Speakes Now Says Reagan Sent Bible

After months of refusing to comment, the White House confirmed today that President Reagan signed a Bible that was given to Iranian officials by fired National Security Council aide Oliver L. North during a secret meeting in Frankfurt, West Germany, last fall.

“It was a gesture to indicate that those who were there were truly representing the President and the President, too, was a man of God,” said White House spokesman Larry Speakes.

Since November, Speakes has refused to comment on reports that Reagan sent a Bible to Iranian officials as a gesture of good will. The reports, originating in Iran, said U.S. officials also brought a cake in the shape of a key and Colt pistols.

Only after the Bible was displayed in Iran on Wednesday by the Speaker of the Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, did the White House decide to confirm that Reagan had signed it.

Suggested by Poindexter

Speakes said the Bible was signed by Reagan in the Oval Office at a 9:30 a.m. meeting last Oct. 3 at the suggestion of John M. Poindexter, the President’s national security adviser, who has since resigned.

Speakes said he is “almost certain it was Ollie” North who carried the Bible to a meeting several days later in Frankfurt with “representatives of high officials in Iran.” The intermediaries were supposed to pass the Bible along to the high officials, Speakes said.

Earlier reports had indicated that the Bible had been carried by Robert C. McFarlane, a former national security adviser, when he flew to Iran last May with a planeload of weapons.

North was fired last Nov. 25 after the revelation that profits from U.S. arms sales to Iran were diverted to contra rebels in Nicaragua.

‘Common . . . Heritage’

“Ollie initiated the idea of a Bible presentation to those individuals because there had been discussions about the common religious heritage and background that existed between Muslim and Christian and Jewish religions,” Speakes said.

Speakes said he believes that Poindexter--who is married to an Episcopal priest--suggested the inscription, a passage from Galatians 3:8, to the President.

Speakes said he had no information about the other gifts--the pistols and the cake.

And he acknowledged that the only reason he discussed the Bible was that Rafsanjani showed it publicly.