Appeals Court Rejects U.S. Attempt to End North Trial : Gives Full Support to Judge Gesell

A federal appeals court, siding with a trial judge and against the Bush Administration, refused today to stop the trial of fired national security aide Oliver L. North on the ground that national security secrets might be exposed.

In a one-sentence order, the U.S. Court of Appeals said it was allowing the trial to go ahead for basically the same reasons given earlier today by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell. The judge had rejected the Justice Department’s claims as “frivolous.”

Earlier in the day, the appeals court had issued an administrative stay, halting all proceedings, after the Justice Department, acting on behalf of U.S. intelligence agencies, said more stringent controls were needed over classified material North intends to present in his defense.

An irritated Gesell had sent the just-selected jury of nine women and three men, all black, home until next week until the appeals panel ruled.

“There is no word from the Court of Appeals,” he said then. “I’m unable to get any advice when a decision is coming down, if ever. What I’m going to have to do is close up shop.”

The Justice Department had asked for a halt in the trial pending the outcome of the appeal.

Authority Challenged

In his earlier order, Gesell said that Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh did not have the authority to intervene at this point in an attempt to stop the trial on national security grounds.

The appeals court panel ordered that the Justice Department’s motion to stop the proceedings “be denied substantially for the reasons given by” Gesell.

In denying the motion, Gesell said “the attorney general’s belated general appearance is wholly misplaced. . . . The attorney general’s attempt to appeal is . . . at odds with the purposes of the laws establishing the independent counsel,” who is prosecuting the case.

Ron Noble, a Justice Department deputy to criminal division chief Ed Dennis, immediately went to the U.S. Court of Appeals in an attempt to get the trial stopped.

At issue is whether national security will be threatened by disclosure of classified information during North’s trial on charges of shredding evidence and lying to Congress in an attempt to cover up the Iran-Contra affair.

The Justice Department stepped into the case Wednesday by demanding censorship control over classified documents that the defense wants to enter as evidence. That position was also opposed by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, who is prosecuting North, a former White House national security aide.

The judge called the department’s intervention in the case “one of the most frivolous motions I have ever seen.”

Gesell said the only person who may make an appeal in the case is the independent counsel, but Noble responded that “the government’s position is that the right to appeal is the attorney general’s.”

Gesell’s irritation with the Justice Department’s belated intervention in the case came to the fore on Wednesday when he said constant interruptions by government intelligence agencies threaten to turn the proceedings into a “cuckoo clock trial.”