Deaver Reports Contacts With 3 Reagan Aides

Former White House aide Michael K. Deaver, now a Washington lobbyist, has revealed contacts with three top presidential aides, according to new reports filed with the Justice Department under a law governing foreign agents.

The reports show that Deaver dined last March with three assistants to the President, several months after Deaver had been cautioned by a White House lawyer that his discussions with persons of that rank could place him in violation of the federal Ethics in Government Act.

Deaver’s new disclosures, required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, were in the form of an “amendment” and “corrections” to reports that he had filed earlier with the department covering a six-month period ending in March. Failure to provide all relevant information by persons like Deaver who represent foreign clients can be a matter for prosecution under the act.

Deaver’s lobbying activities are under investigation by a court-appointed independent counsel and by the investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Tuesday, the subcommittee cast a 17-0 bipartisan vote adopting a staff report that charged Deaver with lying in his testimony at a hearing of the panel.

Held Dinner at Hotel

The new reports disclose that Deaver, in connection with his representation of the government of South Korea on trade matters, was host at a dinner on March 13 at Washington’s fashionable Hay-Adams Hotel in honor of Korea’s ambassador to the United States, Kim Kyung Won.

His report showed that guests included David B. Waller, then senior associate counsel and special assistant to the President; Dennis Thomas, the top aide to White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, and Stephen Danzansky, a special assistant to President Reagan and senior director of international economic affairs.

Last summer, according to recently released congressional testimony by Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel until his departure two months ago, Fielding warned Deaver that, because he had left the White House in May, 1985, he was prohibited by the ethics law from approaching high-ranking White House officials on behalf of any clients until May, 1986.

Client Faced Penalty

Besides the Korean government, Deaver was representing Korea’s Daewoo Corp., whose chairman attended the dinner. Deaver at the time was trying to help Daewoo settle a multimillion-dollar U.S. penalty assessed because the firm had been determined to have “dumped” steel on the American market.

Deaver was reported on vacation in Africa on Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Randall J. Turk, said that Deaver did not believe his “social” contacts with Waller, Thomas and Danzansky violated any law because “no political representation” was made to them at the dinner.

Waller, now an assistant secretary of energy, worked for Fielding at the time but said he was not aware of Fielding’s previous admonition to Deaver. He said he was not involved in the legal review of Deaver’s activities that Fielding conducted last March and April at the request of congressional investigators.

“Had it (the review) been going on before that, maybe I would have given some thought to not attending the dinner,” Waller said. But he added that he had “no substantive conversation” with Deaver at the dinner “nor did I have any idea what Mike was doing with the South Koreans.”

Thomas and Danzansky did not respond to requests for comment on their attendance at the dinner. Other guests included officials of the Defense, State and Labor departments. Deaver is not legally barred from contacting officials at departments in which he did not work.

Loses More Clients

As federal inquiries of Deaver have intensified, the new filings at the Justice Department show also that two foreign clients--the Ministry of Commerce and Industrial Development of Mexico and the Panama-based C.B.I. Sugar Group --have not renewed one-year contracts of $250,000 and $300,000 respectively.

It was previously reported that Deaver had agreed not to continue representing the government of Canada, a $105,000-a-year client.