Reagan Won’t Order Former Aides to Talk

President Reagan has refused to order his former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter, and Poindexter’s former aide, Oliver L. North, to testify before the board Reagan named to review the National Security Council’s role in the Iran- contra affair, the White House said Tuesday night.

Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that Peter Wallison, counsel to the President, has told the head of the panel, former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.), that Reagan’s commanding Poindexter and North to appear before the board would compel the two men to “testify against themselves.”

Tower wrote the President on Feb. 4 and asked that he use his authority as military commander-in-chief to order Poindexter, a vice admiral, and North, a Marine lieutenant colonel, to talk to the three-member panel. Both Poindexter and North have returned to active military duty.

Fitzwater disclosed that Reagan had refused the request not long after the White House made available to members of the commission typed transcripts of Reagan’s notes on meetings involving the secret sales of U.S. weapons to Iran.

Military Justice Rights

In a letter to Tower dated Feb. 6, Wallison said that both North and Poindexter “have a constitutional protection against self-incrimination under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” Fitzwater said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Reagan met with Wallison and with David M. Abshire, his special counsel on the Iran- contra matter, to prepare for a question-and-answer session the President is to have today with members of the panel.

In describing the arrangement through which the White House made Reagan’s notes available to the commission Tuesday, Fitzwater said that the board “gave the dates that they were interested in, meetings and so forth.” He said that the President then “provided the excerpts.”