November 28, 1986

The Government has information indicating that Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, the dismissed White House aide, destroyed several documents from National Security Council files last weekend, Reagan Administration officials said today. Colonel North has been linked by the White House to the diversion of millions of dollars in profits from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan rebels. One Administration official, who requested anonymity, said he understood that Colonel North had destroyed documents considered critical to investigations of the arms dealings. Other sources were unable to confirm this information, however. Private Inquiry by Meese The destruction occurred as Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d was conducting a private inquiry into the weapons sale without the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Administration official said.

THE first thing that needs to be said about Vincent van Gogh is that he has triumphed. He all but invented the Expressionist dream of painting and living at a level truer and deeper than the one at which society settles in. He believed that painting could become a new kind of bread and wine that everyone could share. One measure of his success is the degree to which his work attracts and sustains an ever broader range of people. Van Gogh changed art. He took the complementary colors of Impressionism and made them not so much expressions of light as symbols of a fiery, pantheistic imagination. He took Impressionist brushwork and transformed it into spots, swirls and swarms of paint that rumble with the rhythms of sky and earth. He took Millet's faith in the salt of the earth and tranformed it into Expressionist gospel: no artist has argued with more conviction that only the most basic life can be visited by basic truths.

The war of words between the chairman of the General Motors Corporation, Roger B. Smith, and the company's biggest stockholder, H. Ross Perot, appears to be escalating, with Mr. Smith trying to seize the initiative. All of this comes within days of the disclosure by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company that it had discussed with G.M. the sale of at least part of G.M.'s Electronic Data Systems subsidiary. Mr. Perot, the chairman of E.D.S. and the holder of eight-tenths of 1 percent of G.M. stock, has been publicly critical of G.M.'s management style, calling it overly bureaucratic and isolated from both factory floors and customer tastes. He has sniped at executive perquisites such as chauffeur-driven cars, special dining rooms and the 14th floor of the G.M. building, where the company's top managers work behind two sets of locked and guarded doors.

In the midst of a wave of nervousness about the direction of Brazil's economic policies, the powerful Finance Minister, Dilson Funaro, submitted his resignation Wednesday night, but it was immediately rejected by President Jose Sarney. Mr. Funaro's action, which followed two days of reports that he would be replaced, appeared to have been prompted by criticism of a package of economic measures announced last Friday. Those measures included price rises and tax increases aimed to reduce excessive demand and slow economic growth. Mr. Funaro's offer to step down also coincided with increasing concern that a drop in Brazil's trade surplus and foreign exchange reserve might seriously complicate the country's negotiations to restructure most of its $105 billion foreign debt. [ Thousands protesting Brazil's new economic measures marched through the capital Thursday as riot police and army troops battled the demonstrators, the Associated Press reported. ] The worsening of Brazil's economic picture was brought on largely by a boom in consumer spending that the Government moved to tame only after Congressional elections on Nov. 15. Leaders of the governing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party are pressing the Sarney Administration to adopt a tougher stance in dealing with the country's governmental and commercial creditors.

Foreign Service applicants, officers and their dependents will be tested for the AIDS virus under a screening program expected to begin Jan. 1, State Department officials said today. Under the program, Foreign Service applicants who test positive for having AIDS antibodies would automatically be rejected from consideration for Foreign Service positions, according to William I. Bacchus, a special assistant in the State Department. He said overseas employees of the Foreign Service, along with their dependents, would receive the AIDS test during their annual physicals. If they are found to have the AIDS antibody, their service abroad will be restricted, he said.