House Panel Delays Immunity Offer to Ex-CIA Officer

The House committee investigating the Iran- contra affair, responding to a plea by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, Wednesday backed away from offering limited immunity to former CIA officer Thomas Clines as a means of forcing him to testify.

The move suggests that Walsh may be trying to build a case for criminal prosecution of Clines, whom Walsh described to reporters as possibly “a principal in the activities which are under investigation.”

“We took no action today. We’ll just make a judgment with regard to Mr. Clines at a subsequent time,” House committee Chairman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) said after the panel’s closed-door session.

Grants Poindexter Immunity

While the House panel delayed a decision on compelling Clines’ testimony, it did follow through on a plan--worked out last month with Walsh--to grant immunity to former White House National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter. The Senate panel, working in tandem with the House committee, had voted Tuesday for a similar grant of immunity.

Hamilton said that the committee also voted to offer immunity to others, but he declined to identify them.

Poindexter, a key White House figure in the Iran operation, may be the only witness who can tell the committees how much President Reagan knew about the possibly illegal support that was provided to Nicaraguan rebels through a diversion of profits from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. The diversion occurred during the period when Congress had banned U.S. aid to the contras. Reagan has denied knowing about the funds diversion before it was discovered last November by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

Following the ‘Money Trail’

As the May 5 opening of public hearings draws near, Hamilton said, “we certainly understand the ‘money trail’ (linking the arms sales profits to the contras) better than we did a few weeks ago.” However, he added, lawmakers “by no means are confident we have all the money trail in our sight at this point.”

Under the agreement between Walsh and the congressional committees, Poindexter’s testimony may be taken in private as early as May 2--several days before the opening of the congressional investigators’ public hearings--and in open session in mid-June.

Poindexter is one of more than a dozen figures in the Iran-contra affair who have been offered limited immunity as a means of hearing their recollections without compromising their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Limited immunity protects them from prosecution based upon any evidence drawn from their testimony. Any case against them would have to be built on other evidence.

North Decision Pending

Still pending before the committees is a decision on whether to grant immunity and therefore compel testimony from fired White House aide Oliver L. North, a central figure in the scandal.

Walsh expressed concern that liberal use of the congressional power to grant immunity could hinder his ability to build cases against those who may have violated the law. He noted that he already has ordered that information gathered about those who are scheduled to receive immunity be placed under seal, to prove that his investigators learned it on their own.

He urged that immunity be offered only to those who could be relied upon to tell the truth, who know important information that is not available elsewhere and who are unlikely to be chief targets for prosecution.

Clines, 59, an ex-CIA covert operations chief and currently an international arms dealer, is said by sources to have played a central behind-the-scenes role in the Iran-contra affair.

Clines’ Varied Activities

Among other activities, he reportedly helped coordinate North’s arms purchases for the contras in Europe, aided in the 1986 purchase of a Danish freighter used by North on a series of secret missions and oversaw an unsuccessful $2-million ransom of U.S. hostages in Lebanon last May.

Sources say that he made a series of trips in 1985 and 1986 to Portugal, where a number of contra arms shipments were bought or assembled, and to Switzerland, where some of the Iran-contra network’s finances were centered.

Clines has long been friends with leading figures in the scandal, including North and his two top associates, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and Albert A. Hakim.

Ties to Renegade

After leaving the CIA in 1978, he was linked in court testimony with the activities of renegade former intelligence officer Edwin P. Wilson, now in prison for smuggling munitions to Libya. He was not charged in that case.

Since leaving the CIA, Clines has led a reclusive life as a consultant and arms dealer based in rural Virginia.