A Big Bonus for "Belly Button"

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Hakim at first contended that North remained ignorant of the bank account despite his wife's discussion with Zucker. But under questioning from Senate Chief Counsel Arthur Liman, the businessman admitted, "Eventually, I would have found it impossible for him not to know." Congressional investigators have already uncovered evidence that North used $2,000 worth of traveler's checks obtained from Contra Leader Adolfo Calero to buy groceries, snow tires and gasoline.

According to Hakim's testimony, North's motives may have been tainted by politics as well as profit. Hakim said he attended a secret meeting between North and other U.S. officials and Iranian government representatives in West Germany last October. North, said Hakim, was extremely eager for all of the U.S. hostages to be released before the November congressional elections, to "enhance the position of the President." But the Americans and the Iranians were at loggerheads. As North prepared to leave the meeting, Hakim asked if he could take over the negotiating. North gave him six hours to cut a deal.

Under North's deadline pressure, Hakim worked out a nine-point plan that included a promise that the U.S. would deliver 500 TOW missiles to the Iranians and pursue the release of 17 Shi'ite Muslim terrorists being held in Kuwait in return for one or two American captives. Hakim, following Secord's recommendations, went as far as to commit the U.S. to fighting the Soviets if they invaded Iran, and he pledged U.S. assistance in efforts to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Secord and North approved Hakim's arrangement. Four days before the election, Hostage David Jacobsen was freed (nonetheless, the G.O.P. lost control of the Senate). When Liman sarcastically asked Hakim if he felt as if he had played "Secretary of State for a day," the businessman boasted, "I had it better than the Secretary . . . I can achieve more."

To Senate Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, Hakim's private foreign policy dealings were more disturbing than the indications of profiteering. Although Congress has been denied access to sensitive foreign policy material, Inouye pointed out, Hakim and other private operatives were handed top-secret KL-43 encryption devices, "something that the KGB would love to grab hold of." Moreover, he said, to learn of an "American lieutenant colonel . . . committing this country, its power and majesty, to defend Iran, without even consultation with the Congress of the United States, is just unbelievable."

^ The Congressmen also found it hard to believe what they heard from Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, the point man for the Administration's policy in Central America. The cocky, abrasive Abrams confessed to deliberately misleading congressional committees last fall when he claimed that the Administration had not solicited funds from foreign countries for the Nicaraguan contras. In fact, Abrams himself had requested a contribution of $10 million from the government of Brunei, but he testified last week that he was not "authorized" to tell Congress the truth on the matter. Abrams also told the panel that Secretary of State George Shultz considered North to be a "loose cannon" and that he had been instructed by Shultz to "monitor Ollie." Yet, Abrams said, "I was careful not to ask Colonel North questions I did not need to know the answers to."