Ex-Bush Aide on Poindexter Panel

Fifteen people, including a lawyer who worked for the Bush presidential campaign, were chosen prospective jurors today as the selection process began for the Iran-Contra trial of former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter.

Poindexter is charged with five felony counts--one of conspiracy, two of obstructing Congress and two of making false statements to congressional committees--in connection with accusations that he covered up Oliver L. North’s secret Contra resupply network and lied about a 1985 shipment of Hawk missiles to Iran.

He is the highest-ranking Reagan Administration official to go on trial in the Iran-Contra affair.

U.S. District Judge Harold Greene disqualified one woman who expressed uncertainty when asked whether she could be fair and impartial. The judge also disqualified an equipment operator who said that “when the whole thing was going down” following public disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair, “all you heard was North and Poindexter.” Thirteen of the first 15 in the pool were women.

A total of 206 people have filled out questionnaires to be possible jurors for the trial, and 76 of them have said they had heard, watched or read portions of congressional testimony Poindexter gave in 1987 under a grant of immunity from prosecution based on what he said.

The judge approved for the jury pool a real estate lawyer who worked in President Bush’s campaign as part of a group doing background reviews of potential vice presidential candidates. Bush was President Reagan’s vice president at the time.

The woman also said one of Poindexter’s defense lawyers, Joseph Small, had baby-sat for her when she was a child.

Iran-Contra Prosecutor Dan Webb questioned whether she should be in the jury pool since she knew one of the defense lawyers.

“Just because counsel baby-sat for her doesn’t cast any doubt on her,” Greene said.

The woman also said a brother-in-law has worked for former Virginia Govs. Charles Robb and Gerald Baliles, both Democrats. Robb is now a U.S. senator.

Also accepted for the jury pool: a clerical worker who said under questioning that she knew former Poindexter aide North “was on trial” in the past and that he had been fined and was performing community service.

“It was a big to-do in D.C.,” the woman said

A jury of 12 people and six alternates will be selected from a pool of residents from the District of Columbia. Greene is expected to build a pool of several dozen prospective jurors from which to select a jury.

Most of those questioned said they knew little about the Iran-Contra affair.

A retired cook, who said she had worked for seven lawyers in the 1950s, said she had heard nothing of Poindexter’s or North’s testimony to Congress.