Judge Bars Public, Press From Taping of Reagan : Iran-Contra: The demands of 12 news organizations for an open deposition are rejected. But the testimony will be released after editing for classified material.

A federal judge on Thursday barred the public and press from the Los Angeles courtroom where Ronald Reagan will testify today, but he ruled that the videotape of the testimony must be made public as soon as national security secrets are edited out.

Judge Harold H. Greene thus rejected the demand of 12 news organizations for access to the session at which the former President will be questioned about the Iran-Contra case. The judge ruled that the same national security considerations that led him to permit taped, rather than live, testimony from Reagan also outweighed First Amendment guarantees of public access to a trial proceeding.

However, Greene said that “in the absence of extraordinary disputes . . . regarding classified materials, (the editing) process will not consume more than two or three working days.” He ordered that the tapes be made available to the press and the public “as soon as the editing of the tape has been completed.”

Reagan was called as a defense witness by former White House National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, who is facing five felony counts in connection with the secret sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of some of the profits to the Contras in Nicaragua.

In attempting to show his actions were authorized by Reagan, Poindexter also is seeking access to some 33 excerpts from the former President’s private diaries. Reagan has asserted executive privilege as a reason to block disclosure.

In a separate development Thursday, the Bush Administration threw its weight behind the claim of executive privilege, arguing in a Justice Department filing that the oral testimony to be taped today should give Poindexter all of the information he is seeking from Reagan.

In his ruling that Reagan can testify behind closed doors, Greene noted in a 13-page memorandum that “national security concerns may be expected to permeate the questioning.” Thus, he reasoned, the very purpose of taping the deposition and then sanitizing it of classified material would be defeated if the press were allowed.

Greene added: “It is frivolous to suggest that the court could enjoin the assembled press corps not to publish what they have just seen and heard” if the press were allowed and classified information leaked out inadvertently.

Greene noted further that “the issue here is not whether, but when, the press will have access to President Reagan’s testimony” once the deposition is taken and the tapes are edited.

The Justice Department and special prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh had urged that the tapes be kept private until Poindexter’s March 5 trial. Attorneys for Reagan had urged that the tapes themselves never be made available for television broadcast but be released only in the form of written transcripts.

But Greene noted that Poindexter has, through defense attorneys, urged wide public access to Reagan’s testimony, and has thereby apparently waived any claim that advance publicity arising from that testimony could damage his right to a fair trial. With Poindexter taking that position, Greene wrote, “there would appear to be no legitimate legal obstacle to early access of the public to the videotaped testimony.”

In its filing Thursday regarding Reagan’s diaries, the Justice Department said it was responding to Greene’s earlier observation that Reagan’s claim of executive privilege “is given less weight if it is not supported by the current President.”

A statement of support was formally filed Thursday, but the Justice Department’s full legal argument for asserting executive privilege, on behalf of President Bush as well as former President Reagan, is not due until next week.

But Justice Department lawyers gave a clear preview of their reasoning. Executive privilege, they said, applies to “a President’s diary entries covering the conduct of official business during his tenure as chief executive,” and Poindexter has given no good reason to waive that privilege.

They added: “The balance that must be struck between the interests of the executive and that of the defendant shifts strongly toward the executive when the information sought by the defendant is available from other sources, most specifically from the oral testimony of the former President himself.”

This point, they said, is even more markedly the case “when all or almost all information in the diary entries is already in the public domain.”

The news organizations seeking access to Reagan’s taping session were the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, the Associated Press, Dow Jones & Co., National Public Radio, Gannett News Service and USA Today.