American Notes MIAMI

"If this whole thing ends with just the resignations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, I'll be disappointed," Attorney Daniel Sheehan declared after filing a $22.5 million civil suit in 1986 charging that former U.S. intelligence agents and anti-Communist crusaders -- including prominent figures in the Iran-contra mess -- had engaged in "political assassination, gunrunning and drug trafficking." Last week, just before the case was to go to trial, Federal Judge James Lawrence King ruled that Sheehan and his colleagues at the Christic Institute, a Washington public-interest law firm, had failed to prove their conspiracy theory.

The dismissed suit, which has been followed feverishly by activists on the left and right, was filed on behalf of Journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, who claimed that the 1984 bombing of a press conference held by Nicaraguan Rebel Leader Eden Pastora Gomez was the work of 29 conspirators, including retired Generals Richard Secord and John Singlaub and former CIA Deputy Director of Operations Theodore Shackley. Sheehan, who will appeal the dismissal, claims it is a "conscious action to stop this case from going to trial before the election."