NSC Director John Poindexter assigned North to handle the matter with former NSC director Robert McFarlane. North was aboard the plane that took McFarlane and other Americans from Israel to Tehran in May for talks with Iranian officials.

A well-briefed administration official said the effort to court moderates in Iran was part of a global project begun with a 1981 covert program to prevent Islamic radicals from eroding Western interests in the Middle East.

The official said the concept was developed by history- minded government strategists who fear that an unchecked, radical Iran eventually could overwhelm Israel, moderate Arab governments and Christian communities in Lebanon, thus reversing Western conquests during the Crusades.

* Ethiopia: Since 1981, the CIA has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to Ethiopian dissidents for a propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the pro-Soviet government of Mengistu Haile-Mariam.

In 1984, an American CIA covert operative was abducted, held for more than a month and tortured before then-Ambassador- at-large Vernon Walters gained his release during a secret trip, according to an April 25 Washington Post article.

* Chad: In an operation comparable to the covert triumphs of the 1950s, when governments were overthrown in Iran and Guatemala, the CIA in 1981 funneled about $10 million to a rebel movement in Chad that was battling a Libyan-backed government.

With Egypt, the Sudan and Zaire, the CIA assisted forces under insurgent leader Hissene Habre with cash, food, arms and ammunition between 1981 and 1982. In June 1982, Habre's forces marched victoriously into the capital, N'Djamena, ousting Goukouni Oueddei's regime.

* Angola: Before covert CIA support for Angolan rebels led by Jonas Savimbi began this year, the NSC's North helped organize a 1985 summit of anti-Communist insurgent leaders in Savimbi-held territory.

That summit brought to Jamba, Savimbi's "capital, " representatives of rebel groups fighting governments in Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Laos. One of the goals of the conference, to persuade the U.S. Congress to scrap legislation prohibiting aid to Savimbi, was achieved.

* Guatemala: A March 9, 1981, presidential directive that authorized creation of the Nicaraguan contras to interdict weapons from Cuba and Nicaragua to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador was expanded in 1982 to implement a similar program in Guatemala, according to a 1982 NSC paper.

Administration sources said the program mainly involved covert training for and intelligence-sharing with the Guatemalan armed forces. Sources also said that, with covert U.S. approval, a Belgian company shipped 10 U.S. M41 tanks to Guatemala in 1982, at a time when congressional human rights restrictions prohibited military assistance to the country.

* El Salvador: In another expansion of the March 9, 1981 directive, the White House approved a covert operation in 1983 to monitor and, if possible, interdict supplies of weapons by air, sea and land to the leftist Salvadoran guerrillas.

CIA officers flew small airplanes outfitted with sophisticated sensing equipment over rebel-held territory to spot other aircraft that might be carrying weapons to resupply the rebels.

In October 1984, the program's secrecy was blown when one of the CIA aircraft slammed into a Salvadoran volcano in a storm. Four Americans were killed.

The CIA also financed a small flotilla of speedy gunboats operated by the Honduran navy to prevent arms shipments from Nicaragua to El Salvador through the Gulf of Fonseca.