South Viet Nam, 1969. Somewhere below the 17th parallel. About midnight. It was called Operation Hot Tamale. Quietly but firmly, Second Lieut. Oliver North roused his combat-weary men from their makeshift bunks. "We have to get ourselves a prisoner," he told them. Peace talks were going on in Paris, and the U.S. was claiming the North Vietnamese were operating unofficially inside the demilitarized zone. North's superiors wanted a prisoner for interrogation.
With blackened faces, North and his men crept through the dark, scarred landscape of the DMZ but could not find a single enemy soldier. North was determined to return home with the goods. Suddenly his team spied a North Vietnamese guard across the 17th parallel, inside North Viet Nam. North did not hesitate. He and a comrade stole across the border, wounded the guard and dragged him back into South Viet Nam. Mission accomplished. Keep mum about this, the lieutenant told his troops when they got back.
Boldness. Bravery. The desire to please superiors. The ability to inspire loyalty. Confidence unconstrained by doubt. True belief unhampered by questions. And a willingness to risk the entire game on a single, even reckless play.
Viet Nam shaped North in lasting ways, and the account of his nighttime assault on North Viet Nam reveals some of the same traits and patterns that have put this much decorated war hero at the heart of the Iran-contra affair. For North, the U.S. defeat abroad and the revulsion with the war at home were searing, bitter experiences. Never again would something like that happen -- if he could help it. He was a man of action, frustrated by red tape, timid bureaucrats and waffling politicians. If you needed to get something done, do it yourself.
From his childhood days, North's sensibility was molded by patriotism and devoutness. From Viet Nam on, he saw himself as a soldier in the holy war against Communism. Yet somewhere along the line, this man whose earnest, blue- eyed features were the stuff of Marine recruiting posters went off track. He came to see every bureaucratic squabble as a battle between good and evil, and his passionate intensity began to melt his judgment. He was a man whose zealotry served his country better in war than in peace. As in Greek tragedy, the same characteristics that catapulted North to great heights sent him plunging to earth.
Much has been made about the enigma of North. But that is in large part because this earnest, magnetic, often generous man has been his own best mythologizer, telling reporters and acquaintances stories about himself that bent the truth. Blissfully free of self-doubt, he could be a victim of self- delusion. At the National Security Council, he exaggerated his closeness to the President. In running the contra supply network and the arms-for-hostages swap, he seemed to shuttle between fantasy and reality, as he devised the most bizarre schemes to reach his goals. He spoke often of duty and what was right, yet he carelessly used money from the profits of the arms sales to pay food bills and buy snow tires. "He was always starring in his own movie," said former Presidential Spokesman Larry Speakes. North was certain about his role in that melodrama: the hero who turned rhetoric into action.