Senate Iran Panel Expected to Seek Reagan Notes

President Reagan keeps a private file of handwritten notes for his memoirs that includes some material on the Iran affair, and the Senate select committee investigating the Iran- contra arms deal is expected to seek access to it, according to Administration and congressional sources.

In closed testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last month, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan was asked whether the President kept a diary for the purpose of writing his memoirs. Regan said the President “of course keeps notes,” took offense that the committee might think the file would be available for its investigation and indicated it is private and personal, the sources said.

‘It Is Uniquely His’

A senior White House official familiar with Regan’s testimony, while refusing to confirm or deny the existence of such notes, said last week: “What the President has is a private matter . . . within the bounds of confidentiality. It’s private, not part of official records. It is uniquely his.”

Congressional sources who refused to be named said some members of the Senate committee, including Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), will seek the Reagan material that might be relevant to the Iran-contra investigation.

Cohen has also indicated, sources said, that the committee might seek to interview author Edmund Morris, who is working on a Reagan biography. For more than a year Morris attended some White House meetings and regularly interviewed the President.

The White House has so far cooperated with all investigations into the Iran-contra affair, has not asserted executive privilege and has provided records and documents to the congressional and executive branch investigations.

Writes Notes in Longhand

One White House official said Reagan often writes notes for himself in longhand and gives them to his personal secretary, Kathleen Osborne, for safekeeping. The official said he was not sure this was the only way that Reagan kept a record of his recollections.

Several sources said some of the material bears on Reagan’s Iran decisions because he referred to it in meetings with aides while preparing for an interview last Monday with the special review panel headed by former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.)

In the 1974 landmark ruling on President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate tapes, the Supreme Court held that the President had to turn over relevant evidence in a criminal investigation when issued a subpoena. Under that ruling, independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, conducting the criminal inquiry into the Iran-contra affair, could argue that he is entitled to any relevant material.