Hall Testifies on Document Shredding

WASHINGTON--Fawn Hall, Oliver North's former White House secretary, told congressional committees yesterday that she helped him shred a foot-and-a-half stack of documents as the Iran-Contra affair began unraveling last fall, then walked out of the White House with other papers hidden in her clothing.

Hall said she took internal office notes past White House guards in her boots and in her clothes on November 25, the day President Reagan fired North as a national security aide.

She also described altering documents at the direction of North and hurriedly shredding so many documents that they jammed the shredding machine in North's White House office.

"I was just purely doing my job," Hall said.

Testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecution, Hall recounted the destruction and alteration of papers just before Attorney General Edwin Meese III interviewed North during a weekend investigation he conducted at Reagan's request. North was fired the following Tuesday.

Hall, who was secretary to North for four years, spoke of unquestioning loyalty to him and said she didn't object or ask for an explanation when he ordered her to alter memos.

"I believe in Col. North and I know there must have been a good reason why he was asking me to do this," Hall said. "I did as I was told."

Hall, who testified for two-and-one-half hours and will return today, said she gave the documents she removed to North's attorney at the time, Thomas Green.

She said North had earlier emptied his office safe of documents while she put others into the shredding machine. Hall said when the machine jammed, she called the White House's crisis management center, and a repairman quickly fixed the shredder.

The shredded documents included copies of North's telephone logs and computerized inter-office memos that National Security Council officials used to communicate with one another.

She also said that at North's order she altered the texts of five sensitive documents in National Security Council files. She said she began making copies and destroying the originals but was interrupted to begin shredding.

One alteration she described concerned a 1985 memo from North that referred to the possible sinking or seizure of a ship carrying weapons to Nicaragua. The alteration was made obvious, she acknowledged, because the NSC letterhead paper used for the altered version was new and did not exist when the original was written.

Hall described putting through a call from Reagan to North at a hotel shortly after North had been fired. She talked to North later and recalled, "He said the president called him an American hero, and he just didn't know." She said North didn't explain the last part of that comment.

The secretary defended her former boss as hardworking and loyal to his nation and president--and she alsodefended her own actions.

"I was a dedicated and loyal secretary and performed my duties in an exemplary manner," she said.

The 27-year-old part-time model added pointedly: "I can type."

Under questioning, Hall said she did not recall ever hearing North say that proceeds from the sale of arms to Iran were going to aid the Contras.

However, she described retyping several drafts of a memo that mentioned the diversion of profits. She said she could not recall if a final version was seen by anyone other than herself, North and then-National Security Adviser John Poindexter.

At another point, Hall told of asking North for a small loan for a weekend trip to the beach in June 1985, and said he gave her three $20 traveler's checks, drawn on a Central American bank.

"He said, `Make sure you pay back the money; it's not mine,"' Hall said.

She said she found it unusual that the checks were Central American, but said she didn't ask North why and he didn't volunteer an explanation.

Earlier yesterday, a Reagan administration lawyer was questioned closely by the committees about his 1985 legal opinion that has been used by some in the administration to justify secret aid to the Nicaraguan rebels.

Bretton Sciaroni, counsel for the president's Intelligence Oversight Board, acknowledged that he was working in his first job as a lawyer and that he wrote the legal opinion after conducting two brief interviews and without seeing memos showing North's direct role in aiding the Contras.

Still, he stood by his opinion that congressional limits on military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras did not apply to North and the National Security Council.