Senate Panel Again Postpones Derwinski Hearing, Asks New Data on Defection Tip

In an unusual action, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Friday postponed again its confirmation hearings on Edward J. Derwinski to be the nation’s first veterans secretary, and set a closed session to study national security information involving the nominee.

An open hearing was set for March 1, the day after the closed meeting, as the committee pressed for new information on an incident that occurred in 1977 when Derwinski, then a member of Congress, tipped off the South Korean Embassy that a Korean CIA official was defecting. The committee is now scheduled to vote on the nomination March 2.

A source familiar with the inquiry said the new information is contained in FBI interviews of Derwinski in which he allegedly gave conflicting accounts and explanations of his action.

The national security information involves electronic monitoring of embassies by the National Security Agency that picked up evidence of Derwinski’s actions, a source familiar with the matter said.

Reports of FBI interviews of subjects in background as well as criminal investigations--called 302s--usually are not made available to Senate committees. One source said the alleged conflicts are apparent in summaries of the interviews that have been supplied to members of the panel.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on whether the 302s would be given to the committee.

Some of the interviews took place this year in connection with his nomination and others were conducted in 1983 when he was first named to a State Department post by former President Ronald Reagan after serving in Congress for 24 years.

The allegedly conflicting accounts add questions of candor and truthfulness to the controversy over Derwinski’s nomination.

Derwinski has been criticized for notifying friends in the Korean Embassy in 1977 of the imminent defection. The FBI learned of his warning and managed to escort the defector and his family safely from his home about half an hour before Korean CIA agents arrived.

“This guy (the Korean defector) would have been severely punished or killed, as well as his family,” if Korean agents had headed off his defection, a senior law enforcement official said recently.

White House officials have defended the nominee, maintaining that the incident is “an old story” and that Derwinski admitted his “mistake in judgment,” but they have not responded to questions about Derwinski’s changing his account of the incident.

Derwinski, who was the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on international relations that was looking into the Korean CIA at the time, at first denied that he had warned the embassy of the defection. He dismissed the leak allegations as “guilt by association” because he was known to be friendly toward anti-Communist governments, including South Korea’s.

He refused to testify before one federal grand jury that investigated the matter and gave no statement to the House ethics committee, which also looked into the case. He did supply written answers to questions posed by a second grand jury, one source said.

But no action was taken against him after government officials said that pursuing the investigations could jeopardize sensitive “sources and methods” used by U.S. intelligence agencies--presumably the electronic monitoring of the embassies.

Derwinski changed his story in a 1983 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination to be State Department counselor, admitting that he had tipped the embassy to the imminent defection. The testimony was not reported at the time, however, and was found in the National Archives only after President Bush chose Derwinski to serve in the new Cabinet post.

The FBI interviews, however, are understood to show that Derwinski has continued to give conflicting accounts of his actions.