Clarified U.S. Covert Policy Sought : Congress: Key members tell the President they would welcome a plan to end ambiguity on clandestine moves that threaten foreign leaders.

Key members of Congress expressed support Tuesday for an effort by President Bush to permit U.S. personnel to be involved in clandestine operations that threaten the lives of foreign leaders.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.) said he told Bush at a meeting in the Oval Office last week that Congress would welcome a proposal from the Administration “to clear up any ambiguity” in the 13-year-old government ban on U.S. involvement in assassinations of foreign leaders.

According to sources, the Administration intends to redefine the current ban on assassinations so that it would clearly not be violated if Panamanian leader Manuel A. Noriega were killed accidentally during an effort to extradite him to the United States or during a future coup attempt in which U.S. forces play a direct role.

Even though members of Congress expressed support for such an interpretation, they also emphasized that they do not want to see the ban on assassinations lifted. “It shouldn’t be repealed,” said Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.). “We can clarify it, but I don’t see any major change.”

And Boren stressed that the President never has proposed repealing the executive order banning assassinations, which was first put in place by then-President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 in response to disclosures that the CIA had instigated plots in the 1960s against Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, now Zaire.

At the White House, Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater summed up the Administration’s position this way: “We’re opposed to assassination (but) there is clarification needed.”

White House National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and other Administration officials have suggested that a fear of violating the ban on assassination was responsible for the United States’ reluctance to assist in the recent coup against Noriega.

Nevertheless, The Times reported last week that the Administration already was contemplating a change in its interpretation of the executive order at the time of the unsuccessful coup.

Contradicting Scowcroft, members of Congress said that the ban on assassinations by the Administration had nothing to do with the failure to assist in the Panamanian coup. In fact, Boren said he was told by the President that there was no connection between the ban on assassinations and the U.S. response to the uprising against Noriega.

“As I understand the facts in Panama, I do not understand what relevance it was there,” said Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It is my understanding that the coup plotters did not expect to have Noriega there (when they took control of the government).”

Meanwhile, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, who declined to be identified, said that he thinks there has been a change in attitude among members of that panel regarding the ban on assassinations. He said that the current view seems to be “let’s unshackle the CIA.”

He attributes this so-called “cowboy mood” to the frustration over the continued reign of Noriega and his role in drug-trafficking into the United States.

BACKGROUND

President Gerald R. Ford’s move to end the CIA’s role in overseas assassination plots came as part of an executive order curbing the agency’s domestic intelligence role. The provision of the executive order--signed by Ford in February, 1976--covering assassinations states: “No employee of the United States shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” The executive order does not carry the sanctions of law, however. An employee who violates the order is subject to dismissal, loss of pay or other administrative actions.