“It’s easy to make judgment calls between right and wrong.… The tougher calls are the ones where you have to decide between good and better. And the worst of all are the ones where you have to decide between bad and worse.”
As a born-again Christian, says Oliver North, he grappled earnestly with the moral/ethical issues surrounding his role in the Iran-contra affair. In an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, North disputed the image of himself often conveyed by the news media: that of a cold, calculating ideologue. Describing himself as a “frail, flawed mortal,” the 48-year-old former marine admitted he has “made mistakes.” But he also argued that the “moral quandaries” he faced were much more complex than most people acknowledge.
One of his biggest mistakes, he said, was lying to members of the House Intelligence Committee during a 1986 meeting in the White House Situation Room when he was asked if he had given aid to the contras. “Clearly, what I did in front of that congressional committee was wrong; I know it was wrong.” But, North said, he feared for the safety of the Nicaraguan resistance if he told the truth. And he emphasized that he never lied to Congress during the televised hearings of 1987.
North made his comments to CT during a promotional tour for his new book, Under Fire, copublished by HarperCollins and its evangelical division, Zondervan Publishing House. The tour is the first time North has granted interviews to reporters since the Iran-contra story began to break. In September, a federal judge dismissed the case against North involving obstruction of justice, making false statements, and theft of government property. The dismissal came after special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said he would abandon efforts to reinstate the convictions, which had been set aside on appeal.
Throughout the book, North discusses his faith, including coming to know Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. North and his family are long-time members of Church of the Apostles, an evangelical Episcopal congregation in Northern Virginia.
North said that he had “great, great qualms about putting the price of 500 TOWs [missiles] on a human life,” during the administration’s efforts to give arms to the Iranians in return for their help in freeing Western hostages held in Lebanon. “But with the administration that I served having made that judgment call before I got involved, it seemed to me that the right thing to do was to get as many Americans back as free and safe as we possibly could,” he said.
“I’m not asking that everybody stand up and endorse what we did, or certainly what I did,” North said. But he hopes people will at least try to understand better “the incredible dilemma” he faced. “Am I open to challenge? Yes. Am I forgiven? Yes. Maybe not by the Washington Post, but I know where I’m going, and it’s not because of anything that I’ve done.… It’s all because God cared enough to send his Son to die for me,” North said. “I know that I’m forgiven.”
North makes no apologies for keeping military secrets. “The Bible is full of times when the leaders of Israel, for example, had to keep secrets. Any one of us can turn to the Old Testament and find reference to Rahab, when she denies to the king’s inquisitors that Joshua’s spies are hiding on her roof.… Rather than being tried or dragged through a congressional tribunal, she’s one of the few that was spared when Jericho was captured.”
North said his experience does make him wonder whether Christians can be in sensitive military and government positions if they are constantly faced with choices that compromise their values. However, he added, “things could have been a whole lot worse if we didn’t have at least a handful of [Christians] around.”
Among North’s other comments:
• On media coverage that has ignored his Christian faith: “I don’t expect that your average media mogul, your great press and broadcast elite, is going to pick up on that.” North said he is hopeful that readers, drawn into the book by media attention on other issues, will “see a very clear Christian witness there.”
• On prayer: North said he has “absolutely no doubt” that the prayers of Christians sustained him and his family during the congressional hearings and the trial. They met weekly with a Bible-study group from their church, who also prayed regularly. “It’s been a tremendous resource that a lot of people didn’t have during this thing.”
• On reaction from the Religious Right to his assertion that “President Reagan knew everything”: North, who has been a popular figure among conservative Christian groups, said the conclusions in his book are nothing different from things he said at the congressional hearings in 1987. “Those in the big media are trying to make something new out of an old story. My hope is that those people who loved Ronald Reagan and supported me will read the whole book. I have not changed in my belief that this nation is better for having had Ronald Reagan as President.”
• On congressionally appointed prosecutor Lawrence Walsh: Forgiving Walsh, whom North describes in his book as a “vigilante,” has been “very difficult,” he said. “I don’t understand what motivates the man, particularly in that this has been the longest-lasting, most-intrusive, most-expensive, special prosecutorial investigation ever launched in this nation.”
Zondervan’s Covert Operation
When Zondervan decided to copublish Oliver North’s new book, Under Fire, the evangelical organization found itself in the midst of a covert operation with logistics that sounded like a good spy thriller. The book was dubbed the “Mr. Smith Project,” inspired by the movie classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. For most of the two years the book was in development, only a half-dozen people at Zondervan knew anything about Mr. Smith. Clandestine meetings between Zondervan representatives, North, and his writer, William Novak, were held at hotels where North was registered under an assumed name and hid in the bathroom when room service came. Books were shipped to stores in plain brown boxes with no identification on the outside.
“There was a little bit of cloak and dagger effect to the whole thing,” said Zondervan trade books publisher Scott Bolinder. North and his attorneys insisted upon the secrecy out of fear that the federal grand jury would “subpoena the manuscript or stop publication.” According to Bolinder, the book contains no information that had not been available to the courts and the special prosecutor, but North was concerned “about his effort to tell his side of the story being sabotaged.”
North told CT his desire to reach the Christian market was a major factor in his decision to sign with Zondervan and its parent company, HarperCollins. But before the final agreement was signed, Bolinder said Zondervan officials met at length with North, “asking pretty hard questions about his faith and his willingness to be straightforward and honest.” They came away convinced of North’s sincerity.
According to Bolinder, Zondervan editors had significant input to help North “integrate his faith into this book in a clear way.” Editors also went through and cleaned up some of the rough language contained in earlier drafts of the U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel’s book. “We tried to protect for any gratuitous use of language, but we didn’t want to sanitize it to the place where it lost some of its realness,” he said. Zondervan says it has received only about a dozen complaints during the first week of release, most relating to the surprise arrival of the book.
Judging by early sales reports, the Christian market’s reception of Under Fire appeared favorable during the first week after publication. Paul Van Duinen, Zondervan vice-president of sales for books and Bibles, said figures from Zondervan Family Bookstores indicated Under Fire ranked fifth on their week’s best-seller list. Zondervan initially shipped 46,000 copies of the book to Christian Booksellers Association stores and, after the first week, ordered 20,000 more. The book also got a boost in the Christian market when North was featured on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio show.
