House Panel Chairman to Step Up Probe of Tower’s Geneva Activities

The chairman of a House panel investigating the activities of Defense Secretary-designate John Tower as head of a U.S. disarmament-negotiating team in Geneva said Saturday that he will step up the inquiry after a dispute with the State Department over access to an investigator’s reports on Tower.

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), who heads an Energy and Commerce subcommittee investigation, said that an investigator who had flown here to discuss his findings on Tower was muzzled by the State Department earlier Saturday.

Dingell said that, although top State Department officials later assured him the department would cooperate with his panel’s inquiry, security officers of the department earlier had met the investigator at a Washington airport and ordered him not to talk about Tower, even to Congress.

Affairs Investigated

According to subcommittee documents, U.S. investigators say that Tower had extramarital affairs with two secretaries while he was in Geneva. One of the investigators, Brian Hess of the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, met with the subcommittee staff Friday after being interviewed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The other, Berne Indahl, a State Department security officer, arrived this weekend from Senegal and was supposed to see the panel early this week. It was Indahl who Dingell said had been instructed not to talk to the panel.

Dingell said department officials later assured him that there had been a misunderstanding, but he said he intends to pursue his investigation.