MIAMI -- Lt. Col. Oliver North helped write a contingency plan in 1982 that called for the suspension of the Constitution and imposition of martial law in the event of a national crisis, anewspaper reports.
Outlined in a June 30, 1982, memo, the plan was a revised version of federal contingency plans for dealing with nuclear war, mass insurrection or military mobilization, The Miami Herald said Sunday.
The newspaper said the memo it obtained was written by John Brinkerhoff, a deputy to Louis Guiffrida, the Federal Emergency Management Agency chief. The martial law provisions resembled a 1970 paper by Guiffrida proposing such action in the event of a national black militant uprising, the paper added.
North, as the FEMA contact at the National Security Council staff, helped Brinkerhoff write the 1982 recommendations for suspending the Constitution, declaring martial law, turning control of the United States over to his agency and appointing military commanders to run state and local governments.
Reached by telephone Sunday at his home in northern Virginia, Brinkerhoff denounced as 'ridiculous' the report involving him and the Marine now at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal.
Saying he left government in 1982, Brinkerhoff added, 'There never was a plan to install martial law or martial rule. The whole purpose of emergency preparedness is and was to maintain civil rule.
'A lot of memos and lot of plans were written. We have a responsibility to plan for mobilization in case of emergency or war. As far as some evil plot ... it simply is untrue.'
According to the Herald, the proposal alarmed Attorney General William French Smith, who in August 1984 wrote to North's boss at the time, national security adviser Robert McFarlane, stating his objections and urging a delay in signing the directive.
'I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised Executive Order exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for emergency preparedness,' the Herald said Smith wrote. 'This department and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections to the creation of an 'emergency czar' for FEMA.'
The newspaper said it was not clear whether an executive order was signed with the proposed martial law plans, but congressional sources said they believed President Reagan did sign an executive order in 1984 that revised national military mobilization measures to deal with civilians in a crisis.
