Under Fire:
An American Story
By Oliver North, with William Novak
Simon & Schuster, 446 pages, $25
It`s no surprise that Oliver North and co-author William Novak tell an engrossing story. North has lived a full and exciting life by anyone`s definition.
”Under Fire” is marked by witty anecdotes and a disarming, self-deprecating humor, and readers will gain a full appreciation of North`s ability to inspire nearly any audience. The book also covers serious personal matters, including a marriage strained almost beyond salvage, a period of depression and the psychiatric treatment that brought North back to stability. His performance as a Marine officer had always demonstrated the required traits: obsessive devotion to duty, charismatic leadership and burning ambition. His competence and intelligence garnered the sponsorship of senior officers who determined that he could be a future Commandant of the Corps.
As part of the grooming process, in 1981 they sent North (then a major)
to the National Security Council of President Ronald Reagan ”on what was supposed to be a two- or three-year assignment.” North`s time on the NSC staff, especially his role in the Iran-contra scandal, brought him fame and us ”Under Fire.”
Attention has focused on North`s charge in the book that ”. . . now, five years later, I am even more convinced: President Reagan knew
everything.” But there are other significant statements and disclosures in
”Under Fire.”
North asserts that the ”ultimate goal” of his May 1986 trip to Tehran was ”to arrange a secret meeting between Rafsanjani (Speaker of the Iranian parliament) and Vice President George Bush . . . .” Combined with other credible evidence, this makes a convincing case that Bush has not been candid about his own role in the arms-for-hostages dealings. (It`s clear from other comments about Bush in the book that North doesn`t intend to embarrass the president. So why include this unless it is an implicit warning to Bush that North has information that might be damaging to him?)
Another claim involves Bush`s nominee for director of Central Intelligence, Robert M. Gates. North says: ”. . . Very sensitive
intelligence reports were distributed to a handful of cabinet-level appointees, including . . . the deputy director of the CIA. . . None of them could reasonably claim ignorance of the existence of the residuals . . . .”
Every copy of each such report is serialized, and a cover sheet requires each official granted access to sign or initial and to date his viewing the document. These cover sheets are retained. By making this point, North shows that it is a simple matter for the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence to determine if and when Gates, as deputy director of the CIA, had prior knowledge of the ”residuals” (profits from arms sales to Iran, diverted into special accounts that supported the contras while U.S. law prohibited using federal funds for that purpose).
Some readers will use ”Under Fire” to assign credibility to the many who are giving contradictory versions of Iran-contra. And North assists them by providing verifiable information not involving Iran-contra that allows one to assess his own credibility. But caution is required, for that information can be missed in a casual reading.
For this reviewer, the spell cast by ”Under Fire” worked until page 384, where North describes what he missed most after retiring from the Marines in March 1988:
”And so I reluctantly announced my retirement. I cried that night. . . . I got up every morning as a Marine and came home every night as a Marine. It was hard to imagine being anything else. . . . Today, I realized that it`s not the Marine Corps that I miss. It`s being with Marines. . . . By the time of the (Nov. 25, 1986) press conference I was certainly prepared to leave the administration, and in some ways I actually looked forward to it . . . . (I) had ended up staying twice as long as I ever wanted or
expected.”
The facts are that North was scheduled three times to return to duty with the Marines before he was fired in November 1986, yet he remained at the White House. Other Marines have served there two or three years, and in rare cases, four years. They returned to the Corps with careers enhanced. A very few stayed longer, and the message was clear: That Marine had chosen a new career. Until he was fired, that was North`s message.
North presents selective, even distorted information to create the image he wishes to project. In this case, the image is that of the dedicated Marine forced against his will to serve longer than he wanted to in what he calls
”Byzantium on the Potomac.”
Another example: North discusses his return in 1974 from a 13-month tour in Okinawa, during which his family remained in Virginia. Landing in California to transfer for his flight to the East Coast, North called home. His wife told him she wanted a divorce. The emotional description is very effective, containing a large dose of self-reproach for sins contritely acknowledged. This sets the background for a description of events that lead to his hospitalization for depression a few days later.
Casual reading produces the desired result: sympathy for North and the ordeal he and his family faced. But after a more careful reading, the distortion of facts and emotional manipulation is apparent.
On his first night in northern Virginia (between Dec. 12 and 14 in 1974)
in temporary quarters, North watches the evening news: ”. . . It was all about the impending fall of South Vietnam. Marines, my Marines, were being readied and deployed for evacuation operations up and down the coast of Southeast Asia. Within days . . . the battalion I had just left behind deployed to rescue the American crew of the Mayaquez. . . . Instead of being with them I was sitting alone in Virginia with what appeared to be an unsalvageable marriage and two children whom I couldn`t even see on Christmas.”
There are major errors in North`s story:
– The ”impending fall” of Vietnam did not became a topic of news coverage until three months later.
– Marines did not deploy to the coast of Southeast Asia until 1/2 months later.
– Marine involvement in the Mayaquez debacle began on May 14. Five months is hardly, ”Within days . . . .”
Again, North distorts facts to fit the version of reality that he desires to present to the American public.
That is not to say that North doesn`t reveal some important information in ”Under Fire.” When it suits his purposes, he gives an accurate account. The problem is to differentiate between those instances where he distorts facts for self-interest and those where his interests are served by the truth. ”Under Fire” is well-written, interesting and an important contribution to the growing body of literature on Ronald Reagan`s national security apparatus and its key personalities. And, more than most books, it accurately reflects the character of its author. It is Oliver North`s story, and that is both its major strength and its greatest weakness.
