White House Pressing Senators to Publicly Back Tower

The White House, concerned that opposition by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) could derail John Tower’s nomination as secretary of defense, is privately pressing senators to endorse Tower publicly without waiting for a final FBI report on his background.

Nunn, obviously nettled that the lobbying is taking place before the final report is filed, declared Tuesday that he will wait and examine the document before deciding how to vote on the nomination in committee.

And he said he expects most senators of both parties to await the committee’s recommendation before making a commitment on how they will vote when the nomination comes before the full Senate.

President Bush, according to informed sources, ordered the lobbying effort after Nunn told him at a private meeting on Feb. 7 that he had “serious concerns” about certain allegations involving Tower. Nunn told Bush that, if a committee vote were taken at that time, as some had urged, he “would vote no because of those concerns.”

Nunn, as well as other senators on the committee, were known to have expressed concern about allegations involving excessive drinking and an accusation by a suspect in the Pentagon procurement fraud investigation that illegal contributions had been channeled to Tower’s campaign when Tower was a senator.

With the FBI continuing to investigate those allegations, the committee agreed last Wednesday to delay any action on the nomination until after the Senate returns next Tuesday from a recess.

The investigation is now being concluded and a report should be completed in a few days. A source familiar with the inquiry said that no “smoking gun” had been found.

Marlin Fitzwater, White House press secretary, said Tuesday that Frederick D. McClure, Bush’s assistant for legislative affairs, is leading the White House lobbying effort for Tower’s nomination and that several senators had agreed to “speak out” for Tower.

Fitzwater, interviewed at a luncheon session with editors and reporters of The Times’ Washington Bureau, at first said that several Democratic senators were among those who would speak out but refused to name any. Later, after checking with McClure, Fitzwater said that there are no commitments from Democrats and that the lobbying is confined to Republican senators.

However, sources familiar with the lobbying told The Times that the effort is aimed at lining up Democratic senators also. And one Democratic member of the committee, who asked not to be identified, said that he has been contacted but told the White House that he plans to support Nunn in whatever position he takes.

Nunn said that there is nothing “inappropriate” about the White House lobbying. But he said it is strange that the Administration would be pressing senators to speak out before the final FBI report has been filed, especially because White House counsel C. Boyden Gray has told him that it “would not be proper” for the committee to make a decision before seeing the report.

Another committee member, Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.), said: “I find it incredible, extraordinary, that they’re asking us not to take a position until we have the report but they are urging others to take a position.”

Wirth said that Nunn is the key to Tower’s fate. If the chairman votes against him, the Democratic-controlled Senate probably will reject the nomination. “It all depends on Sam,” Wirth said. “Everybody has such respect for Sam, and he’s very cautious.”

Another committee member, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), is “very, very troubled” by inconsistencies in Tower’s statements about his consulting work for British Aerospace Inc., an aide to Levin said. The aide said it is likely that Levin will ask that Tower be recalled to testify about the discrepancies.

Tower told the committee two weeks ago that he represented the British aircraft and weapons maker only on civil aviation matters, such as the sale of commercial jets. But, in a divorce deposition taken in June, 1987, Tower stated that he had given the company advice on “selling certain systems to the Defense Department.”

Tower sat on the board of directors of the U.S. subsidiary of the British firm and was paid more than $260,000 during the 2 1/2 years that he was associated with the company.

A Tower attorney said that the divorce deposition was a casual accounting of what he did for British Aerospace and a number of other defense contractors and was not meant to be a definitive statement of his consulting business. He said that the more recent statement to the committee is accurate.

However, when Tower registered as a legislative lobbyist in February, 1988, he explicitly listed British Aerospace as a “defense contractor” and not as merely a manufacturer of commercial aircraft.

Staff writers John M. Broder and Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington contributed to this story.