A workhorse, North initially did much of the scat work in the NSC avoided by others. By dint of long hours and devotion to detail, North made himself the de facto executive of the president's cabinet-level advisory council. The master of all details, North became chief expediter of a covert operation involving the NSC, CIA, Department of Defense, and a private enterprise for profit, the aim of which was to circumvent the will and laws of Congress forbidding the expenditure of public funds to overthrow Nicaragua's government. Two separate amendments to omnibus spending bills (named after their author, Rep. Edward Boland [D-Mass.]) to this effect had been passed and signed, though reluctantly, by President Reagan. Believing their desire to rid the West-ern Hemisphere of Marxists a better measure of their patriotism than rigid adherence to the law, North and his coconspirators created an "off-the-shelf" program...