NEWTON'S LAW: OLIVER NORTH ON A NEW FRONT, LAUNCHING ASSAULT ON REAGAN

Let us call this, in an effort to be both timely and accurate, the Anita Hill Corollary. It is this: If two parties give inconsistent accounts of the same incident, and it seems unlikely that one account or the other is not the result of misunderstanding, then one party must be lying.

William Shakespeare understood there were no new things under the sun in the 16th century, and in modern Washington our threshold for surprise has risen to an almost unreachable level.

Discredited in a venue where credit has been scrapped even in the lunchroom, Anita Hill might soon share her lot in life with better-known sorts of a previous administration.

Say, Oliver North. Or, Ronald Reagan.

For several days in the summer of 1987, Oliver North was among the most visible men in America. He got more television airtime than Dan Rather. As a rule, the people who loved to hate Dan Rather, loved to love Ollie North.

Those glory days are being relived this week. North is turning up on television so often we might as well call him Oprah. He's worn enough pancake makeup to become a flapjack.

What makes Ollie so suddenly telegenic and chatty is a book he has written, "Under Fire," which was published recently and covertly. Among other things, his autobiography purports to build a case, at least a circumstantial one, that President Ronald Reagan knew the particulars about the Iran-contra scandal as it was developing.

This, of course, doesn't square with the more fashionable version of these events, which is that Oliver North, a mid-level staffer in the National Security office, ran a renegade operation out of the White House basement, funneling arms to the Iranians and sustaining the Nicaraguan resistance in one stroke.

According to North's book, the Reagan administration strategy, from the moment the diversion scheme began unraveling, was to keep the scandal from becoming another Watergate.

Did it work? Where Richard Nixon had shifty eyes and five o'clock shadow, Ronald Reagan had a grandfatherly glow and Teflon. Try to recall which one finished his second term in office.

Obviously, North's book is a self-serving account of these events. No surprise there. People who survived the Reagan years made a rather lucrative habit of setting history straight for the publishing world.

Still, in published excerpts, the author takes his wide-eyed innocence to laughable extremes. North twice notes CIA Director William Casey's frustration with him because North (aka Mr. Clandestine) didn't know how to initiate a wire transfer to an offshore bank account or to use a code book.

Carrying out North's account, all Casey needed were Curly and Larry to do that triple-slap routine.

Certainly, North had some scores to settle with Reagan. As an ex-Marine, he knows about payback. "(Reagan) could have ended years of suffering for me and my family by granting a pardon or by shutting down the office of the special prosecutor," North writes. "Is that betrayal? Well, it sure as hell wasn't supportive."

So Ollie has put himself in print and at odds with the boss he risked his life and sacrificed his career for. "President Reagan knew everything," North proclaims in his book. President Reagan insists he didn't know of the diversion, or, more precisely, can't remember knowing it.

It will be interesting now to see the jockeying of Iran-contra apologists, who spoke with reverence about President Reagan and Ollie North in the same breath. A line has now been drawn, and someone has to be the bad guy, either the tall-in-the-saddle cowboy or the stiff-backed Marine hero.

One thing seems certain. Someone is lying.

Anita Hill, move over.