President Called Aware of Contra Fund-Raising : Diary Entries Contradict Tower Panel Finding That He Was a Detached Leader, Senators Say

President Reagan’s confidential, handwritten diaries show he was far more aware of private fund-raising efforts for the Nicaraguan rebels than previously known, according to members of the Senate committee investigating the Iran- contra affair.

The diary entries, reviewed recently by the staff of the Senate and House committees, were particularly surprising to congressional investigators because they contradicted the Tower Commission report’s portrait of Reagan as a detached leader who avoided details.

“What the diaries show is that the President is intensely aware of the contra funding program,” Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) said in an interview. “He is aware of what’s going on, and he’s passionate about it.”

Senate committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) expressed a similar view in an interview with CBS News Wednesday night. Sources said Inouye’s judgment was based in large part--although not entirely--on the President’s diaries.

“He was very much knowledgeable about the events occurring around him,” Inouye said. “In raising funds from private sources for the contras, he was not just a peripheral player, but he was involved very deeply.”

Diversion of Funds

Neither Inouye nor Cohen suggested the diaries offered evidence that the President had instructed his subordinates to do anything to violate the law, which during 1985 and 1986 prohibited direct U.S. military assistance to the contras.

And Inouye said specifically that there is no indication as yet in the committees’ investigation that Reagan knew funds from the Iran arms sales were being diverted to the anti-Sandinista rebels.

Inouye said he had been unprepared for what the committee found in the diaries, especially since the Reagan-appointed Tower Commission appeared to reach a different conclusion after reviewing many of the same diary entries. The committees are believed to have reviewed a larger selection of the diary entries than did the Tower Commission, the panel appointed by Reagan to investigate the Iran-contra affair and headed by former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.).

“You know, people have suggested that he was getting old, and he didn’t know what was happening,” he said. “What we are saying is that from what we have seen, for example, in some of the notes, he knew what was happening.”

Selected entries from Reagan’s diaries relating to the Iran-contra affair were provided to the congressional committees under an unprecedented agreement reached between Congress and the White House on April 8. The pact states that the notes will never be made public.

Reagan Role Denied

The President played absolutely no role in the private fund-raising conspiracy to defraud the government that was alleged by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh on Wednesday, White House officials said.

“It is the legal view of the White House that the President is not part of this conspiracy,” said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.

Walsh filed charges Wednesday against conservative activist Carl R. (Spitz) Channell, who pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge. Channell set up meetings at the White House between the President and supporters of Channell’s tax-exempt foundation in 1985 and 1986. He admitted conspiring with former White House aide Oliver L. North to deprive the government of taxes on more than $2 million in contributions that went to the contras. Such contributions are not legally tax deductible.

The Tower Commission, in its report on the Iran operation issued earlier this year, quoted from a North memorandum that said: “The President obviously knows why he has been meeting with several select people to thank them for their ‘support for democracy’ in Centam (Central America).”

‘Kind of a Stranger’

However, Reagan, when questioned briefly Thursday night about Channell, said: “I’m kind of a stranger in this whole thing.

“I never knew anything about him (Channell),” Reagan said. “I met him a couple of times” when he was “supporting fund-raising for TV ads for the contras.”

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. told reporters Thursday that Reagan “has convinced me by words and body language” that he knew nothing about the diversion of Iran arms sale profits.

Baker also said he and Inouye had tried unsuccessfully to reach each other Thursday to discuss Inouye’s remarks that Reagan was more “knowledgeable” about the diversion of funds than has been revealed.

Fitzwater also said it was the President’s understanding that the contributors brought to the White House by Channell were helping to pay for an advertising campaign on behalf of the contras--a point first made by Reagan at his news conference on March 19. The visitors were brought to the White House by David Fischer, a former aide to the President.

The spokesman described Fischer as “a longtime friend of the President’s, (who) can and does visit the Oval Office on any number of occasions, as do a lot of other people,” and he added: “I don’t know what he was doing or what he thought was happening or what his motivations were.”

As for Inouye’s remarks, a senior White House official told reporters that the senator “meant to be positive, not negative” about the extent of the President’s knowledge of the private contra funding network.

‘Inouye Quite Impressed’

“It was my understanding that Sen. Inouye was quite impressed with the excerpts and felt they would have a positive influence on the American people if they saw them in terms of understanding the President’s involvement and understanding of the issues and also making clear he had no knowledge of the diversion of funds,” the official said.

On Thursday, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax-exempt status of Channell’s National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, and Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.) criticized the agency for waiting so long.

Staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.