Iran-Contra Bid for Secret Papers Fails : Judge Denies Defense Request, Questions Fair Trial Possibility

The judge in the Iran-Contra case today rejected a defense request for top-secret government documents but again questioned whether Oliver L. North and three co-defendants could get a fair trial on conspiracy charges.

U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell handed independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh a significant pretrial victory by rejecting the defense’s wide-ranging request for documents relating to such operations as U.S. intelligence gathering in Iran and efforts to free American hostages in Lebanon.

But the judge again expressed reservations about whether the defendants could get a fair trial on charges that they conspired to defraud the government by diverting profits from the U.S.-Iran arms sales to the Nicaraguan rebels.

The prosecution’s conspiracy case relates “to a wide course of conduct that has to explain why each individual was involved, what got him into it, what he was doing before,” Gesell said.

4 Charged in 3 Counts

North, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who was fired from the National Security Council staff; former national security adviser John M. Poindexter, and arms dealers Albert A. Hakim and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord are charged together in three counts of the 23-count indictment returned in March.

The judge questioned whether the restrictions on the use of classified documents in a public trial would unfairly inhibit the defendants’ ability to present evidence that they were merely acting in accordance with procedures established for other covert operations known to their superiors in the government.

“When a man is accused of a crime, he ought to be able to get on the stand and tell his side of the story if he wants to,” Gesell said.

But that right could be restricted if the defendants want to say, “ ‘I’d been doing these things time and time again in other covert operations with the approval of Cabinet officials,’ ” the judge said.

‘Going to Spill All Over’

“I really expect that if the defendants take the stand . . . they are going to spill all over with classified information,” Gesell said, adding that he has “no stomach” for censoring the defendants’ testimony.

Testimony about other covert operations that the defendants may have participated in could be prohibited under the Classified Information Procedures Act by the government’s unwillingness to expose the information in court, Gesell said.

Such testimony would be important to the defense because it deals with “that abstract question that the jury must decide--what was on the man’s mind” when he participated in the Iran-Contra affair, Gesell said.