Mr. NIELDS: Well, I would like you to turn in that case to exhibit 145. It is in book 6. Do you have that in front of you?

Mr. NORTH: I have exhibit 140—did you say 5 or 6?

Mr. NIELDS: One-hundred-forty-five.

Mr. NORTH: Right.

Mr. NIELDS: Do you have that in front of you?

Mr. NORTH: I do.

Mr. NIELDS: And that is a document, a memorandum, from you to Mr. McFarlane.

Mr. NORTH: It is.

Mr. NIELDS: And it deals with this Central American country and it is titled "Aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance".

Mr. NORTH: That is correct.

Mr. NIELDS: And it recommends that the National Security Adviser, Mr. McFarlane, send a letter to the Secretaries of State and Defense, among others?

Mr. NORTH: Yes, that is correct.

Mr. NIELDS: And the letter itself is a suggestion of providing some assistance to the Central American country.

Mr. NORTH: That is correct.

Mr. NIELDS: And in your memo, you say—at the end of the memo on page two, once we have approval for at least some of what they have asked for, we can ensure that the right people in that country understand that we are able to provide results from their cooperation on the Resistance issue. Now you wrote that, was that your intention?

Mr. NORTH: That was one of my intentions, but it is very clear from the attached memo what the real problem is there, too. And the attached memo talks about in recent weeks there appears to have been an increase in guerrilla attacks and subversion in that country.

Mr. NIELDS: And indeed you indicate in the memo, at page 1, that the real purpose of your memo is to find a way by which we can compensate the Central American country for the extraordinary assistance they are providing to the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters. And you also recommend that the letter—that goes to the Secretaries of Defense and State—and this is on page two—not refer to the arrangements which have been made for supporting the Resistance.

Mr. NORTH: That is correct. I don't deny a single word that is in there. But what I am saying to you, and the point I was trying to make is I did not tell the representatives of that country blanked out there that if they did this, then we would do that. Never did I do that.

Mr. NIELDS: But you wanted this done for the purpose expressed at the end of page 2, which is so that you can ensure that the right people in the Central American country understand that we are able to provide results from their cooperation on the Resistance issue.

Mr. NORTH: I do not deny that.

Mr. NIELDS: But you didn't want the Secretaries of Defense and State, who were being asked to provide these results, to know why they were doing it?

Mr. NORTH: Let me be more specific than that. I did not want the memo that you see at tab I, which is sent to the Honorable George P. Shultz, Casper Weinberger, William Casey and General Vessey, which would be reviewed by hundreds of people en route to their offices, to have that reference in it. And as I said yesterday, counsel, it was fairly well known certainly to those men—although they may all deny it—what I was doing. There came a time when the man at the top of that list, at the occasion of the retirement of Ambassador Robert Oakley, took me aside just weeks before I was summarily fired, put his arm around my shoulder and told me what a remarkable job I had done keeping the Nicaraguan Resistance alive. There is no doubt that they knew what I was doing and yet I didn't think it was necessary that the hundreds of staffers who would see that memo on the way to their front offices had a clear recognition for what I was doing. I didn't seek the credit and I didn't want the blame. I was simply willing to take the fall if somebody needed a political scapegoat. That is what I was willing to do.