Many of North’s Efforts Legal, Walsh Concedes

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh acknowledged Wednesday that former White House aide Oliver L. North “engaged in many wholly legitimate” efforts to win release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon.

Walsh made the concession, and a similar one Tuesday, in an effort to reduce the volume of classified documents that North wants to disclose at his trial in the Iran-Contra case.

North, meanwhile, withdrew his request for some 10,000 pages of monthly Central Intelligence Agency cables concerning Nicaragua from 1984 to 1986.

Dismissal of Counts Possible

The White House, on the advice of the U.S. intelligence community, has warned that there are some categories of information at stake in the pretrial skirmishing that can “never” be made public. But if U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard A. Gesell rules such details essential, the impasse could force dismissal of some counts in the indictment.

In an attachment submitted to Gesell on Wednesday, associate independent counsel Louise R. Radin offered a six-page account of North’s legitimate hostage-related activities in the course of the Reagan Administration’s arms-for-hostages program.

After President Reagan signed a Jan. 17, 1986, finding authorizing shipment of arms to Iran to secure “a more moderate” government there and to foster hostage-release efforts, the summary said, North “legitimately undertook certain activities, including . . . the gathering of intelligence.”