North Defense Assails Deal on Secret Data : Says It Would Hide Critical Information on Third-Country Aid

Lt. Col. Oliver L. North’s lawyers Monday objected to a proposed compromise on releasing classified information at his Iran-Contra trial, saying that the plan worked out by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh and the Justice Department “would gut the defense and guarantee a ‘cuckoo-clock’ trial.”

North attorney Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. said that the deal worked out over the weekend would hide “critical information about the Reagan Administration’s third-country arrangements for military support of the (Nicaraguan) resistance and the official non-disclosure of those arrangements.”

With the trial of the former White House aide apparently delayed for at least several more days, U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell temporarily dismissed jurors and planned to hear legal arguments by all sides today before deciding whether to adopt the proposed compromise and resume North’s trial on 12 felony charges.

Opening Statement

North’s lawyers said that they want the court’s approval to tell jurors in their opening statement that former President Ronald Reagan and top officials of his Administration obtained aid from third countries to help rearm the Contras but planned to conceal the operation from Congress and the public.

The compromise worked out between Justice Department lawyers and Walsh would ask Gesell to impose more stringent restrictions on what North’s lawyers may disclose in court. Details of the compromise, however, remain under seal.

The weekend agreement diffused a bitter confrontation between Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, who wanted Gesell to prohibit a specific list of disclosures, and the independent prosecutors, who expressed satisfaction with Gesell’s existing orders, which define broad categories of what may and may not be disclosed.

Temporary Stay

If Gesell accepts the compromise, the Justice Department said that it would ask Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to dissolve a temporary stay of North’s trial, which he imposed Sunday until the Supreme Court could consider the issue on Friday.

However, in court papers that Gesell unsealed Monday, North’s lawyers objected to any additional restrictions and called on the judge to hold fast to his earlier orders. They said, for example, that disclosure to jurors of U.S. efforts to obtain third-country military aid for the Contras--to which government security analysts apparently have objected--is “critical” to North’s defense.

Defense attorneys Sullivan and Barry S. Simon complained that the government has offered an inadequate stipulation of facts on this issue in an effort to have specific details squelched under terms of the Classified Information Procedures Act.

“The stipulation omits critical details of those third-country arrangements, and it fails to acknowledge that President Reagan and other top Administration officials established a policy that the arrangements would not be disclosed outside the executive branch,” the defense motion said.

Such stipulations, Sullivan said, “would guarantee a ‘cuckoo-clock’ trial that would make a mockery of the adversarial process.”

Gesell has said that he is opposed to a “cuckoo-clock trial,” a phrase he has used to describe constant objections by government intelligence experts to disclosure of state secrets.

Closed Session

North’s lawyers quoted Gesell as having said in a transcript of a closed session earlier this month that the third-country plan exemplified “the area of concealment, as I understand it, that is an issue in this case.” They quoted the judge as saying further that North “should be entitled to have the jury see the circumstances under which he acted.”

The defense lawyers said that third-country military aid for the Contras was arranged at a time when Congress had forbidden the executive branch from providing military assistance to the rebels. The plan operated on a quid pro quo basis, meaning that the United States pledged to help the third countries in return, they said.

Besides Reagan, others who “participated personally and directly” in this policy included former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane and the late William J. Casey, director of the CIA, the defense papers said.

Congressional hearings into the Iran-Contra scandal two years ago disclosed that Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and at least 10 other unnamed countries provided Contra aid under this policy. But $10 million from the Sultan of Brunei mistakenly wound up in the wrong Swiss bank account.

Gesell, in temporarily excusing jurors Monday morning, instructed them to phone him each afternoon to see if they might be needed the following morning. But he said that “it’s not in the court’s hands,” a reference to the temporary stay that has been imposed by Rehnquist.

In a related development, ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said that they have asked Thornburgh and CIA Director William H. Webster to testify about the classified documents issue in a closed session on Feb. 21.

The committee said that it expects to focus on Thornburgh’s certification last month that sensitive material could not be provided to try North on the central charges of conspiracy and theft. As a result of Thornburgh’s determination, those charges subsequently were dropped, leaving North to be tried on 12 lesser felony charges, including obstruction of congressional and presidential inquiries and making false statements to Congress.