Iran Contra: Episode 7 - Olliewood

Pushkin.

The day Oliver North was fired from his job at the White House, Ronald Reagan called him on the phone and told him he was a national hero. It was a brief conversation, but Reagan found time for some gallows humor, telling North he thought Iran Contra would make a great movie someday. Reagan, a former Hollywood actor with nearly thirty years of experience in the movie business, probably didn't realize how quickly someday would come.

Hollywood's already growing up its wait list for a TV mini series What's Got all the elements.

Of the health. It's a very dramatic story. It's complex, but it's a dramatic story.

Ali North was the rare star witness and a political scandal who had actual star quality. Norman Lear, the creator of All in the Family at good times, marvel at his stage presence. He gets tears in his eyes. Lear said, TV eats up moist eyed people.

There were times when this career military man demonstrated a brilliant gift for using the media. Through the day, across the country, Americans watched as network soap operas were replaced by Oliver North.

Even before the Iran Contra hearings ended in the summer of nineteen eighty seven. Journalists and producers in Hollywood were talking about who should play North on the big screen if.

They ever get around to making the movie of the contra hearings. Here in Hollywood, Oliver North look alike Treat Williams would seem to be the front runner for the leading role.

At one point during north testimony, Prankster's in Los Angeles covered up the H and the Hollywood sign so that it said olliy would.

An anonymous scholar said he made the change quote not to condone North's actions, but to give expression to the nationwide wave of Ali mania.

The scandal had everything you could want in a blockbuster international intrigue, communists, bad guys, secret rons abroad. He was an action movie, a legal drama, and a spy thriller all at once. And at the center of it stood a dashing, charismatic man of conviction, a perfect cipher for American attitudes about government, patriotism, and democracy.

Is Oliver North, a hero who kept the Nicaraguan resistance alive after Congress had forbidden it, or a zealot subverted the system by repeatedly lying about his activities and shredding the evidence.

The expectation in publishing circles was that North would eventually be able to get seven figures for his autobiography, which could in theory be optioned for TV and film. But that could take years, and producers wanted to capitalize on the buzz as quickly as possible. That meant they'd have to find their source material somewhere else, so they turned to journalism.

I felt that Iran Contra was a really important story, really about a constitutional crisis.

This is Ben Bradley Junior. He's the son of legendary editor Ben Bradley, who Oversawtergate coverage at the Washington Post.

You know, the ideologues in the Reagan administration used North as an agent to circumvent the law.

Ben Bradley Junior was a reporter at the Boston Globe. In February of nineteen eighty seven, it was announced that he would chronicle the Iran Contra scandal in a book called Guts and Glory.

You know, he had sex appeal. North sort of a do it yourself, a gung ho brand of patriotism and making things happen, grabbing the bull by the horns. Exploiting power vacuums and filling them. That's why I really chose North as a vehicle to tell the story of Iran Contra in this book.

Bradley was still working on Guts and Glory when an outline of the book started circulating in La Mike Robe, a producer and director, first heard about it from an executive at CBS. Robe had recently produced a TV movie for the network called Murder Ordained.

Unmercifully and Without Compassion.

Murder Ordained was very successful. I was sort of in the good graces of CBS, and I was beginning to think about what I wanted to do next. Ann Along came Ali Maniel.

Robe worked in the increasingly popular genre known as the docu drama, a kind of fictionalized nonfiction that, as Newsday put it, gave viewers instant history the way a noodle mix and hot water give us instant soup. Murder Ordained was a prime example of the form. It was based on the true story of a minister in Kansas who was accused of killing his wife.

It was a crime beyond belief, starring Terry Kinney Joe Bethwick.

They were very popular at the time the networks were looking for any extra boost and notoriety in sizzle that could elevate the interest in their project above that of their competition, and it became a whole new art form, an original American art form.

Robe was intrigued by the idea of making a docudrama out of the Oliver North story.

I was fascinated by Oliver North from the get go. I was a former military officer. I understood the pressures he was operating under. I understood a lot of his attitude. I wasn't sure if he was hiding something, but I did feel he's a heck of a performer, and he was rather spellbinding to watch.

He is unquestionably telegenic. You'd perhaps say that the force is with him. He is a natural.

I was working desperately to keep the hostages alive. Good grief, We'd had this stuff all over the newspapers. The Israelis were calling me every half hour.

And I was Robe did have some reservations.

From the very get go. My problem as a dramatist, my challenge was how do you make this terribly convoluted scheme dramatic for a mass television audience in a way that they can come to care about someone in the show and to understand the very twisted machinations of Iran Contra.

At the end of the day, Robe couldn't say no, and he signed on to adapt Bradley's book into a television movie event. He and Bradley would collaborate on the screenplay while Bradley finished up his reporting. CBS wanted them to move fast. If they didn't, the Guts and Glory movie could end up being just one in a sea of Iran Contra adaptations.

No matter which direction you look these days, you'll be facing North. Oliver North has been all over television, and he's soon to be all over everything else.

We heard rumblings of other networks thinking about doing Oliver North. If your subject is a hot topic, you want to get on the air as quickly as you can. We looked at a lot of pressure in that way.

Among Robes would be competitors was a producer named Jay Weston, who had announced his own plans to make an Oliver North biopic. North was reportedly a fan of Heartbreak Ridge, Weston's nineteen eighty six movies, starring Clint Eastwood as a fictional marine who leads a platoon during the invasion of Grenada.

And an assistant in operation of the Island of Grenada to rescue American citizens.

That the Island of what Grenada?

For the title, Weston was considering reluctant hero, American hero gone wrong and carrying patriotism too far. But Weston's project never made it off the ground. In September of nineteen eighty seven, he told a reporter that it had all become too complicated and that life was too short to do that tough a project. Plus, with the congressional hearings over and the stream of shocking revelations dying down, Weston felt like the Iran contra story was getting kind of

This is fiasco Iran contrast. Welcome to the National Security Council. Agent.

Are you ready to do battle for the administration?

Absolutely?

On the set we would have disagreements, so.

You're right about the job.

Miss Paul sawn Hall.

A lot of people probably thought she was a gold digger, a bimbo. I didn't want to portray her that way.

His involvement in the Iran Contra arms deal has left him without a job, but with a new responsibility as Conservative spokesman.

I fight any way I can fly.

Episode seven, Hollywood, How Hollywood tried to turn Iran Contra into a movie while Oliver North tried to avoid going to prison.

We'll be right back.

As you heard in the previous episode, there were three major investigations into Iran Contra, the Tower Commission, the Congressional Inquiry, and the criminal probe of the Independent Council Lawrence Walsh. By nineteen eighty eight, the first two had completed their work and only Walsh was still chugging along.

Independent Council Lawrence Walsh is saying nothing. Since his appointment fourteen months ago, he thirty lawyers and fifty investigators have poured over hundreds of thousands of documents and conducted at least fifteen hundred witness interviews.

A federal grand jury in Washington has indicted four men for try to help the Contras at a time when Congress had forbidden it.

On March sixteenth, nineteen eighty eight, a grand jury brought indictments against Oliver North, former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, and Richard Secord, who oversaw logistics for the Contra resupply operation and the Iran weapons sales.

All are accused of having participated in the illegal diversion of Iranian arm sales profits to the Contras and Nicaragua.

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North was named in sixteen counts ranging from conspiracy to obstruction of Congress.

The charges included making false statements to Congress in response to early inquiries about the Contra War, obstructing the Attorney General's weekend investigation into the Iran arm sales by shredding official documents, and defrauding the IRS in the course of fundraising for the Contras. Those charges could plausibly be defended as efforts to protect the President's foreign policy agenda, but a few of the other charges Walsh brought against North

A gift by Sea Cord of the security systems.

The acceptance by North of the security system.

The fence cost thirteen eight hundred dollars. Walsh characterized it as an illegal gratuity and alleged that North had tried to cover it up after the Iran Contra scandal broke.

North's obstruction of our investigation by developing false documents to conceal his acceptance.

Of that gift.

North had allegedly gone onto a department store and used a floor model typewriter to fabricate a pair of backdated letters in which he discussed paying for the fence with the contractor who had installed it.

Meanwhile, the Walsh investigation continues, which could mean more charges against those named today or against others in the Iran Contra affair.

The prospect of criminal trials for North, Poindexter, and Seacort invited a host of new questions about how the Iran Contra scandal would play out. Would Reagan be called to testify, and if any of the accused were found guilty, would they be pardoned. Reagan downplayed that possibility, but he made clear that he was standing by Oliver North.

I still think Haley North is a hero. And at the other hand, in any talk about what I might do or pardons and so forth, I think with the case before the courts, that's something I can't discuss now. But I just have to believe that they're going to be found innocent, because I don't think they were guilty of any law breaking or any crime.

In the meantime, Ali North was beginning his second act.

While awaiting trial, North has been giving speeches. Last week, this one in Virginia, raised eighteen thousand dollars for his defense.

I don't believe that there's anything wrong with faithfulness to this country or its ideals.

North started touring the country, meeting his fans and raising money for his legal defense fund. In the process, he morphed into something between a politician and a motivational speaker.

Friends of Oliver North paid twenty dollars each to listen to a pep talk this.

Morning, one hundred and fifty dollars each to hear the man who fought Congress. They love him and his cause.

That the man's a hero.

I wish we had more likely help.

He's just what we need in America, somebody who stand up and protect our land.

North was invited to address Washington's football team before the Super Bowl. He also delivered the commencement speech at Liberty University, where he was introduced by the school's founder, Jerry Folwell.

The first questions always ask, why are you having an indicted man to speak to the students at Liberty University. I said, well, we serve a savior who was indicted.

His involvement in the Iran Contra arms deal has left him without a job, but with a new responsibility as conservative spokesman.

With the nineteen eighty eight election approaching, North became one of the most popular spokesman for publican candidates.

On the campaign trail.

Pretty soon people were wondering when Ali North might make a run for office himself.

There has been talk of a political career for Oliver North, even though he has no experience and no money. North is a hero to conservatives. He is now free to speak publicly and to criticize Congress. Political careers have been built.

Unless While North traveled and prepared for his trial, Mike Robe was hard at work on the script for Guts and Glory. One of the questions he was asking himself was how do you craft a multi layered character or out of someone most viewers are going to either love or hate before they even see the movie.

The problem that I had with Oliver North as I got into his story was that what he believed with all his heart was in the beginning understandable and somewhat admirable, But he was done in in his passion and his failure to have perspective on those acts which were illegal and horribly detrimental to the process of government in the US.

There was another problem too. Even though the real life story all over North was full of exciting scenes and details, from a screenwriter's perspective, it was missing something crucial.

One of the challenges of writing the script was to give voice to an opposing, ethical, moral, legal point of view when it came to the Shenanigans that North was carrying off.

As Robe saw it, Oliver North needed a foil, someone to challenge his point of view, to generate conflict and introduce a moral counterweight. The trouble was Robe didn't think that person actually existed in the Reagan White House. Bud McFarlane apparently didn't fit the bill.

And I resorted, out of necessity, frankly, to a much used docu drama device called the composite character, and I named him Aaron Sykes.

I'm looking for, mister Sykes. Oh that's me, Oliver North, reporting, Sir, Major US.

Marines, Aaron Sikes, Tiger, Princeton University. Welcome to the National Security Council, Major.

And I made him a colleague of Oliver Norse at the National Security Council, a man who fictionally knew Oliver from most of his career and became the voice of reason when it came to judging Oliver North's misdeeds. Listen, ALEI for those maps for the contras.

Yep, But I thought we weren't allowed to pass on any kind of military intelligence.

Well, the CIA can't, I can't.

But that's not what we're.

Hearing, boy, Aaron Sykes.

Robe created a White House official with misgivings, someone who is willing to push back against North.

There's a line I remember at one point when North is facing expulsion from the NSC. North is our right, and he he says to Aaron Sykes regarding all of his transgressions, he doesn't care because the end justifies the means.

The end justifies the means.

Damn right.

And Sykes retorts, but that's not what America's about, colonel. But you don't understand. America is about the means.

Wake up and smell the dog crap, Aaron. We're fighting for democracy down.

There by keeping it a secret from democracy here. Sell that somewhere else, colonel.

And that's the way in which Aaron Sykes became the conscience of Oliver North, but also the rebuttal from so many Americans who were polarized and critical of what North represented.

With a tight deadline from CBS, Robe and his team got started on the other major part of pre production, finding the cast.

Once the mini series was announced, there was this national furor, this big brujja over who should play Home? Are there crazy things like al Pacino should play Oliver North or vera facet is obviously Von Hall. That was very popular. I kind of recall, however, there wasn't quite as big as a flood of interest in playing Oliver North himself, which is kind of ironic and maybe that can be chalked up to liberal Hollywood.

The production team eventually founded There Oliver North in One David Keith, a Tennessee farm boy turned up and coming actor.

Who was probably best known at the time in his role as Richard Gear's buddy and officer and a gentleman.

I'm just not like you, Mayo.

I can't shit all over people and just sleep like a baby at night.

And I was fine with that choice. I was fine with David as an actor. I think he was okay with me as a director. What I didn't know was that he was a staunch conservative Republican and I wasn't.

Maybe bullshit to you, buddy, but I wasn't raised that way.

One of the most sought after roles in Guts and Glory was that of Fawn Hall North secretary who had testified before Congress about shredding documents and smuggling them out of North's office in her clothes.

When I first moved to Hollywood, I had kind of a little career going playing older actresses in younger flashback scenes.

That's Amy Stock. She had started her career playing the younger version of Joan van Ark's character on the soap opera Notts Landing.

You know, I was very generic blonde, and so when Fawn Hall came around, Yeah, the resemblance was pretty striking.

Stock had just wrapped an arc on the hit drama Dallas when she landed the audition for Guts and Glory.

I went for the initial call, and I'm pretty sure it was either the shredding scene between Oliver North and Fawn Hall. Are you sure? Hell?

No.

I wanted to show this to my grandkids, but I've never disobeyed an order in my wife, or was.

The interview when she walks into oliverant North's office.

So you're right about the job, miss Hall.

Fawn Hall, Miss Hall, if you'd like to come aboard, I'd be on.

And then I was called back basically because I looked so much like her. I'd like to think is because I was a great actress. But you know, I think it was morcause I looked a lot like her and then got the part and was.

Thrilled Major North's office.

And I immediately said, I want to meet Vawn Hall. I want to talk with her. I want to get close to her as I possibly can get about her story and her side of things.

Stock wanted to do Faun Hall justice, both because it was her first time playing a real person and because she felt Hall's portrayal in the media had been rather one dimensional.

Well, I'm just going to say it. She came across as kind of shallow, you know, like a glory seeker in the newspaper, and she had this tiny, minor role important in what happened as it turns out. But a lot of people felt that she was trying to promote herself to during this whole thing, and I didn't want her to come across that way, so I tried to tried to make her as honest as possible, that she truly believed that what she was doing was right.

Stock tried to schedule a meeting with Hall to get a better idea of her experience and motivations, but Hall did not want to talk. The rumor was that she had hoped to play herself in the movie, but that idea was ultimately shot down. As Robes said at the time, it would have blurred the line between the illusion of reality and reality itself. Stock did not give up. She knew that Vaughan Hall had moved to Los Angeles after

We all met at the Chateau Marmont. David was going to this rave which were very popular back in the late eighties, and so he invited us to come along, and he said, Fawn Hall will be there, and I went, oh, great, I would just love to even meet her, So let's go.

The party was in the Hollywood Hills. The guest list included celebrities from the A List to the Z List, and the music was loud.

Some kind of eighties pop crap, you know, the stuff that goes boom jiga, boom jaga book, you know, and you just can't really think. And there are a lot of people around, and one of them was Madonna, and she was sitting at David's table. And so I got to meet Madonna and it was great. In Fawn Hall, she was there. I walked up to her and I said, Hi, my name is Amy Stock and I will be playing you in Guts and Glory. And honestly, she gave me

With that Stock let it go. Hall just wasn't going to talk to her. Thirty years later, she declined to talk to me too. Guts and Glory started filming in Los Angeles in the winter of nineteen eighty nine, at almost the same exact time, the trial of Oliver North was getting under way in a Washington courtroom.

After nearly a year of legal wrangling, the trial of former White House aid Oliver North began today in Federal District Court in Washington.

From the outset, North's attorney and the Independent Council's office were locked in a procedural battle over evidence. The fact that North and Poindexter's immunized testimony before Congress could not be used against them meant that Lawrence Walsh and his prosecutors could not rely on it in any way while making their case. That didn't just mean the prosecutor couldn't refer to it. It meant that none of their witnesses could either.

North's attorney's arguments that grand jury witnesses had been exposed to the highly publicized congressional testimony.

The judge in North's trial instructed witnesses not to rely on any information they'd learned from his immunized congressional testimony, but that was hard to enforce, and there was always a chance something it admissible would slip out. That created a huge risk for Walsh's prosecution. It also presented an opportunity for north legal team should they find themselves having to appeal an unfavorable verdict. Instead of a military uniform, North wore a simple blue suit to the first day

The witness stand today former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Mees.

Today's witness was Adolpho Cooleero, a rebel leader who described North as quote the savior of the contrast.

Oliver.

North's former White House Secretary, Vaughn Hall, came to court today to testify at her former bosses trial. Haul also total of the intense atmosphere in North's office and now he would occasionally break the tension with jokes, including some about how he may end up going to prison. She said, he's a man with a wonderful sense of humor.

Meanwhile, in California, the cast and crew of Guts and Glory were trying to make their deadline. They had about forty days to shoot the entire film.

And what happens when you do these things is that the network had already slotted the mini series for May sweeps. That's the period of time when the network is judge on its ratings. So we were pushed. We ended up shooting the entire film in the Los Angeles area with just two days at the end of the schedule in Washington, d C. To pick up backdrops that would ground us in real world.

Robe and his crew arrived in Washington. A few weeks into North trial. At one point they were shooting a scene of the Jefferson Memorial less than two miles from the Federal courthouse. In the scene, Oliver North tries to recruit Richard Secord to run the Contrary Supply Operation. Director wants you, General, and your country needs you.

I'm a businessman now, and this is a business proposition with the usual markup the CIA is.

Making up for.

Writing in The New York Times, Maureen Dowd described it as a collision of art and life being played out back to the future style. By this point, the relationship between Mike Robe and David Keith had become strained. As it turned out their political differences placed them at odds on the question of who Oliver North was and how he should be portrayed in the movie.

David liked, essentially that North said what he believed, and believed what he said and acted on it.

Now, once again, the same gang of reds are establishing a potential nuclear base right in our own hemisphere.

In front of us. Mister President, We're not ready to.

Lick a pissant islands or what's become of us.

There was a period in a scene where Oliver North was hospitalized during a rocky time in his marriage, during the time he had come back from Vietnam, and he was hospitalized for emotional.

Stress, emotional distress, whatever that means.

That's documented. But when I tried to get David to behave as someone undergoing emotional stress, he felt I was trying to make Oliver North look crazy, and I tried to say, David, that's why he's in the hospital.

David Keith, who didn't respond to interview requests for this podcast, told People magazine that he had tried to make North more of a hero and Robe had tried to make him less of one. We probably wound up with something around the truth.

In the end. I kind of felt like David's defense of Norse ideology kind of fit the character. I mean, that's kind of who Oliver North was.

We'll be right back.

The Oliver North jury began debating criminal charges today against the former Reagan White House aid with strong ties.

After eight long weeks, Oliver North's trial began winding down. On April twenty first, nineteen eighty nine, the jury began its deliberations.

The fate of Oliver North now rests with the jury in his charge to the jury.

In the midst of those deliberations, the cast and crew of Guts and Glory were in the final days of promotional blitz before the premiere of their movie.

David Keith is Oliver North, Peter Boyle Is, John Poindexter, Amy stock pointon is Bonn Hall.

David Keith appeared on the cover of TV Guide in a white marine dress uniform. Journalist Ben Bradley Jr. Went on Fresh Air with Terry Gross to talk about the adaptation of his book.

You describe in your book the phone call that President Reagan made to Oliver North, and he ended, according to report, this phone conversation by saying to North, I'd say this is going to make a great movie one day. I think it's kind of funny that your book is actually becoming the first movie about Oliver North.

Yeah.

And actually it's even funnier that that very scene is in the movie, which when I saw it makes me laugh. It's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy, I guess, and I'm satisfied that the film will do the book and history justice.

On April thirtieth, nine days after jury deliberations began, Part one of Guts and Glory premiered on CBS.

As good men to risk their lives for Notted, you fight to win.

It was the thirty first most watched program of the week, behind Bionic Showdown, The Return of the six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. The second half of Guts and Glory was set to air a few days later.

A secret operation explodes, but taking the heat could destroy Oliver North.

They've done anything criminal.

The stunning conclusion of Guts and Glory tomorrow.

Reviews for Guts and Glory were not positive. It is fitting that television is rushing to tell North's story before it is concluded, wrote a TV critic for the San Diego Union Tribune, and particularly fitting that a story so confusing has become even more muddied when told in a television drama.

I think some of the critics didn't quite know what to make of it. They had their expectations. The ratings in the ann weren't particularly great.

Critics were especially harsh about a scene in which Oliver North flew a plane through a firefight in Central America to rescue a group of soldiers. Get the Wounded, Get thee In his book, Ben Bradley Junior had noted that the story may have been apocryphal because no one had ever heard of North being able to fly. But the main problem, according to a review in The Buffalo Times, was that America seemed to be Ali to death already.

I think the story had evaporated by the time we actually got on the air, even though we got on the air as quickly as we could. I mean, people had had enough of Oliver North. One way or the other. It had been prick Asi and fried and stewed Ali Mania.

It seemed was not a phenomenon. It was a fad.

The jury now has spoken and answered the question of Oliver North's guilt in the Arms for Iran?

What happened to the money case?

On Thursday May fourth, nineteen eighty nine, two days after And Glory finished airing on CBS, the jury in North trial returned to verdict.

Leading the news.

This Thursday, a jury found Oliver North guilty on three of twelve counts. The guilties game on charges of obstructing Congress, destroying government documents, and accepting an illegal gratuity in the form of a security system at his hall.

On all the other charges, the jury found North not guilty, an indication that they didn't see him as a ringleader or even a rogue operator.

But it seemed to be saying, we're not going to throw the book at him.

This was the low man on the totem pole.

So well, we agree he did something wrong, but we're not going to buy all of it.

We're not going to pile on.

North immediately appealed to verdict and took the opportunity to address the media.

Just a very brief statement, that is that today's verdict by the jury here in Washington is a partial vindication for what has been for my family in me a very long and difficult process. We will continue this battle. We will be fully vindicated. Thank you.

Guts and Glory ended up being the first adaptation of Iran Contra to be released, and strangely, it was kind of the last.

Though there have been a few feature.

Films about the Contra war, Hollywood has failed, at least so far, to produce one definitive account of the whole saga. There is no All the President's Men for Iran Contra, and though Oliver North has held on to various forms of relevance over the years, by appearing on Fox News leading the NRA and running unsuccessfully for a Senate seat. I think it's fair to say that he is not

Ultimately, American people judged that their est was no complexity or intellect or reason to keep following this one dimensional marine.

Frankly, a marine does what it takes.

I fight any way I can.

Bite, scratch lie, because in the end, America's worth it.

The Washington Post review of Guts and Glory summed it up nicely, saying that North, as portrayed by David Keith, did not live up to the status of tragic hero because his flaws were mundane and his heroic self aggrandizing. I think that's true about Oliver North as portrayed by Oliver North too. Even when he published his memoir in nineteen ninety one, North came across as a man without much capacity for self doubt or inner conflict about the

Bush.

As it turned out, Bush had some ideas of his own about how Iran Contra should end. On the next and final episode to Fiasco, the Independent Council's Office tries to finish its work on Iran Contra while contending with two presidents at once.

The three leading television channels ran the story of the Vice President and all help brokeloves.

For a list of books, articles, and documentaries, we used in our research.

Follow the link in the show notes.

Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. Shows produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline kaplan Ula Kulpa and me Leon Mayfock. Our editor was Camilla Hammer. Our researcher was Francis Carr, with additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas. Our music is by Nick Silvester. Our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips and y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers,