OLIVER NORTH'S SECRET PLAN TO DECLARE MARTIAL LAW

	  While	caught up in exposing Fawn Hall's hairstyle, Ollie North's
     heroic gap-toothed	smile, and the soap opera ambience of the
     Congressional Contragate hearings,	most of	America's media ignored the
     chilling constitutional issue of Oliver North's secret plan to declare
     martial law.
	  But Alfonso Chardy, of THE MIAMI HERALD, was not deluded by
     North's charisma nor frightened by North's	earlier	warning	to him not
     to	investigate the	National Security Council's (NSC) connection to the
     Nicaraguan	resistance.
	  Unfortunately, Chardy's extraordinary disclosures about North
     went unexplored and unreported by other major media.
	  On July 5, 1987, Chardy reported over	the KNT	News Wire that
     Marine Lt.	Col. Oliver North helped draft a plan in 1984 to impose
     martial law in the	United States in event of an emergency.
	  According to Chardy, the secret plan called for suspension of	the
     Constitution, turning control of the government over to the
     little-known Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), appointment
     of	military commanders to run state and local governments,	and the
     declaration of martial law	in the event of	such a crisis as nuclear
     war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to
     a U.S. military invasion abroad.
	  North	helped draft the plan to impose	martial	law while serving
     as	the NSC's laiason to FEMA. Chardy reported that an administration
     official said the contingency plan	was written as part of an executive
     order or legislative package that Reagan would sign and hold within
     NSC until such time as a severe crisis arose. "It is not known whether
     Reagan signed the plan," Chardy added.
	  The plan was extraordinary enough to even frighten then-Attorney
     General William French Smith into protesting to Robert McFarlane,
     North's NSC boss at the time, that FEMA was establishing itself as an
     "emergency	czar" and "exceeding its proper	function as a coordinating
     agency for	emergency preparedness."
	  This secret plan to declare martial law in the event of internal
     dissent or	national opposition to a U.S. military invasion	abroad took
     on	an added dimension as citizens gathered	to protest the nation's
     intervention in Honduras in March,	1988.

	  SOURCES:  KNT	NEWS WIRE, 7/5/87, "North linked to plan for
     martial law," by Alfonso Chardy, p	A1, SAN	RAFAEL (CA) INDEPENDENT
     JOURNAL; THE NATION, 8/1/87, "Minority Report," by Christopher
     Hitchens, p 80.