Senators Delay Tower Vote After New Charges Emerge : Panel Will Check Data With FBI

Senators moving to check “additional information” with the FBI postponed a vote today on John Tower’s nomination as defense secretary, a step that sparked speculation about his confirmation chances.

Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and senior Republican John W. Warner of Virginia announced at a committee session dealing with an unrelated matter that more data has come to the panel about Tower and that some members want a further look at the former Texas senator’s file.

“The chairman and I have been looking at some additional information that has come to the attention of the two of us . . . and we feel it important to see that each one of these bits of information is carefully checked out,” Warner said. “(Nunn) and I will be meeting with the FBI and others today.”

Neither senator would elaborate and both quickly left the committee room, but Warner cautioned: “I wouldn’t read anything into it at this time. . . . I would not attach any credibility or non-credibility to the information.”

Grilled on Private Life

Nunn, who had said earlier that a vote was probable today, said that he now does not know when the committee may vote--and that the full Senate would be unlikely to be able to take up the nomination until next week.

Tower, 63, had endured four days of public and private hearings before the committee he once chaired, hearings that saw him grilled closely about his work as a defense consultant after he left the Senate four years ago and about allegations that he was a womanizer and a heavy drinker.

The hearings had apparently concluded Wednesday with his public declaration that he has no alcohol problem. The Texan conceded, “I feel like I’m glad it’s the end of the hearings.”

Nunn’s announcement of the postponement came on the same day that the Washington Post’s gossip column carried a report on Tower’s behavior at a Wednesday lunch at a posh hotel with girlfriend Dorothy Heiser.

The report said Tower “playfully lunged at Heiser, his arms reaching toward her under the table, and said, ‘I’m going to fondle you.’ She gave a little shriek and jumped slightly and said, ‘Don’t you do that.’ He stopped and they resumed eating.”

Nunn had suggested some discomfort with the nomination late Wednesday, telling reporters after the hearings that he had not made up his own mind. But the chairman nonetheless said then that he expected Tower to win confirmation.

“I have had and continue to have concerns not on the basis of his competence” but on the basis of his private life and conflict-of-interest questions, Nunn said. “I am wrestling with those.”

Conservative activist Paul Weyrich said Tuesday that he had seen Tower intoxicated and in the company of women other than his wife “on numerous occasions,” but when called into a private meeting he was unable to convince senators that he had anything more than “hearsay” evidence.

The twice-divorced Tower, whose 1987 divorce was particularly acrimonious, was offered the opportunity by Nunn to respond publicly to his critics Wednesday after he, too, spoke privately with the committee.