Panel Revisits McFarlane, Seeks Proof of Cover-up

The presidential commission investigating the Iran- contra scandal held a final, unscheduled interview Saturday with hospitalized former White House aide Robert C. McFarlane and focused on evidence that the Reagan Administration attempted to cover up its problems, sources familiar with the inquiry said.

The three-member panel, headed by former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.), met for three hours with McFarlane at Bethesda Naval Hospital in suburban Maryland, commission spokesman Herbert E. Hetu said.

Hetu said the panel’s more than 200-page report, expected to be sharply critical of the Administration, will be issued on Thursday with relatively few details deleted for reasons of national security.

Saturday’s session was called to allow McFarlane, President Reagan’s former national security adviser, to answer a series of questions the panel drew up after a similar interview at the hospital on Thursday, Hetu said.

McFarlane has been hospitalized since Feb. 9 after he took an overdose of the tranquilizer Valium in what police said was an apparent suicide attempt, only hours before he was scheduled to be interviewed by the panel.

White House officials have said they are braced for a new set of negative findings to come from the two-month-long investigation.

Critical Report Seen

“I think it’s going to be a very critical report and a very tough report, and the tougher and the more critical, the better,” presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said last week. “We have said from the beginning let the chips fall where they may.”

In both of its interviews with McFarlane, sources familiar with the inquiry said, the commission has focused on two issues: whether President Reagan secretly approved an Israeli shipment of U.S.-made arms to Iran in August, 1985, and whether the Administration attempted to cover up the extent of the scandal once the arms sales became known.

In Saturday’s interview, McFarlane reportedly repeated his contention that Reagan authorized the 1985 Israeli shipment--the first of several aimed at winning the release of U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon.

The question is important because if Reagan approved the shipment without any formal order, he may have violated several laws; if McFarlane or other aides authorized the shipment without presidential approval, then they also may have broken the law.

White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan has insisted that the President never approved the shipment. The President, who has been interviewed twice by the Tower Commission, first told the panel he did approve the sale, but later--after conferring with Regan--revised his version to say that he did not.

Regan’s departure from the White House staff is widely expected in Washington.

The commission also heard McFarlane’s answers to questions about his actions after the arms sales were revealed, including his part in preparing a written chronology of the project that deliberately minimized the President’s role, sources said.

The panel, which initially appeared hesitant to probe into the issue of whether the Administration had attempted to cover up parts of the scandal, has focused increasingly on that problem in recent weeks, the sources said.

The commission’s members are Tower, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President Gerald R. Ford, and former Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie.

Panel spokesman Hetu said the report still will not clear up the question of where the profits went from the Administration’s secret arms sales to Iran, or how much money went to the Nicaraguan rebels.

“We never did see the money records,” he said. “The Swiss banks have still got them.”

The panel and its staff interviewed 58 people connected with the scandal, including arms merchants Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar. But it could not interview CIA Director William J. Casey, who has been hospitalized after brain surgery; former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and aide Oliver L. North, who refused to testify; or officials in Israel, whose government has agreed to respond only to written questions.