Washington City Paper: Contents for Feb. 3

The Man in Oliver North's Notebook
How a Small-Time Covert Operator Became Washington's Grandest Conspirator

Cover Story

Around 1 a.m. on Oct. 18, 1992, all hell broke loose around Liam Atkins.

A federal prosecutor later described that Sunday morning's wee hours in a statement filed in U.S. District Court. About a half-hour earlier, retired Marine Col. Patrick Collins had informed a Georgetown street cop that an escaped felon was drinking at the Guards Restaurant. Six plainclothes officers followed Collins into the crowded barroom.

According to the prosecutor's statement, the plainclothesmen surrounded Atkins, identified themselves as police, and asked him to keep his hands on the bar. Instead, Atkins turned and swung at the closest officer; he missed, and flung his drink in the cop's eyes. Then Atkins reached for his waistband, and three lawmen wrestled him to the floor. In his belt holster, they discovered a loaded .357 Sturm Ruger revolver. They charged him with assault on a police officer and with felonious possession of a firearm and ammunition.

Christine Dolan, a witness to the fight that night, tells a much different story. Dolan is a gravelly voiced maker of documentary films, a former criminal investigator with a law degree from Georgetown, and a former CNN political reporter. Dolan looks like a hardbitten newswoman. She smokes Marlboros, drinks white wine, and gives the impression that liquid nitrogen courses through her arteries.

When the ruckus ignited at the Guards, Dolan and a friend had just finished dinner and were walking toward the restaurant's exit. The tussle piqued Dolan's interest: Were it an ordinary brawl, she surmised, the bartenders would have sailed over the bar to break it up.... Continued

Issue of Feb. 3 - 9, 1995

News and Features

The Man in Oliver North's Notebook
How a Small-Time Covert Operator Became Washington's Grandest Conspirator
Cover Story By Lisa Gray
Post Morbid
The City By Dave Nuttycombe
Soporific Secrets
Ethics Cops' Investigation Proves to Be a Bust
The City By Jonetta Rose Barras
Code Words: Pepper Spray
The City By Clara Jeffery
Those Were the Days?
Perceptions of Washington, Then and Now
The City By Clara Jeffery
Beauty and the Bust
A Capitol Hill Arrest Proves That No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
The City By Dave Nuttycombe
Anonymous, the Sequel
The Mail By Anonymous II
Your Mama
The Mail By Mary Catherine Knoll
Memory Lane
The Mail By David Rosse
In Virtual Disagreement
The Mail By Joanne Wiggins
On Her Honor
The Mail By Steven Block
I Condone Methadone
The Mail By Jeffrey A. Hoffman