THE CASE OF OLIVER NORTH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890028-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: July 21, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890028-4
ARTICLE APPAE1g0
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON POST
21 July 1986
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
The Case of Oliver North
The case of 011ie North pinpoints
the transformation of the National
Security Council staff under Adm.
John Poindexter from arbiter of inter-
agency struggles and control point for
operations to a bland paper machine
that makes President Reagan victim
rather than master of the bureaucra-
cy.
Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North has
been Reagan's star player in the long,
hard struggle to keep alive the Nica-
raguan contras while the House tried
to smother them. Poindexter, de-
scribed by critics as "uneasy* with
North's growing fame on a staff,
wants him back in the Marines. The
pretext: to fend off ? a politically
drenched House probe of North as
Reagan's handler of the contra ac-
count.
Although serious enough by itself,
the imminent loss of North is impor-
tant as a symbol of the institutional
degradation of the once-mighty NSC
staff. It is inconceivable that a Henry
Kissinger or a Zbigniew Brzezinski
would fire the one member of the
NSC staff who could keep it?and
hence the president?in tight control
of the unfolding contra drama.
Shedding the once-formidable pow-
er of the NSC staff over the feuding
bureaucracies of State, Defense and
the Central Intelligence Agency is
what Poindexter apparently feels is
expected of him. Critics inside the
administration feel that comports
with White House Chief of Staff Don-
ald T. Regan's wish to be surrounded
by gray and faceless officials who
cannot threaten his own supremacy
or gain power enough to play to the
press.
That may make Poindexter the
man for him. But an NSC staff infused
with passivity invites feuding bureau-
cracies to settle matters by elbowing
their way, individually, into the Oval
Office. There they can argue their
parochial policy preferences in the
absence of an NSC synthesis. As one
State Department official told us,
"The system works just fine for [Sec-
retary of State] George Shultz, be-
cause the president becomes the vic-
tim of the one who sees him most, and
that's our George.*
Pentagon officials were surprised
when stories appeared in the press
praising Soviet ruler Milchail Gorba-
chev's arms control letter just after it
arrived in the Oval Office. These'
officials knew there had been no
NSC-directed interagency discussions
of the arms control proposals and no
adversarial proceeding. Yet here was
the president pumping out the line
that Gorbachev's letter contained
new and serious ideas.
Shultz's verdict that the new Soviet
arms control ideas were meritorious
was not shared by leaders of the
Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency, the Defense Department or
the CIA. Yet it has become the basis
for heavy pressures on Reagan to
accept the Soviet demand for a mora-
torium on withdrawing from the An-
ti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In the ab-
sence of a well-formulated
administration policy, the president is
being urged to write Gorbachev a
letter offering a multiyear ABM ex-
tension that would suffocate the Stra-
tegic Defense Initiative.
NSC protection for the president in
the case of the contras has come from
the staffer earmarked for oblivion,
OUie North. Although nothing is yet
chiseled in granite, he is supposed to
be repiaceo by --V itice Canalstrero, a
CIA Central America specialist who
has been on the NSC staff for two
years. The switch would likely send
North back to the Marine Corps,
though he might stay at the NSC with
his original counterterrorism assign-
ment.
The House investigators have sent
a letter to the president asking for all
contra documents and papers involv-
ing North. Both Regan and the White
House legal staff have tentatively de-
cided to invoke executive privilege
and withhold the few such papers that
exist.
Poindexter is described by friends
as wanting to step back from any
confrontation, which he says Privately
might hurt the president Stepping
back means getting rid of North.
That is what the CIA wants. With.
its man Cannistrero handling the Cen-
tral America account in the White
House alimAgegg:uilaging_t.lie
operation in Nicaragua, CIA hegemo-
ny over ule delicate contra maneu-
vers ahead would be solid. Such domi-
nation is o by both the
Pentagon and State.
Considering Ronald Reagan's stake
in the fate of. the contras, why would
Poindexter shift powerfrom his own
staff in the person of 011ie North to
the CIA?
01986. News America Syndicate
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890028-4