North Won’t Go on Trial in Campaign : Indefinite Delay on Documents Issue Regarded as Helpful for Bush Cause

The judge in the Iran-Contra affair, unable to settle disputes over the use in court of top-secret documents, indefinitely postponed Oliver L. North’s conspiracy trial date Friday, eliminating the prospect of a trial during the fall presidential election campaign.

U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell’s postponement of the scheduled Sept. 20 trial date spares Vice President George Bush the prospect of a trial that could rivet public attention on the Reagan Administration’s worst foreign policy debacle just as Bush was campaigning for the presidency.

Two days after his indictment in March, North said that his defense might require him to “issue subpoenas for the testimony . . . of the highest ranking officials of our government.”

Linda DiVall, a Republican polling consultant, said: “Not having to deal with a trial is just one less potentially dangerous issue out of the way that could have hurt George Bush--it’s definitely a plus.”

North Sought Delay

Lawyers for North, the former White House aide who was fired in 1986 for his role in diverting Iran arms-sale profits to Nicaragua’s Contras, had sought the delay. Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, who obtained North’s indictment on 16 counts including conspiracy to defraud the United States, had urged an early trial.

Sources in Walsh’s office said that as a result of Gesell’s order, the trial could probably not begin before the end of the year.

Gesell, in his terse order, gave Walsh until Oct. 10 to produce classified documents that North’s lawyers might need in his defense. North’s lawyers have until Nov. 14 to tell the court which of the documents they intend to use.

Because the judge has said in the past that he does not want a trial interrupted by the Christmas holidays, the new schedule would suggest waiting until after the holidays to begin.

The delay is expected to renew speculation about President Reagan’s possible consideration of a presidential pardon for North, which Reagan has said should neither be ruled in or out until after a verdict.

However, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Friday that he did not believe the delay would have any effect on the President’s stand. “It doesn’t change things,” he said.

Officials with the presidential campaigns of both Bush and Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis refused comment on the ruling.

“This is a matter for the courts,” said Sheila Tate, Bush’s press secretary.

Bush, asked at an appearance in Washington whether he thought the trial delay would make his campaign easier, said it would not. Bush has repeatedly said he was unaware of the details of the Iran arms sales and had no knowledge of the diversion of profits to the Contras.

Walsh, in a brief statement, said that he and Gesell “have made extraordinary efforts to bring this case to a prompt trial” and that he would prepare his case under the schedule dictated by the judge.

Lawyers for North refused to comment on the ruling.

In appealing several weeks ago for a six-month delay, North’s lawyers said the Sept. 20 trial date did not give them enough time to review nearly a million pages of relevant documents, many of them classified and difficult to obtain from the CIA and other government agencies. In motions filed this week, they complained that they had been only just notified of 80 boxes filled with additional documents that might help their case.

‘Frantic Rush’

“There is no conceivably legitimate basis for imposing such an obviously impossible burden on the defendant and his counsel,” North’s lawyers said in arguing against a Sept. 20 trial. “In its frantic rush to trial before the election, the court seems to have abandoned all sense of what is fair.”

North’s attorneys have also argued repeatedly that North could not get a fair trial during a presidential election campaign.

In ordering the postponement, Gesell cited only the difficulties faced by North’s lawyers in obtaining the necessary documents. At a hearing last week, he belittled the defense argument that North would be hurt by political attention, saying that North himself had sought much of that attention by making political speeches around the country.

An official in Walsh’s office, speaking not for attribution, found a bright spot in Gesell’s order.

Earlier, the judge had given Walsh only until Aug. 1 to produce certain classified documents for review by defense lawyers. He had threatened to throw out the conspiracy charges at the heart of the case against North if Walsh failed to meet the deadline.

No Separation Needed

Walsh, unable to comply with the Aug. 1 date, was forced last week to ask Gesell to separate the charges against North and try the conspiracy counts at a later time. But now that Gesell has given Walsh until Oct. 10 to produce the necessary documents, it will no longer be necessary to separate the conspiracy charges.

“This way at least we can try (all 16 counts against North) together, which is a plus,” said the official in Walsh’s office.

North apparently plans to use the classified material sought from the prosecutor to try to show that his diversion of the Iran arms-sale profits to the Nicaraguan resistance had been approved by top Administration leaders. He has said he plans to summon “the highest officials” in the government in his defense.

Walsh asserted last week that his investigation has found no evidence linking Reagan or Bush to the diversion.