North Supplied Encoding Devices : Iran Probers See Serious Disregard for U.S. Secrets

The congressional hearings into the Iran- contra scandal have detailed accounts of what lawmakers say is a serious--and almost unbelievable--disregard by government officials for the nation’s secrets.

Even though it has been six months since the scandal broke, it was not until Friday that Iranian-American businessman Albert A. Hakim was asked to return to the government a super-secret encryption device that he received and used to communicate with then-White House aide Oliver L. North, who ran the clandestine Iran arms sales and a secret contra supply operation.

North was fired last November, after a memorandum found in his safe indicated that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to the Nicaraguan rebels. The Marine lieutenant colonel had gotten 13 of the encryption devices, known as KL-43s, from the National Security Agency and had distributed most of them to his secret ring of associates.

When asked about the machine by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), Hakim replied that he had never been asked to return the KL-43, which he received in May, 1986, and that it is “under lock with my lawyer in Switzerland.”

“You were given the KL-43, a most secret device, something the KGB would love to grab hold of,” an incredulous Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) said. “And now we are told that it’s lying in an attorney’s safe or closet.”

Inouye, who is chairman of the special Senate committee investigating the affair, said that testimony thus far has brought forth tales “stranger than fiction.”

On Thursday, for example, Hakim told of North’s giving a delegation of Iranian officials a tour that took them to “every corner in the White House” in September, 1986. The CIA also prepared a fake passport for Hakim, he said.

Inouye noted that Hakim had told of meetings with North in the Situation Room, a purportedly secure chamber in the White House basement where the President’s national security advisers monitor world crises and where the President meets with them to discuss particularly sensitive matters.

“We are told that persons not cleared have had access to the Situation Room,” Inouye complained. “I doubt if three of us on this (24-member House and Senate) panel have ever seen the Situation Room, it is considered so secret.”

Barred From Deposition

In fact, in a particularly ironic twist, Hakim knew so much classified information that one of his depositions had been marked “top secret,” which meant that he--as a private citizen without a security clearance--was legally prohibited from looking at his own comments when questioned about them.

Another person who had access to sensitive information during the Iran arms sales was Iranian middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar, who reportedly had been tied to the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s secret police in Iran. Ghorbanifar was considered highly unreliable--particularly after he failed a CIA lie-detector test in early 1986.

“It just saddens me to be told that, as a United States senator, I may not be privy to certain information, but Mr. Ghorbanifar may get the darkest secrets of this country, Mr. Hakim can be made privy to all our secrets,” Inouye said.

When the committees demanded that Hakim turn over the encryption device within 24 hours, Hakim lawyer Richard Janis suggested that it might be difficult to retrieve it from the Swiss lawyer’s office over the weekend.

“We are dealing with the most sensitive equipment, and I suppose it would be an imposition on the law firm,” Inouye snapped. “But so be it.”