Oliver North

Oliver North ran the operation at the centre of the Iran-Contra affair from the basement of the White House and became, for a few weeks in 1987, the most watched man on American television. He was a decorated Marine officer who joined the National Security Council staff in 1981. Two policies collided there: the administration wanted Iranian help to free American hostages in Lebanon and was willing to sell weapons for it, in contradiction of its own embargo, while Congress had passed the Boland Amendment forbidding military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. North's contribution was to connect them - overcharging Iran for missiles and routing the surplus to the Contras through Swiss accounts, funding a war Congress had defunded with money from a country the administration called a sponsor of terrorism. When it broke in November 1986 he and his secretary Fawn Hall shredded documents for days. His testimony to the joint congressional committee in full uniform, admitting he had lied to Congress and saying he had assumed authorisation, made him a hero to part of the country and a symbol of impunity to the rest. His convictions in 1989 were vacated because the immunised testimony had tainted the witnesses. He later ran for the Senate, hosted television programmes, and briefly led the National Rifle Association. The independent counsel's report concluded that senior officials knew, and the question of what Reagan understood was never settled. Six people were pardoned by George H. W. Bush in 1992, including the former defence secretary, days before a trial at which Bush's own diaries would have been evidence. North's uniformed testimony is now studied as much for its performance as for its content.

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