North Attacked as Iran-Contra Trial Opens

WASHINGTON Oliver I North "placed himself above the law" by lying to Congress and shredding documents to conceal his support of the Nicaraguan rebels, a prosecutor told jurors today at the opening of the former presidential aide's Iran-Contra trial.

Associate independent counsel John W. Keker said North's lies to congressional committees and to the attorney general amount to "a crime that goes to the sold of our self-government."

But North's lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, countered that "the defense says to you, he is not guilty on all charges. He never broke the law...he followed instructions of higher authority."

Keker, then Sullivan, delivered their opening statements, each describing a different North, the first person to go on trial in the Iran-Contra affair.

"He was doing his job as he understood it; he was doing his duty as he understood it," Sullivan said. "If he didn't, then there could be death resulting to the people he worked with and dangers resulting to the United States."

"The need for secrecy is no excuse for lying to Congress," Keker told the jury. "Lying to Congress is a crime."

"You don't have to be a political scientist to understand why that's so," Keker said. "Congress enacts the law, the president approves it and enforces it. If they start lying to each other our system of government is not going to work."

A year after it passed the 1984 Boland Amendment banning U.S. military assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras, Congress received news reports that North, then a Marine lieutenant colonel, was secretly raising money for the rebels from foreign countries and private donors and providing tactical military advice.

North and his boss at the time, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, "decided they didn't want Congress to know what Colonel North had been doing. They decided they would not tell Congress," Keker said. "They decided they would place themselves above the law and not tell Congress about Colonel North's activities."

Similar inquiries a year later were met with false answers from North, including a meeting with the House Intelligence Committee at the White House when the National Security Council aide "looked them right in the eye and lied," Keker said.

He said North pocketed some of the travelers checks which a Contra leader gave him to cover the expenses he incurred helping the rebels.

"Colonel North used that $4,000 like it was his personal piggy bank" to buy groceries, tires and take his family on a trip," Keker said.

North also accepted installation of a security fence around his Great Falls, Va., house from arms dealer Richard V. Secord, who had helped sell U.S. arms to Iran and divert $15 million in profits to buy weapons for the Contras, the prosecutor said.

The arms-for-hostages deals with Iran were kept secret from Congress until October 1986, when "the roof caved in on this house of cards" with public disclosures about the Iran-Contra affair, Keker said.

When North went to his office on November 21,1986, "the first thing he did was take some of the records and change them to make it look like what he had been doing he hadn't been doing for the last two years," Keker said.

"He wanted to hide [the fact] that he had already lied to the Congress of the United States," Kecker said. He added that North also sought to hide the fact that he "had illegally diverted money from the Iranian arms sales to help the Contras."

"He went into his office and began to change the records, shred the records, destroy the records," Keker told jurors. Two days later, when he lied to then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III, "he had placed himself above the law again."

North sat raptly at attention as Keker spoke, occasionally taking notes.

North's wife, Betsy, was escorted to her seat in the packed courtroom by security guards midway through Keker's opening statement.