Fawn Hall Takes Time With Fame

NEW YORK — It is a strange world. One year you talk to senators in Washington about the Iran-Contra affair. Next year, you’re at a cow-dung hut in Kenya, talking to a European heiress wed to a Masai warrior.

For Fawn Hall, that is what life in Washington has led to. Her fame as the attractive, feisty former secretary to Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North has gotten her a major talent agent and all manner of offers, including TV anchoring.

Last month that fame propelled her, three cameramen and a producer into the African wilds on an 11 1/2-hour drive to meet the heiress and her beloved. The result will be on view tonight in a one-hour ABC special, “M & W: Men and Women” (9 p.m., Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).

Fame can be funky, though.

“Luckily, the wind was blowing,” Hall said. She explained that all the huts in the couple’s village are built of sticks and dried cow dung. “Needless to say, that attracts flies and all sorts of things.”

Last September, when interviewed on ABC by Barbara Walters, Hall was asked about rumors that she wanted to host a TV talk show or become a reporter. She did not give a direct reply. But consider what she’s doing now.

Last week, she co-hosted the syndicated “Hour Magazine.” And in an interview this week, she said she has “a real interest” in broadcast journalism, and “I’m just getting my feet wet” in it with the interview she did for ABC’s show.

The idea, she said, is “to see if I like the field and if I’m accepted in the field--and also see if I have a talent to continue. This is a one-shot deal to see how it all works out.”

It must be noted that ABC News has no part in her test run; “M & W: Men and Women” is a product of ABC’s entertainment division. The network identifies her in it as a performer, not a journalist. (Other celebrity interviewers on the show are Katie Wagner, daughter of actor Robert Wagner; actress Jane Seymour; Ron Reagan, the President’s son, and race driver Danny Sullivan.)

Hall said she isn’t bothered by being billed as a performer.

“Doing this type of broadcasting gets you a little bit of experience before you go into something very serious,” she said.

She was in something very serious last June when she appeared before the nationally televised Iran-Contra hearings before a joint congressional committee.

Under a grant of immunity from the special prosecutor, Hall testified about her job as secretary to North while he was an aide at the National Security Council and revealed that she had helped him shred and remove documents from the office. North and three others were indicted in March on charges related to the Iran-Contra scandal. A defense brief recently filed by North in that case identified Hall as having been named an unindicted co-conspirator by the grand jury that indicted him.

Hall became a celebrity even before her testimony, when her name first surfaced in the case.

“The press was all over to get a picture of me,” she said in an interview from Washington, where she is a secretary in the Department of the Navy.

“It got to the point where they were all over my house, following me to work. . . . Then Tom Brokaw and everybody else was doing stories, ‘A star is born.’ ”

She thought she would testify and that would be that.

Wrong.

“Offers started pouring in from everywhere,” she said. They included modeling jobs and big-bucks proposals to pose for Penthouse. She nixed those, likewise acting offers.

Even though she had no experience as a journalist, she said, she was also offered jobs reporting or even anchoring for local stations. She declined to identify the stations.

Hall, who also declined to talk about her old boss “because of pending investigations,” said it took until last August for her to decide on just one thing--to let a major talent agency, the William Morris Agency, represent her and advise her on the various offers tumbling in.

“I was very happy being a secretary,” she said. “I loved working for the government. I was very happy with my life.”

Furthermore, she said, “I wasn’t interested in exploiting myself. I wasn’t in this for the money.”

She thought broadcasting might prove a good, serious career--hence her initial attempts in it.

“I had a lot of confused feelings about this, but I figured it was an opportunity where I could change my career and do something serious, and also better myself and be involved in a very important field,” she said.

Since signing with William Morris, she said, she has addressed the New York and New Hampshire state broadcast associations. She has also lectured at several colleges and universities.

“I talk about this past year, the Iran-Contra thing, and the Contras themselves, and our Central American policy and the way it’s affected. And the students ask a lot of questions . . . some of them personal, some of them regarding politics and policy.”

She has done the speeches, the lectures, her week on “Hour Magazine” and the trip to Kenya for tonight’s ABC show in her spare time. For despite all the publicity, the glitz, the Hollywood ramble and the excitement of broadcasting, she intends--for the time being--to keep her day job at the Department of the Navy.

“Yes,” said Hall, secretary and celebrity, “contrary to beliefs, I’m not making enormous amounts of money.”