Walsh Tells of ‘Breaches’ in Shield : Says He Heard ‘Fragments’ of Immunized Iran Testimony

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh testified Monday he was exposed about six times to “fragments” of congressionally immunized testimony on the Iranian arms case because of “some breaches” in his procedures to shield prosecutors from such evidence.

Walsh’s testimony came at a pretrial hearing as defense attorneys for Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North and three co-defendants sought to obtain information about these breaches in an effort to convince U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell that the case against their clients may be legally flawed.

Gesell, who postponed ruling on the issue, set another hearing for later this week. He told Walsh to provide him with more information and written records of these breaches.

Limited Immunity

The testimony in question was given by witnesses during the congressional investigation into the Iran-Contra affair. Under federal law, witnesses who testify before Congress with a grant of limited immunity--as did North and some of the other principal figures in the Iran case--are protected from having such testimony used against them.

The four men were indicted on criminal conspiracy charges last month after Walsh gave public assurances that his prosecutors had gathered their evidence totally independent of last summer’s congressional testimony.

One of the four defendants, Richard V. Secord, a retired Air Force major general and a middleman in the arms sale deal, testified at the joint Senate-House hearings without receiving limited immunity. Therefore, his testimony still could be used against him. North and the two others, former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and Iranian-born businessman Albert A. Hakim, received limited immunity.

Walsh Tells of Steps

Walsh, at Monday’s hearing, took pains to show that he was sensitive to the immunity protections and spelled out steps he took to shield most members of his 75-member prosecution staff from the defendants’ immunized testimony.

He said he forbade the 27 lawyers, 35 FBI agents and 11 Internal Revenue Service investigators from watching any of the nationally televised testimony or from reading any newspaper accounts of it. Similar instructions were given to members of the federal grand jury544499809breaches, and clerical staff were exempt, he said.

In addition, Walsh testified that before North gave his immunized testimony last June, prosecutors sealed several envelopes of evidence that they already had gathered and put them under federal guard to ensure “the independence of our inquiry.”

‘Inadvertent’ Breaches

Nevertheless, Walsh said, some “inadvertent” breaches occurred, including three occasions before last month’s indictments--and about three occasions since then--when he heard brief references to the testimony of North, Poindexter or Hakim. He did not elaborate on the circumstances.

“I was never exposed to the testimony itself, so far as I know,” Walsh said, adding that he designated an associate counsel, John Douglass, to keep a record of every time a staff member reported that he or someone else on the staff had been exposed to immunized material.

Walsh said he did not know how many such instances occurred, but that one staff attorney, Christopher Todd, was re-assigned to other matters after he was exposed to some immunized testimony.

After Walsh complied with a request by Gesell to provide him with Douglass’ file, the judge told defense attorneys that it seemed to contain some “relevant” information that he would disclose to them later.

Might Not Matter

Gesell said defense lawyers were entitled to “determine the extent to which this system (of Walsh’s) failed to work perfectly.” At another point, however, the judge said it might not matter if grand jurors learned about immunized congressional testimony “if the information (for an indictment) was independently obtained.”

Under questioning by Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., North’s lawyer, Walsh acknowledged that dozens of witnesses who had appeared before the grand jury since last summer had probably seen some immunized testimony on television.

Earlier at the hearing, Gesell barred defense attorneys from calling any witnesses themselves on grounds they had violated his order two weeks ago to give Walsh sufficient advance notice of persons they wanted to question.

“The orders of the court are going to be complied with,” Gesell said sternly.