Immunity Violated, 3 in Iran Case Charge

Former White House aide Oliver L. North and other defendants in the Iran-Contra criminal case asked a court Thursday to throw out their indictments, arguing that they are based on evidence given Congress last summer under pledges of immunity from prosecution.

The long-expected claims, filed with U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell, were the first of what may be many maneuvers by defense attorneys to thwart independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh’s prosecution of the Iran arms case. Walsh’s office had no comment Thursday but is expected to respond with its own court brief soon.

In their filings, lawyers for North, John M. Poindexter and Albert A. Hakim charged that “in many ways” Walsh used immunized testimony and documents given to Congress to prepare cases against the men, violating their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

Poindexter, a former White House national security adviser, and Hakim, an Iranian-American businessman, were indicted with North last month on charges of theft, fraud, conspiracy to defraud the government and other counts linked to the secret arms sales to Iran and diversion of funds to the Contra rebels of Nicaragua.

Burden of Proof

All three men testified before Congress last year under “limited immunity” agreements guaranteeing that their testimony would not be used against them in a trial. The agreements allow Walsh to use any evidence gathered before the men began appearing before Congress. But he must prove that any evidence obtained after that point was not derived from immunized testimony.

A fourth defendant charged with them in a sweeping 23-count indictment, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, did not receive a grant of immunity from Congress and could not argue Thursday that his indictment was tainted by immunized evidence.

Instead, his lawyer took the opposite tack, contending in a filing Thursday that Secord was wrongly indicted because Walsh did not give the grand jury immunized evidence suggesting that Secord did nothing illegal.

Without that evidence, he argued, the jury could not reach a balanced judgment on the likelihood that Secord had broken the law.

Girding for Challenge

Walsh has been girding for months for the challenges filed against his investigation Thursday. From the day of his appointment as independent counsel in the case, he has taken extraordinary measures to shield his staff from exposure to immunized evidence, even limiting his employees’ exposure to television and censoring the newspapers they read.

Lawyers for North, Hakim and Poindexter argued, however, that the massive publicity arising from Congress’ televised hearings last summer made it impossible to keep the investigation from being “tainted” by immunized evidence.

If investigators themselves were shielded from the evidence, they contended, “witnesses exposed to defendants’ immunized testimony . . . subsequently were interviewed by the office of independent counsel.” Other staff members, such as government declassification officers, used their knowledge of the testimony to decide what national security information Walsh’s staff would receive, they stated.

Seeks Mountain of Documents

The attorneys offered no proof of their contentions. In a thick letter included in Thursday’s filing, however, North’s lawyer demanded that Walsh surrender a mountain of documents that might bolster their argument.

The list of documents includes outlines of Walsh’s security measures, any papers proving that the indictments are not “tainted” and every page of data, “from issues of the Washington Post to Playboy to Veil”--a recent book about the CIA--which investigators might have seen during their inquiry.

Walsh has hired Washington attorney Herbert Stern to respond to the charges.