Congress Leaders Ready Iran Probes : Reagan Says Cabinet Members Have His Permission to Refuse to Testify

Leaders of both the House and Senate moved Thursday to establish special Watergate-style committees to investigate the unfolding controversy over the Reagan Administration’s sale of arms to Iran and the channeling of profits to Nicaraguan rebels.

But even as the congressional leaders were readying probes of what has become the most serious crisis of the Reagan years, the President said at the White House that his Cabinet members had permission to refuse to testify before the various investigations already under way on Capitol Hill.

Meets President Arias

“The individuals will have to make that decision for themselves . . . as to what they feel their situation is,” President Reagan said, responding to a reporter’s question while posing for photographers in the Oval Office with President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.), whose panel is already conducting closed hearings on the secret dealings, suggested that some Cabinet members and other Cabinet-level officials “are involved.” He said his panel has not ruled out calling them to testify.

Durenberger did not explain what he meant by “involved,” and it was unclear from his statement whether the committee has had indications that Cabinet-level officials had prior knowledge of the diversion of profits from the Iranian arms sales to contras in Nicaragua.

Following four days of secret hearings by his committee beginning last Monday, Durenberger also made an appeal to the President to disclose the facts of the case himself and strongly suggested that Reagan knows more than he is telling the American people.

“If he chose to get all of the facts and make them public, that would hasten the process a lot more,” the senator said.

It was also learned that the Intelligence Committee has summoned as a witness retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, who as a private citizen is believed to have worked closely with presidential aide Oliver L. North on both the Iranian arms shipments and the effort to supply the contras. However, it was not known when Secord would appear.

House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said that he and Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) have agreed to ask that a special 15-member House panel begin work as soon as Congress reconvenes.

Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the Senate’s incoming majority leader, said that a corresponding 11-member Senate committee will be established then as well, although Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas has suggested that he will press for creation of the Senate panel even sooner.

Concession to Democrats

And a spokesman for Dole said the GOP leader is prepared to give Democrats a majority and the chairmanship on such a committee even if it begins work before the Democrats officially take control of the Senate on Jan. 6.

Wright said the House committee will seek to discover “exactly what happened, when it happened, where it happened, who did it, at whose direction and conclusions as to the legality and the propriety and the effect (of the secret operation) upon our foreign policy.”

The committees drew comparisons with a panel established in 1973 to investigate the Watergate scandal. Its findings were followed by an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, which voted three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon shortly before he resigned.

Neither chamber is expected to name the full membership of its committee until next week. Considered leading candidates to chair the House panel are Reps. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), outgoing chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee; Edward P. Boland (D-Mass.), Hamilton’s predecessor and the Intelligence Committee’s first chairman, and Jack Brooks (D-Tex.), who was a key member of the House committee that handled the Watergate impeachment proceedings.

Among the Democrats mentioned as possibilities to head the Senate committee are Sens. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, a member of the Senate Watergate Committee; Howell Heflin, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court; Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland and George J. Mitchell of Maine.

‘Unnecessary Duplication’

Wright said that a single investigatory committee is needed in the House to prevent “unnecessary duplication” of the efforts of the five committees that can claim jurisdiction over various aspects of the case. However, its establishment was a decision of great political delicacy, requiring the regular committee chairmen to hand over some of their powers--and the prospect of national media attention--to the select committee.

As Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.) went into Wright’s office to discuss the special panel, he insisted: “We have the major jurisdiction.” He likened any new committee’s establishment to “saying (the) Indian Affairs (Committee) ought to do it.”

Both the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees will begin hearings Monday.

In part to reassure the five chairmen, Wright promised that they would be made members of the special panel and said that the regular committees would be responsible for drafting any legislation that might be required as a result of the investigatory committee’s findings.

Allocation of Seats

The committees will allocate seats to Democrats and Republicans roughly in proportion to their membership in each house. The House panel will include nine Democrats, six Republicans; the Senate committee, six Democrats, five Republicans.

Wright said that Congress will “insist on the availability of all information” to its investigatory panels. However, this week’s experience has left many on Capitol Hill unsatisfied with the cooperation of the Administration.

Even as the President was promising full cooperation on Tuesday and Wednesday, two former members of his Administration--North, who was a member of the National Security Council staff, and Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, who was the President’s national security adviser--have refused to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. They cited their right, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, not to incriminate themselves.

On Thursday, however, Reagan tied their refusals to a lack of time to prepare for their appearances before the panel. But he also said that they are free to invoke their constitutional right against self-incrimination--a position that some members of Congress saw as being at odds with the President’s earlier promises of full cooperation.

Durenberger, asked how he would respond if members of the Cabinet took the Fifth Amendment, replied: “The only problem that it would cause for me is with the President’s credibility.”

On Thursday, the committee’s primary witness was Deputy CIA Director Robert M. Gates. Durenberger said the committee also had “people flying around the country serving subpoenas for documents.”

White House spokesman Larry Speakes, meanwhile, said that Reagan agreed with Vice President George Bush’s contention in a speech Wednesday that mistakes had been made in connection with the operation. He said Reagan read the text of Bush’s speech before the vice president described the arms sale project as a “mistaken tactic.”

The spokesman said the vice president’s speech was “just as the President would have told it himself. . . . The President has denounced the implementation process and the diversion process.”

Weinberger’s Remarks

But Speakes took exception to remarks made by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who told reporters while traveling in Europe on Wednesday that Reagan, in trying to open a dialogue with politically moderate elements in Iran, was acting on advice that “has not turned out to have been accurate or correct.”

The White House spokesman said, only partly joking: “I’d like to see his full text before I cut him off at the knees.”

And he said that Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was “dead wrong” and that his statements were “irresponsible” when he said that Reagan’s aides “were all acting with presidential authority” in arranging the transfer of the arms sale profits to a Swiss bank account.

Speakes expressed confidence that support for Reagan among the public would rebound, after falling in public opinion polls. A survey conducted by the New York Times and CBS News found a drop of 21% in the President’s popularity.

“The President has set the process in motion to straighten the matter out,” Speakes said. “And once the public realizes that, I think . . . the credibility will not be damaged, but will be enhanced by the President’s willingness to get to the bottom of the matter.”

The spokesman, referring to the disclosure of the funneling of the Iran arms sales profits into the Swiss bank account, said it had been “uncovered by the President’s senior officials” and made public by Reagan.

However, many details of the operation were first disclosed by the news media, and Administration officials have responded in public discussion often after being subjected to considerable pressure from Congress and even from former Administration aides and presidential advisers.

Reagan met briefly Thursday with Frank C. Carlucci, who was named on Tuesday to replace Poindexter as the President’s national security adviser. Carlucci, a former deputy secretary of defense and deputy director of the CIA, will begin his new job on Jan. 2.

Carlucci told reporters after visiting with Reagan that he sees his role as “providing a good quality-control mechanism to the decision-making process” and said he was promised “direct access to the President.”

When Poindexter was appointed to the job a year ago, it was reported that White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan sought to limit the access Poindexter’s predecessor, Robert C. McFarlane, had to the President.

Staff writer Sara Fritz contributed to this story.