first, she refused to return his calls requesting a date, but his persistence -- and a snapshot -- won her over. Only days after their honeymoon in Puerto Rico, Larry, as his wife has always called him, left for Viet Nam.

North loved combat. He was in Viet Nam for eleven months, and won a Silver Star and a Bronze Star with a V for valor, the nation's third and fourth highest combat medals. He also earned two Purple Hearts. "He was all guns, guts and glory," says Machine Gunner Randy Herrod, now an Oklahoma private detective. Herrod, like others, was awed by him; though 6 ft. 4 in., Herrod did not realize until much later that he was taller than the 5-ft. 9-in. North.

North commanded a patrol platoon. He was "tough but fair," says Herrod, and always a stickler for safety regulations. He insisted, for example, that his men buckle their helmet chin straps, when most soldiers let them dangle free. In combat, North's first instinct was to attack, not hit the dirt. Ernest Tuten, who served under North for five months, says, "He had a philosophy that the best way to survive was to minimize your exposure to hostile fire, and the best way to do that was to assault the enemy."

North's Silver Star owes as much to determination as to bravery. He was leading his platoon near the demilitarized zone when the lead platoon came under heavy fire. North maneuvered his men through the lines and led an assault against the North Vietnamese, "calmly braving the intense fire of the tenacious hostile soldiers," as his citation puts it. After regrouping his men and directing the evacuation of the wounded, he renewed the attack three more times before driving the enemy from the field.

When North's tour of duty was over, he returned to Quantico to teach tactics. As an instructor, North was something of a hot dog: he wore camouflage to class, and once surprised his students by jumping on a desk and opening fire with an M16 loaded with blanks. North justified his histrionics by saying that his men must be prepared for anything. "If you screw up, you die," he told them.

Even friends who admired North sometimes found his ambition hard to take. Rob Pfeiffer, who taught with North at Quantico, recalls basketball games in which North constantly fed the ball to the commanding officer. "Ollie passed to him because he was in to make rank," recalls Pfeiffer. "He was going to be a general, and being in Quantico wasn't quite close enough to Washington for him."

North briefly left Quantico in 1973 to supervise jungle training in Okinawa. Once again, he never let up, working long hours and seven-day weeks. His wife was not with him, and toward the end of his tour, the strain seemed to trigger a depression. He voluntarily checked himself into Bethesda Naval Hospital for mental exhaustion and stayed three weeks. North has never spoken of the experience, and it was subsequently expunged from his record. When he was released, he was pronounced "fit for duty." North was helped through this trying period in his marriage by the works of Dr. James Dobson, a Christian counselor whose films on marriage were required for all U.S. soldiers.

It was at a later posting, the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., that North caught the attention of Navy Secretary John Lehman, who was impressed by a paper the young major wrote about the uses of the modern battleship. Lehman recommended North to National Security Adviser Richard Allen, who hired him for the NSC's Defense Policy Staff.

North had arrived. Soon he was working on counterterrorism, then the contras. "Many NSC people took to their assignment passively," says one colleague. "North was aggressive from the start." The man of action turned into a fiend for paperwork and was often at his cluttered desk by 7 a.m. and still there after midnight. "I've seen a lot of workaholics in this town," said one associate, "and believe me, nobody outworked Ollie."

As ingratiating as he was industrious, North made many friends around the White House, especially among his superiors. William Clark, Allen's successor, took a shine to the intrepid Marine, and his replacement, Robert McFarlane, looked upon Ollie as another son, but one in need of supervision. Only Admiral John Poindexter seemed relatively immune to Ollie's charm, but North still almost always got his way with Poindexter. Among his male colleagues, North could swear like a dirtwater Marine, but when a woman entered the room, he cleaned up his speech. Says one woman at the White House: "With women, he did his Gary Cooper, aw shucks routine."

During 1984, after Congress cut off funds for the contras, North became obsessed with the men he referred to as freedom fighters. He kept a shoe box filled with pictures of contra leaders and talked about how he did not want to lose Nicaragua the way he saw the U.S. lose Viet Nam. North had been in the NSC longer than many of his superiors, and he began to believe in his own indispensability. "Being in the White House is heady," says a colleague. "You start carrying the cross by yourself, and if you don't do it, democracy falls."

Sometimes North would work 24 hours at a time, and it seemed to affect his judgment. "When Ollie didn't sleep at night, he'd come up with even crazier ideas," says a colleague. "During the TWA hijacking in 1985, he called me in the middle of the night with some absolutely foolish idea. I told him, 'What you suggested is the most ridiculous idea I ever heard. Go home and get some sleep!' "

Poindexter thought North was too emotionally involved with the contras and tried to get him transferred to the Naval War College. In mid-1986, McFarlane, in a computer message to Poindexter, proposed that "in Ollie's interest I would get him transferred or sent to Bethesda for disability review board."

"Ollie was always on the edge and wound enormously tight all the time," said a former colleague. In June of last year, in a memo to Poindexter about the contras, North actually seemed lost, demoralized. "What we most need is to get the CIA re-engaged in this effort so that it can be better managed than it now is by one slightly confused Marine Lieut. Colonel . . . At this point I'm not sure who on our side knows what. Help." Yet North seemed aware of the consequences of his actions. "He said it often enough and to everybody around him," says a colleague, "that if anybody was going to be a fall guy, Ollie North was going to be the one."

Since he was fired in November, North has divided his time between his two- acre farmstead in rural Virginia and his lawyer's downtown Washington offices, with perfunctory appearances at Marine headquarters at the Pentagon, where he has a desk in the Office of Manpower and Policy Planning. For once, North is not working overtime. He has ten months to go before reaching the 20- year Marine retirement plateau.

Although North has kept a low profile over the past few months, he has not been a hermit. He held a get-together last Christmas for neighbors and friends. In March he attended a farewell party for a Japanese journalist and his wife with whom the Norths had become friends after selling them a puppy. He seems to be relishing the time at home with his three children and Max, the family's Labrador retriever. Like any suburban dad on a weekend, he can be seen cutting the grass and barbecuing in the backyard. During the day his wife Betsy keeps the kitchen television tuned to the Iran-contra hearings.

Since he reportedly received several death threats this year, North has been protected around the clock by Navy guards. Two guards, sometimes three, escort him on his weekly visit to the barber. They were in tow when North went to his daughter's high school graduation last month. North sat in the back of the hall, causing something of a stir. Afterward, many of the parents offered him best wishes and asked him to pose for pictures.

At the moment North seems to be depending on prayer as much as legal advice. "His faith in the Lord is his backbone right now," says his sister Patricia, who lives in California. Though he still considers himself a Roman Catholic, North now attends the Church of the Apostles, an Episcopalian congregation in Fairfax, Va., known for such charismatic practices as faith healing and speaking in tongues. North has told his fellow churchgoers about how, at Camp Lejeune in 1978, he suffered a sudden bout of back pain. An officer knelt before him, laid on his hands and "healed" him.

North started visiting the Church of the Apostles after his eldest daughter Tait, 18, went there and then persuaded her family to join her. The congregation regularly offers prayers for North, and several members meet at North's home every Thursday night for a prayer session. "His faith is very evident," says Friend and Neighbor Betsy Smith. "It explains the peace that he has."

The rest of the family, however, is not always able to achieve such equanimity. North recently confided to a friend that Tait is bitter about how her father is being treated and at one point angrily criticized the U.S. for dealing with him so unfairly. Her father quickly rebuked her, saying that "if this was some other country and your father fell out of favor with the powers that be, he could go out for cigarettes one day and never come back." A touching story, but Tait's father does not do himself justice. Oliver North, as all know, did far more than merely fall out of favor with the powers that be.

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/New York and Alessandra Stanley/Washington