Fawn Hall: Oliver North’s Angel

No one could say Fawn Hall wasn’t loyal. When her boss, Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, asked her to work weekends at the National Security Council, she readily agreed. Hall, 27, a strikingly pretty blond with blue-green eyes, often turned down modeling jobs because she was afraid they might interfere with her secretarial duties. Hall even rejected the chance to take a screen test because she was just too busy. Said a friend: “She was a good employee, and a good employee does what her employer wants.”

Indeed, Hall was so obedient that she followed North’s orders last November to retype four NSC memos, possibly to conceal President Reagan’s role in the arms trading with Iran. Hall helped North shred hundreds of documents the day before Justice Department officials were scheduled to review the agency’s files. And on the day North was fired, according to a source close to the investigation, she removed papers from his office and gave them to her former chief hours before the premises were sealed by the FBI.

But even loyalty has its limits. She has agreed to tell Iranscam Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh about her NSC deeds in return for immunity from prosecution. When the deal became known last week, Hall suddenly found herself thrust into the media glare. Photographers followed her car, a red Fiero with license plates that read FAWN. David Letterman joked about her, the New York Post dubbed her “Iranscam Beauty,” and pictures from her modeling days flashed across the network news shows. Said Hall: “One of my friends told me Andy Warhol said everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. I kind of feel like that right now.”

Given what she did for North, Hall seems entitled to those 15 minutes, but she owes part of her instant fame to revelations about her romantic life. From mid-1985 to late last year, Hall dated Arturo Cruz Jr., 33, son of Contra Leader Arturo Cruz. Like his father, Cruz was a dedicated Sandinista before growing disenchanted with Managua; in the early 1980s he served in Nicaragua’s Washington embassy. Rumors floated around the capital that “Arturito” was a Cuban intelligence agent, though the State Department later concluded the stories were unfounded. North tried to persuade Hall to cut off the relationship, but she refused. She ended the affair in November. “She decided Arturo was not the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with,” says Tricia Erickson, a close friend.

Hall lives in Annandale, Va., with her stepfather and mother, who has worked as an NSC secretary for 16 years. A 1977 graduate of Annandale High School, Hall was employed as a secretary in the Navy Department before moving to the NSC in 1983. She returned to the Pentagon in January, perhaps feeling that never again will she have such an exciting job as her assignment with North. “She felt she was at the vortex of history,” says a friend. Her life is not likely to settle down just yet, however. Fawn is in sudden demand as a model, and Actress Farrah Fawcett has called with plans to portray her in a movie. Let’s see, Ryan O’Neal could play Arturito, Cliff Robertson could be Oliver North . . .