Word: contra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Among the witnesses at congressional hearings on the Iran-contra scandal, former National Security Adviser John Poindexter was the only one "who didn't hang Oliver North out to dry." So says North, who last week sought to convince Federal Judge Harold Greene that he should not be forced to testify at Poindexter's upcoming trial. North claimed that his memories of the secret arms sale to Iran had become so intertwined with the account Poindexter gave Congress that he could no longer distinguish between them. The implication was that he could not give evidence against Poindexter without violating...
...reduced to offering more private entertainments; and a spooky guru bilking the faithful. Librettist Larry Gelbart cheerily exploits these cliches without sneering at the genre. In telling the Hollywood side of the story, however, he is at times as snide as in his just closed satire of Iran-contra, Mastergate. But when he becomes cranky about the writer's woeful lot, the show is redeemed by the wit and humanity of David Zippel's lyrics and the zip of Cy Coleman's score, which delights in the past without sinking to pastiche except, maybe, in the close- harmony numbers...
...Palace that helped topple the Somoza regime a year later. Partly because he was unhappy with the Sandinistas' growing dependence on Moscow, he quit as Vice Minister of Defense and in 1983 launched a guerrilla war against his former comrades. But he rejected CIA pressure to join the main contra faction and was finally forced to quit fighting...
...cynic might suspect that one arm of the Government had protected another. The CIA swore to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh that if Joseph Fernandez, its former station chief in Costa Rica, were to use certain classified documents to defend himself at his Iran-contra trial, the nation's security would be endangered. Thornburgh last week repeated the claim in an affidavit to Federal Judge Claude Hilton. So Hilton dismissed all charges against Fernandez, even though Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh scoffed that the "fictional secrets" had already been disclosed in the press...
That leaves only one Iran-contra defendant still facing trial: former National Security Adviser John Poindexter. He insists that testimony by former President Ronald Reagan is vital to his defense. Reagan is resisting Poindexter's subpoena. If Judge Harold Greene rules that Poindexter's ex-boss need not testify, the retired admiral presumably will ask to have his case dismissed...