North Hot Topic Among Veterans : Contragate Figure Sparks Kinship at Annual Convention

WASHINGTON — Oliver North.

Those two words still had people cheering, booing, shrugging or scowling last week at the third national convention of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

The Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who has figured so prominently in the Iran- contra controversy was applauded, condemned or branded a zealot. But all said they felt a sense of kinship with North because, like them, he had served in America’s longest war.

“The minute I saw him in his uniform, I was up there cheering,” said David Bland, an infantry leader in Vietnam in the Army’s 1st Cavalry in 1966 and 1967. But, added Bland, now 41 and a state employment specialist in Olympia, Wash., “I don’t consider him a hero. I think he did his job as a soldier, but he lied to Congress. It’s like, ‘I did it, so what?’ ”

“He was troubling to me because he seemed to use his status as a war hero to justify actions, which are blatantly illegal,” said John Greenfield, a 43-year-old lawyer from Boise, Ida., who served first in an artillery unit and later as an Army photojournalist in 1968 in Vietnam. “I think Col. North’s uniform was his best defense.”

Thumbs Down

Earl Williams, 40, a Marine Corps “grunt intelligence” officer in Vietnam from 1965 to 1967 who now works as a veterans’ outreach specialist in Massachusetts, pointed thumbs down. “I think he was exploiting his role as a Vietnam veteran,” Williams said.

Nevertheless, 100 “OLIVER NORTH, AN AMERICAN HERO” buttons sold out within hours when the 600 convention delegates descended on the Omni Shoreham Hotel on Wednesday. By Thursday morning, the hotel’s drugstore had restocked the $2 buttons, and was reporting brisk sales.

“To me he’s definitely a hero,” said Zeke Zeender, 48, a Washington-area restaurateur who did not serve in Vietnam but joined the veterans’ group as an associate member because he admires the soldiers from America’s longest war so much.

Chartered in 1979 to serve the special needs of Vietnam veterans, the organization grew slowly at first. But in January, 1981, when the American hostages were returned from Iran, the group experienced a surge both in membership and in public attention.

“It was as though America went through an emotional catharsis that put the issues of the Vietnam era on the table for public discussion,” Robert Muller, the group’s founder and outgoing president, has written.

Last week, as Cabinet-level witnesses appeared before the Iran-contra hearings on Capitol Hill, that connection continued. Breaking occasionally from lengthy floor sessions, many delegates expressed strong feelings about American military involvement in the world today.

“Beirut, Central America, the Persian Gulf, it’s the same politics as we had in Vietnam: No win,” said Rick Covert, 46, of Olympia, Wash. Now disabled from his job as a truck driver, Covert served in the Army’s First Air Cavalry in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968.

“We are giving the image of the United States being wimpy,” 38-year-old Philip J. Milio, an Army Specialist E5 in Vietnam in 1968-69 who works as a vocational school counselor in New York, said. “We should either go in there and take care of things, or not.”

Dressed in fatigues, T-shirts that boasted proud statements about Vietnam, jungle camouflage and three-piece suits, many delegates turned pensive as they talked the lessons of Vietnam.

“Before,” said Gib Halverson, 36, wearing the black beret that identifies him as a member of the Army’s long range reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam, “we were the people who just took the world by the horns and just did it, whatever it was. That was acceptable.”

After Vietnam, the Madison, Wis., firefighter said, “we have become less trusting of our government.”

Special Screening

This year’s VVA convention featured the organization’s first “Vietnam Film Festival,” as well as a special screening of “Tour of Duty,” a CBS-television series about Vietnam to be aired this fall. At Saturday’s banquet, Oliver Stone, producer of the Academy Award-winning film “Platoon,” was the evening’s main speaker.

For some Vietnam veterans gathered in Washington last week, this recent spate of books, movies and television programs about the war in Southeast Asia posed both a way to promote understanding about Vietnam and a risk of continued stereotypes.

“ ‘Platoon’ is a fairly accurate portrayal of what many of the Vietnam veterans went through,” said lawyer Greenfield, who introduced Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) to the plenary session. “But ‘Rambo,’ that kind of movie makes a mockery out of what these people went through.”

“With three ‘Rambos,’ ” Duggins volunteered, “we could have stayed home.”