Met With Fund-Raiser Who Pleaded Guilty to Aid Scheme : State Dept.’s Abrams to Be Queried on Channell

Federal investigators plan to question Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and several of his aides about their relationship with Carl R. (Spitz) Channell, the conservative fund-raiser who pleaded guilty this week to criminal charges related to his fund-raising efforts for Nicaragua’s contras , officials said Friday.

Abrams spoke to several groups of Channell’s contributors last year and met privately with the fund-raiser and his public relations consultant, Richard Miller.

In addition, State Department officials and rebel sources say that Abrams and two of his aides put several contra lobbyists in touch with Miller last year when the rebels needed money for political operations in Washington.

Acknowledged Meeting

Abrams, through a spokesman, acknowledged meeting with Channell and Miller but said he did not know that Channell was using tax-deductible funds to buy weapons for the contras. He denied referring anyone to Miller for funds.

“He had only one private meeting with them,” Abrams spokesman Gregory Lagana said. “That was because Channell and Miller wanted to show him the television ads they were doing.” The commercials, which were also paid for with charitable donations, attacked members of Congress who opposed U.S. aid for the contras.

“He never referred anyone to Rich Miller,” Lagana said.

However, a contra source and a U.S. official said that Abrams did ask Miller to direct some of Channell’s funds to Bruce Cameron, a liberal lobbyist working on behalf of moderate contra leaders. Cameron received $66,000 from two of Channell’s organizations for his lobbying activities.

Cameron confirmed that account, but added: “I don’t think Elliott knew the extent of what was going on” in the arms buying operation “and I don’t think his relationship with Miller was particularly close.”

Named North in Plan

In entering his guilty plea Wednesday, Channell named both Miller and fired White House aide Oliver L. North as participants in a plan to use tax-deductible contributions for military aid. Sources involved in the probe said that investigators were looking into whether others were also involved. Miller has denied any wrongdoing.

An Internal Revenue Service spokesman said it is illegal to use tax-deductible funds to purchase arms or to support a political lobbying effort. In linking Abrams to Cameron’s lobbying effort, none of the officials have suggested that Abrams knew Channell’s funds were from a tax-exempt foundation.

The U.S. and contra sources who described Abrams’ contacts with Channell said they did not know whether Abrams was aware of the military aid scheme. Instead, they said that Abrams and his aides looked to Channell as a source of aid for the contras’ Washington office, which was set up largely to lobby Congress for renewed military aid.

“We tried to match the contras up with them,” a State Department official said. “We kept running up against things that we couldn’t do and they could, like funding the contras’ office here. . . . It takes a lot of money to lobby Congress and run an office in Washington.”

Federal law prohibits the State Department and the CIA from funding foreign lobbying efforts in Washington.

Actions Defended

“I don’t think there was anything wrong with telling the contras to go there,” the official added.

However, contra officials said that some of the money Channell funneled to their Washington operations came from his tax-exempt educational foundation, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty.

Officials said that independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh has informed Abrams and 11 aides that they should prepare for questioning this month on the contra aid scandal.

Abrams, the State Department’s chief Latin American strategist, is also expected to be questioned about his knowledge of the secret airlift operation that delivered military aid to the contras. Lewis A. Tambs, former U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, has said that Abrams and North directed him to help the contra supply network; Abrams has denied his account.

Abrams has also come under scrutiny for his role in soliciting a secret contribution of $10 million for the contras from the sultan in Brunei, a southeast Asian nation. The money was transferred to a Swiss bank account controlled by North associates and then disappeared.

Retainer Confirmed

Meanwhile, sources in the contra fund-raising network confirmed reports that Channell paid David Fischer, a former White House aide, $20,000 a month to arrange meetings for contributors with President Reagan.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Channell originally agreed to pay Fischer a flat fee of $50,000 for every meeting he arranged with Reagan, but the deal was changed to a $20,000-per-month retainer, according to a source close to the fund-raiser.

Fischer, a former appointments secretary to Reagan, earned the retainer for roughly a year, from late 1985 until last November, the sources said.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater acknowledged that Channell and his contributors had been invited to “several meetings” with the President, including a small private meeting on Jan. 30, 1986. But he said Reagan understood that he was thanking the contributors for their donations of non-military aid to the contras and did not know anything about military aid.

“He thought they were there because of the contributions they had made to education and television spots on behalf of the freedom fighters in Nicaragua,” Fitzwater said.

Asked for Reagan’s reaction to his former aide’s accepting money for arranging the meetings, Fitzwater said: “I have no reaction.”

But another White House aide called the arrangement “disgusting.”