Congress More Skeptical About Covert Activity : May Change the Way It Inspects Such Operations

Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) knows how it feels to be deceived. As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee while the Administration was secretly selling arms to Iran and diverting profits to the Nicaraguan contras , he was assured by key players in the scheme that nothing improper was going on.

Hamilton believed them then. Now he knows otherwise.

The lesson he learned will loom large in the forthcoming congressional hearings on the Iran-contra scandal. More skeptical now, Hamilton has become chairman of the special House committee that, along with its Senate counterpart, will launch the hearings Tuesday

More than that, the deception of Hamilton has taught him--and many of his colleagues--that Congress may have to change the way it oversees covert operations conducted by the executive branch.

“I’m not at all satisfied with the present arrangement,” Hamilton said in an interview. “I would like to see a much broader discussion of the whole role of the intelligence community in a democratic society. It is an area of government that has been largely neglected.”

Congress established House and Senate intelligence committees in the mid-1970s after allegations that the CIA engaged in misdeeds that included assassinations and domestic spying.

Congress Not Informed

Until then, Congress had no way of knowing what the CIA and other intelligence agencies were up to. So in the legislation establishing the committees, Congress required that the intelligence agencies keep the committees fully informed of their activities.

That did not happen in the Iran-contra affair. Many lawmakers are afraid that the intelligence community, so accustomed to operating in the dark, will always find Congress an easy mark for its deception, just as it did in the Iran-contra affair.

And even when the current system works, Hamilton said, it gives Congress no practical role in the formulation and conduct of secret operations. Appointed officials at the CIA and other intelligence agencies still set covert actions into motion with almost no review by elected officials.

“Those who run the black world, as it were, need the input of politicians who are accountable to the public,” Hamilton said. Merely informing the intelligence committees after the fact, he said, gives them little opportunity to have any impact.

“The momentum is already established,” Hamilton said. “It’s very hard for the Congress to turn it around.”

In the Iran-contra affair, however, key Administration officials did not even keep Hamilton and other committee leaders informed. A Republican who was involved in intelligence oversight and asked not to be identified said: “We were lied to. . . . We asked the right questions. We were deceived.”

Hamilton accepts some of the blame. Congress “did not do the job we should have,” he conceded. “We should have pushed much, much harder. . . . We should not have been willing to accept the statements made to us at face value. If we had done our job properly, we would not have had as many problems as we have had.”

Deliberate Deception

But he insists that Congress will probably never be able to pierce a deliberate attempt by any Administration to deceive.

“If you have a set of mind in the executive branch which looks upon the Congress of the United States as an obstacle to be overcome and to inform as little as possible, then no structure is going to work,” he said.

Over the last few years, Hamilton said, the Intelligence Committee questioned Administration officials “rather extensively” about indications that they were helping supply the contras in apparent violation on a congressional ban on U.S. aid.

He declined to discuss whether he believes high Administration officials intentionally misled the committee. He said he would leave that question to the report that the committee intends to release this fall on its investigation of the Iran-contra affair.

But the written record of the Iran-contra affair clearly suggests that some of the efforts to mislead Hamilton’s committee were deliberate.

Over the last few years, for example, the committee frequently questioned Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser through December, 1985. It also confronted Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, who served on McFarlane’s staff at the White House National Security Council and was fired last November for his role in the Iran-contra affair.

In particular, the committee wanted to know about reports that North was heavily involved in assisting the contras during the period from late 1984 to late 1986, when such aid was illegal.

On Aug. 20, 1985, McFarlane wrote Hamilton: “I can state with deep personal conviction that at no time did I or any member of the National Security Council staff violate the letter or the spirit of the law.” House Intelligence Committee members said McFarlane made the same assurances in personal appearances before the panel, although one member noted he was never forced to testify under oath.

At that very time, according to the presidential commission that reported on the Iran-contra affair in February, North was deeply involved in the contras’ fund-raising and military operations. “By fall, 1985, Lt. Col. North was actively engaged in private efforts to resupply the contras with lethal equipment,” the commission found.

But when North went before the House Intelligence Committee in the White House situation room the following August, he apparently denied any extensive and direct involvement with the contra operation.

An internal National Security Council account of that testimony showed that North told the committee he was simply trying to “foster viable, democratic, political strategy” for the contras and “gave no military advice, knew of no specific military operations.”

The commission reported that John M. Poindexter, who had replaced McFarlane as North’s boss and apparently had extensive knowledge of North’s relations with the contras, forwarded the internal record to North with a two-word message: “Well done.”

For Hamilton, the unfolding record of the Iran-contra affair has been a rude awakening. He “felt he was taken,” said one Democratic congressman who asked not to be named. “He’s probably going to be much less trusting in the future.”