Withholding of Key Contra Memo Alleged

The Administration of former President Ronald Reagan failed to give the congressional Iran-Contra committees a key memo that set in motion a secret plan to secure military assistance from Honduras for the Nicaraguan rebels in 1985 in return for stepped-up U.S. aid to Honduras, congressional sources said Friday.

President Bush, then the vice president, played a role in that secret plan by telling the president of Honduras that the United States was accelerating aid payments to his country, according to a document prepared recently by the Bush Administration.

At the time, Congress had banned all U.S. aid to the Contras, “direct or indirect,” although it remains unresolved whether the ban applied to solicitation of aid from foreign countries.

The existence of the memo, sent to Reagan by his national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, was mentioned last week at the Iran-Contra trial of Oliver L. North, who was on McFarlane’s staff at the time.

Bush insisted at a press conference Friday that all documents introduced in the North trial had also been submitted to the congressional Iran-Contra investigating committees. He said it would be “totally unfair” to comment further while the trial is proceeding.

But one congressional source, who insisted on anonymity, said of the key Reagan Administration memo: “The committee received no such document.”

And Mark A. Belnick, a New York lawyer who served as an attorney for the Senate Iran-Contra committee, said: “If there is a document that shows a specific quid pro quo arrangement with another country, I do not believe the committee received it. I do not recall it and have not found anyone (on the committee) who recalls it.”

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), without being specific, said that Reagan Administration documents introduced last week during the North trial had apparently not been made available to the Senate Iran-Contra committee, on which he served.

Unaware of Bush Role

“I was unaware until the trial of the direct participation he (Bush) had in the arrangements for assistance from other countries in exchange for those countries aiding the Contras,” Mitchell said at a breakfast session with Times reporters. “It raises very serious questions, into which some inquiry must be made as to whether or not there were violations of the law.”

Although the memo had been referred to in a general way at the North trial last week, its contents were not publicly described until Thursday.

The McFarlane memo to Reagan, dated Feb. 19, 1985, recommended that Reagan dispatch to Honduras “an emissary who would very privately explain U.S. criteria for the expedited economic support, security assistance deliveries and other support,” according to a 42-page “admission of facts” submitted by the Bush Administration at the North trial Thursday.

Reagan, according to the Bush Administration document, “personally authorized the entire plan.”

The “admission of facts” did not name the emissary or even disclose whether an emissary had been sent. But, less than a month later, on March 16, Bush met in Honduras with Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordoba and told him that U.S. economic and military aid to his country would be expedited, the “admission of facts” said.

Despite the sequence of events, a State Department source familiar with the situation said the Administration, acting at the State Department’s urging, ultimately decided against sending an emissary from Washington to explain the U.S. plan to Suazo.

Another Administration source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the congressional committees had received at least “an undated draft” of the McFarlane memo, if not the memo itself.

And another source, who also did not want to be identified, said he was sure that all relevant documents had been supplied to the committee.

Bush himself told reporters: “All of the material that was introduced yesterday (at the North trial) . . . has been available to the independent counsel and the Iran-Contra committee and has been reviewed by them for any special significance.

“So I believe the legal process ought to run unfettered, without you or me endangering the trial that’s going on right now. And that’s the last question I’ll take on that subject.”

When told that former Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Me.), a member of the Tower Commission that investigated the Iran-Contra affair for the Reagan Administration, had been unaware of Bush’s role in the Honduran assistance plan until it was disclosed at the North trial, Bush again refused to enter the debate.

Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel who is prosecuting North, said that the “admission of facts” introduced at the trial Thursday “is in many ways incomplete and therefore distorted” in its description of Administration officials’ dealings with other countries for support of the Contras.

Sources said the Feb. 19 memo from McFarlane to Reagan had been released to Walsh, if not to the congressional committees. And sources added that a preliminary search of the committees’ files has turned up no other documents relating specifically to the Honduran initiative, and so congressional investigators had been unaware of its details until they were disclosed at North’s trial.

Mitchell Dissatisfied

Mitchell, meeting with Times reporters, expressed dissatisfaction that the Senate committee had not received a full accounting of the Iran-Contra affair from the Reagan Administration.

“When witnesses lie, when documents are destroyed, when not all documents are available . . . you’re not going to get the full story,” he declared. “I think it will be some time, possibly never, before we know the full truth.”

Staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this story.