Word: courtroom
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...classic courtroom confrontation: defendant and prosecutor, both decorated Marine veterans of Viet Nam, locked in a bitter cross-examination. The Oliver North who endured four days of acerbic questioning by prosecutor John Keker last week did not come across as a selfless patriot used by superiors to carry out a covert plan for assisting the Nicaraguan rebels in defiance of a congressional ban. Instead, North emerged as an evasive witness with a selective memory and unusual personal finances...
...stash of up to $15,000 in cash that North claimed he kept in a steel box bolted to the floor of a closet in his suburban Washington home. North's initial explanation of how he happened to have that much cash lying around elicited muffled laughter from the courtroom audience. "When I would come home on Friday . . . I would take my change out of my pocket and put it in that steel box I'd been issued as a midshipman." When Keker expressed his disbelief, North added another explanation: proceeds from a 1964 insurance settlement after an automobile accident...
After a night sequestered in a downtown hotel, the jurors were brought to the federal courthouse in a van and taken to an small room only a few feet away from the courtroom where they had listened to testimony for eight weeks. Their room was further crowded with hundreds of exhibits, some still classified as top secret. A U.S. marshal guarded the door...
North's lying to Congress should also be punished in kind. After three or four weeks at the MVA, he should be brought back to the courtroom amidst intense public drama. "Not Guilty," the jury head should announce. But as soon as Ollie jumps up, hugs Betsy and takes his first big bite of apple pie, he should be grabbed and carted off to jail. Goodbye, Oliver. You're going to the circus...
Having failed in his effort two weeks ago to bring Ronald Reagan to the courtroom to testify on his behalf, North took the burden of his criminal defense upon himself. A risky move, it exposes him to cross-examination by the federal prosecutors and leaves him liable to a possible perjury charge if he contradicts his earlier testimony before the Iran-contra committees. Soft- spoken and earnest, he admitted lying to Congress as well as altering documents. But always, he insisted, he was following the orders of his White House superiors. In yet another melodramatic but memorable statement, he declared...