North Associate Believed Aiding Walsh Inquiry

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, having indicted the “core four” in the Iran-Contra affair, has broadened his inquiry and shifted his attention to former CIA officials and others who may have committed crimes in the arms sale scandal, sources familiar with the case said Thursday.

At the same time, Walsh appears to have strengthened his case against Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and two other defendants by obtaining the cooperation of an American attorney who was a Swiss-based financial consultant for several of the defendants but who did not testify during last summer’s congressional investigation of the scandal.

‘I Did Cartwheels’

The consultant, Willard I. Zucker, was “the witness I most wanted to speak to and couldn’t,” said Arthur L. Liman, the chief lawyer for the Senate Iran-Contra investigation. “I did cartwheels to get Zucker.”

Walsh’s office would not comment on whether Zucker was cooperating with the inquiry. But several lawyers familiar with the case confirmed that Zucker--who, as accountant for North’s operation, had managed the movement of money through dummy firms--had provided Walsh with a “road map” through the intricate Swiss bank accounts used by North and his associates to divert Iran arms sale profits to Nicaragua’s Contra rebels.

Congressional investigators obtained a more limited picture of those financial transactions from Iranian-born businessman Albert A. Hakim, one of the four men whose indictments were obtained by Walsh on Wednesday.

To get information on those financial transactions, the congressional investigators were forced to grant Hakim immunity from prosecution. That immunity means Walsh may not use Hakim’s testimony to the congressional committees as evidence against him, but he obtained Hakim’s indictment anyway, apparently using other evidence.

But, even with Hakim’s help, Liman said, deciphering the records “was one of the most complex investigating jobs that I have ever seen in my life. These records were deliberately deceptive, kept to allow deniability.”

Records Hold Key

The financial records are the key to the emerging prosecution strategy--to portray the defendants as having “corrupted” the Reagan Administration’s Iran initiative into a scheme that lined their own pockets. “If Walsh has Zucker’s records, then a lot of people are in trouble,” said a former congressional aide.

The accusations of personal enrichment in the indictment include millions of dollars of arms sale money that ended up in Swiss bank accounts controlled by Hakim and retired Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord. And they include smaller sums that the two men are accused of having given North in return for his official actions.

In one of those incidents, the indictment says, Zucker served as the go-between, conveying to North and his wife, Betsy, Secord’s offer of $200,000 for the education of their children. The indictment accuses Secord of having offered North an illegal gratuity but does not accuse North of accepting it.

Sources familiar with the investigation said prosecutors over the last several months had focused on the core indictment, doing only preliminary work on the other figures in the case. A day after a federal grand jury in Washington returned the indictments after 14 months of investigation, Walsh’s team began turning its attention to Monday’s grand jury session and the next phase of the inquiry.

Could Bring More Charges

Although Walsh remains free to bring additional charges against North and his co-defendants if new evidence surfaces, lawyers familiar with the case said that the comprehensive nature of Wednesday’s indictment made that unlikely.

Instead, the grand jury is now believed to be focusing on a large group of lesser figures in the scandal who may have broken laws as the alleged conspiracy was carried out. Several others are named in the indictment but not accused of any crimes, including the CIA’s former station chief in Costa Rica, Joe Fernandez.

Among the most exposed of the potential targets is Thomas G. Clines, a retired CIA covert operations officer and a financial equal with Secord and Hakim in the Iran-Contra arms sales. Clines was brought into the “Enterprise”--the name given to the effort to support the Contras militarily--by Secord in May, 1985, about six months after the first secret arms sales to the Contras.

In the next 18 months, according to congressional testimony and other sources, he managed virtually all Enterprise weapons purchases and overseas covert missions, netting nearly $973,000 in arms-sales “commissions” in the process.

Not Granted Immunity

At Walsh’s request, the congressional Iran-Contra panels did not grant Clines limited immunity from prosecution, leaving him one of the few central figures without some legal shield against the grand jury’s inquiry. “Walsh felt very strongly about that,” Liman recalled.

Some experts believe Walsh omitted Clines from Wednesday’s indictments because he is seeking his cooperation in bolstering the case against North, Secord, Hakim and Poindexter.

“Without the testimony of one of the conspirators, he is going to have a tough time” convincing a jury that the four men are guilty, a senior investigator in last summer’s congressional hearings said Thursday. “I’ve always thought of Clines as a significant part in whatever conspiracy existed.”

Arraignment Near

While part of Walsh’s 30-lawyer office continues to present evidence to the grand jury, another group will be concentrating on preparing for the numerous pretrial motions that the defense is expected to file in the weeks immediately after next Thursday’s arraignment before federal Judge Gerhard A. Gesell.

The large number of complex issues raised by the case is likely to make a trial impossible before this fall’s presidential election. The potential delays range from the motions that defense lawyers are already preparing to the logistical problems involved in declassifying the thousands of documents that will be needed for the trial.

That delay could be the best thing possible for the defense. “The operating rule in all these cases is that delay is to the advantage of your client unless he’s locked up and can’t meet his bond,” said a lawyer for one unindicted figure in the case. “They’re going to do everything possible to delay it.”

In this case, particularly, delay could be crucial because of the possibility that President Reagan eventually might choose to pardon the defendants. Already, conservative groups have begun organizing efforts to obtain a pardon.

Protesters supporting North picketed Walsh’s office Wednesday. “I love Ollie,” one demonstrator’s placard read.

Because of the “firestorm of controversy” that a pardon would cause, “I just don’t see it politically happening” before the election, said Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who was an outspoken defender of North as a member of the House Iran-Contra committee.

“Following the election, as we move toward January, I could see it as more likely,” Hyde said.

Staff writer Michael Wines contributed to this story.

U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell, one of the most experienced trial judges in the nation, has been chosen to preside over the trial of President Reagan’s former aides.