When I first heard that Fawn Hall was in the news again, I had a little trouble recalling which one she was.
Then I remembered: She was the one who wasn't Donna Rice or Jessica Hahn.
Hall hates it when people lump her with these two. And I admit she may have a point.
While Rice and Hahn were involved in sex scandals, Hall insists that her boss, Ollie North, never laid a glove on her. (Yet another reason North would not have fit in at the U.S. Senate.)
And Hall has always been careful about details.
When in 1987, Sen. Howell Heflin, Democrat of Alabama, accused Hall of smuggling government documents out of the Executive Office Building in her "brassiere," Hall denied it and labeled him as "sexist."
She did not smuggle government documents in her brassiere, she later testified under oath, she smuggled government documents down the back of her skirt.
So take that, you sexist pig!
Given immunity from prosecution, Hall testified that at Ollie North's request she retyped memos, eliminating references to his assistance of the Nicaraguan rebels.
She then shredded the originals (until the shredder jammed) so they would not fall into the hands of government investigators.
When Rep. Thomas S. Foley, Democrat of Washington, asked Hall if she knew that all this was an attack upon a nation of laws, Hall replied: "Sometimes, you have to go above the written law, I believe."
The day she testified before Congress, CNN's ratings jumped 200 percent.
After that, Hall enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame. She went on Barbara Walters, made a TV special in Africa, hung out with Bruce Jenner and Judd Nelson, dated Rob Lowe and was co-host of "Hour Magazine" with Gary Collins.
But Ollie stiffed her. To this day, he doesn't call; he doesn't write.
"I consider it a betrayal, his not speaking with me," Hall said this week. "When he published his first book, he didn't put me in the acknowledgment. It made me feel like a paper cup . . . disposable."
Hall, 35, often portrays herself as a victim these days. But the most interesting thing that I find about her life is how lucky she has been:
Hall admits to having been a drug user since the seventh grade, dabbling in pot, hashish, "wobble weed" (i.e. marijuana laced with PCP) and LSD.
And in 1989 she told government investigators that during a three-
year period in which she held jobs on the National Security Council and at the Pentagon, she was a "weekend" user of cocaine.
Yet she had no trouble getting a high-level security clearance for jobs in which she typed memorandums that included plans for the invasion of Grenada, counterterrorism operations and secret arms sales to Iran.
After she left government, Hall moved "into a world of opium, heroin and, finally, crack addiction." And this week, she went on "Inside Edition" to tell us all about it.
She is recovering now, she says, but society is partly to blame for her woes.
"I had been called a bimbo," Hall said. "It had been said that I slept with my boss. I was either 'America's Sweetheart' or the 'Bimbo.' Fawn Hall, as I know myself, didn't exist."
I have trouble with this scenario, however. Her story is not one of some innocent who is thrust into the limelight and then tragically falls into drug abuse.
Her story is the all-too-typical one of a downward slide from drug to drug from adolescence through adulthood.
And if she did not look like Farrah Fawcett and had not testified before Congress as to her nefarious deeds, one wonders why anyone would care what she had to say?
But that is the point. The media care and they, too, are to blame.
As "Inside Edition" reported this week, after Hall went to a drug clinic and then checked into a halfway house, "the relentless media attention made it impossible for Fawn to focus on her recovery program." So she went home to California.
It seems to me, however, that one way to escape "relentless media attention" would be to stop going on shows like "Inside Edition."
In any case, I certainly hope Hall fully recovers from her drug problem. But most of all, she should not get discouraged.
Because no matter how far she slides, I'm sure she can always get government work.