Lawyer Says He Warned of Using Secord

The CIA lawyer who gave the Reagan Administration the legal foundation for the U.S. arms sales to Iran after they had already begun said today he warned the White House in early 1986 about bringing in Richard V. Secord as the private operator for the initiative.

But Stanley Sporkin, who resigned as chief CIA counsel last year to become a federal judge, told the Iran- contra panel that when he cautioned then-national security adviser John M. Poindexter about Secord, the White House official merely said he would “look into the matter.”

The 22nd day of congressional hearings on the foreign policy scandal homed in on the national security “finding” that Sporkin drafted in late November, 1985, and that President Reagan signed Jan. 17, 1986.

Legal Right to Proceed

The 1 1/2-page “finding”--which Reagan did not even read before approving--was intended to give the government the legal right to proceed with its clandestine overture to Iran’s radical Islamic government and also to keep the dealings secret from Congress.

While Reagan generally has insisted that the arms sales were merely a U.S. effort to reach out to “moderates” in the government of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, documents and reports have proven that the dealings also were intended as barter for the American hostages in Lebanon.

Sporkin told the select House-Senate committees that Deputy CIA Director John McMahon approached him in late 1985 requesting a legal opinion about U.S. arms dealings with Iran.

Sought Presidential OK

Sporkin, now a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said he undertook the project in the belief that all the U.S. activity on the arms sales--including any mention of the American hostages--had to be cited in a finding because “this kind of action, I thought, should have a finding from the President of the United States.”

However, Sporkin said, he did not know that Secord, the retired Air Force major general who with Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North directed the private foreign policy “enterprise,” had already been recruited into the project, which included not only the arms sales to Iran but also the diversion of sales profits to the Nicaraguan contra rebels.

‘Something Disturbed Me’

Sporkin said he had learned “at some point” in January, 1986, that Secord had become involved in the arms sales to Iran, and the veteran Washington lawyer said he called Poindexter to express his concern.

“There must have been something that disturbed me. I said to Admiral Poindexter, ‘Do you know that Secord is involved in this project? And I want to know whether you have vetted him and determined that he was exactly what you wanted to use. There is a background matter here.’ ”

In 1983, Sporkin testified, Secord had applied for CIA clearance to gain access to the spy agency’s most classified documents. However, at that time, Secord was a target of a Pentagon investigation into the dealings of rogue CIA agent Edwin Wilson, who now is serving a 50-year prison term for illegally selling weapons to Libya.

Secord was cleared of all wrongdoing but he retired from the Air Force that year.