Oliv­er North is the new pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion (NRA) and an old bête noire of In These Times. Recall that this is the man who, in 1987, lied to Con­gress about his role in pro­vid­ing weapons to Iran in exchange for mon­ey (and the release of Amer­i­cans held hostage by Hezbol­lah) and then using the prof­its from those arms sales to ille­gal­ly fund the Con­tras in Nicaragua. He was even­tu­al­ly indict­ed on 16 felony counts and con­vict­ed on three, includ­ing lying under oath to Congress.

In Decem­ber 1987, In These Times cov­ered the report of the joint House-Sen­ate con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal. Peter Korn­bluh wrote:

The seamy side of the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal — the administration’s col­lu­sion with ter­ror­ists, mer­ce­nar­ies and dope ped­dlers — is con­spic­u­ous­ly omit­ted. … Both the scan­dal and the report offer con­clu­sive proof of Congress’s self­in­d­uced inabil­i­ty to make covert oper­a­tions com­pat­i­ble with Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, and the unfail­ing ded­i­ca­tion of America’s nation­al secu­ri­ty man­agers to keep things that way. More­over, the report doc­u­ments the extra­or­di­nary threat to the Amer­i­can way of life that these oper­a­tions por­tend. Buried on page 390 is the report’s most sig­nif­i­cant obser­va­tion: The type of oper­a­tions being run by Rea­gan and his men rep­re­sent­ed ​“the path to dic­ta­tor­ship” for the Unit­ed States. Yet instead of call­ing for a nation­al debate on the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of covert oper­a­tions with a con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy, the report endors­es para­mil­i­tary wars such as the ongo­ing one in Nicaragua. … Ignor­ing the over­whelm­ing evi­dence of insti­tu­tion­al crim­i­nal­i­ty, the com­mit­tees con­clude: ​“The Iran-Con­tra affair result­ed from the fail­ure of indi­vid­u­als to observe the law, not from defi­cien­cies in exist­ing law or in our sys­tem of governance.”

Under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, North has again been busi­ly blaz­ing ​“the path to dic­ta­tor­ship.” This time, he teamed with ex-CIA offi­cer John R. Maguire (an Iran-Con­tra vet­er­an) and Black­wa­ter founder Erik Prince to pitch the White House on a pri­vate intel­li­gence ser­vice that would report direct­ly to the pres­i­dent and the CIA direc­tor. Accord­ing to The Inter­cept, North and com­pa­ny tried to sell their scheme as a way to counter the influ­ence of ​“deep state” bogey­men. The White House has denied any meet­ings took place.

With North at the helm of the NRA, Trump now has one of his avid sup­port­ers lead­ing an army of gun-tot­ing wingnuts. The two men share a dis­dain for the rule of law. They also are unit­ed in their enmi­ty for Bill and Hillary Clin­ton. In 1994, North, his felony con­vic­tions set aside on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, ran for U.S. Sen­ate, chal­leng­ing Virginia’s Sen. Charles Robb.

As Robert Par­ry report­ed in June 1994 for In These Times, at the Repub­li­can state con­ven­tion, North set his sights on the Clin­tons and the ​“20-some­thing kids with an ear­ring and an axe to grind” who had tak­en over the White House. ​“Today, we send the Clin­tons and their cronies a sim­ple but unmis­tak­able mes­sage,” North told the crowd. ​“This is our gov­ern­ment. You stole it and we are going to take it back.”

And, like Trump, North is a stranger to the truth. In the wake of the San­ta Fe High School shoot­ing in Texas on May 18, the new pres­i­dent of the NRA blamed the 10 deaths not on guns, but on drugs: ​“Many of these young boys have been on Rital­in since they were in kinder­garten.” That may be the case; the 17-year-old shoot­er, how­ev­er, was not one of them.