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.