Shaken Senate Panel Delays Hearings on CIA Nominee : Iran-Contra: Senators want to study new evidence of more agency complicity in cover-up of aid to rebels.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, shaken by evidence that more senior CIA officials may have been involved in the Iran-Contra cover-up, Thursday postponed confirmation hearings for Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s nominee for director of central intelligence.

Despite White House pressure to move quickly on the nomination, the committee chairman, Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), said the senators cannot act on Gates’ nomination until they get answers to new questions arising from the latest disclosures about CIA complicity in the diversion of Iran arms sales profits to the anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua.

Boren said the committee particularly wants to question Alan D. Fiers, a former CIA official who admitted in federal court this week that he had told his superiors about the illegal diversion months before it became public on Nov. 25, 1986. Other witnesses whom the committee intends to call include former CIA officials Richard Kerr and Clair George, Gates’ former deputy at the CIA.

It was not clear whether the testimony could be obtained without placing Gates’ nomination in an extended--and potentially precarious--form of limbo. Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel handling the Iran-Contra criminal prosecutions, said he would object to offering immunity or other arrangements that would complicate future prosecution of key figures.

“Our investigation has now reached a point of significant breakthrough,” Walsh told The Times. “To jeopardize this progress in a vain hope of getting quick facts as to an individual nomination would be regrettable.”

In a related development, the New York Times reported in its editions today that the Iran-Contra prosecutor had acquired tapes of hundreds of phone conversations between CIA headquarters and agents in Central America and was using them in pursuing possible charges against agency officials.

The taping system was installed in the 1980s to provide a permanent record of the instructions issued by officials about agency operations, the newspaper said. It said taped conversations provided the corroborating evidence that helped Walsh obtain the plea bargain from Fiers this week.

A source told the Los Angeles Times that the independent counsel’s office does have tapes and transcripts of some CIA conversations but that they did not play a decisive role in the Fiers case.

“There is no magic bullet here” in getting conclusive evidence against possible CIA defendants in the Iran-Contra probe, the source said.

Boren said that the committee will spend the next several days seeking to question Fiers, George and “a number of other people” about the knowledge Gates may have had about the scandal that rocked the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

The senator, who still hopes to begin the confirmation process before Congress’ August recess, indicated that the committee will meet again early next week to review its findings and decide how to proceed.

The hearings on whether to confirm Gates, who withdrew his nomination as CIA director once before because of questions about the Iran-Contra affair, had been expected to start on Monday. But Boren said in a statement announcing the delay that the committee could not proceed with the hearings until all the questions raised by the Fiers confession had been cleared up.

Although he stressed that the decision to delay the hearings should not be interpreted as a sign of a “negative attitude” toward Gates, congressional sources acknowledged that support for Bush’s nominee is slipping, with even some Republicans now privately entertaining doubts about his nomination.

Gates can still be confirmed, one source said, if Fiers, George and the other new witnesses are cooperative and no further evidence is unearthed to link Gates to the Iran-Contra scandal. However, if the witnesses refuse to testify voluntarily, the hearings could be delayed indefinitely, making confirmation much less likely.

Gates, now deputy national security adviser, was serving as CIA Director William J. Casey’s top assistant during much of the period in which the United States was covertly aiding the Nicaraguan Contras.

He has insisted that he had no certain knowledge of the illegal operation being run by National Security Council official Oliver L. North until it was disclosed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese II on Nov. 25, 1986. He said he purposely did not follow up earlier “flimsy” indications that something was amiss because he did not want to involve himself in what he suspected might be an illegal activity.

But Fiers, who has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges and is now cooperating with investigators, told Iran-Contra prosecutors that he knew of the diversion earlier and told at least two other top CIA officials. He said George, then the CIA’s director of operations, was one of the people who knew about the diversion.

Boren refused to say whether the committee will seek to subpoena testimony from or to obtain limited immunity for those who do not come forth voluntarily. He added that he has been in touch with Walsh and that Walsh was doing “as much as he appropriately can under grand jury guidelines” to cooperate with the committee.

However, Walsh said in his interview with The Times that giving immunity to anyone besides Fiers, who has already entered his plea, could frustrate further prosecution.

He cautioned against any expectations that the questions raised by Fiers’ testimony can be resolved quickly.

“There is no way in which the . . . investigation as to the cover-up in the CIA can be completed within a few days or a few weeks,” Walsh said.

Walsh drew a sharp distinction between the Gates confirmation hearings and the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987. At that time, “there was the potential of presidential impeachment, however remote.” He said that that required swift movement on the hearings, even at the risk of frustrating prosecutions.

“Here, we don’t have that kind of compulsion . . . . There is significantly less justification for frustrating a prosecution,” he said.

The immunity provided for North’s testimony before Congress has been cited by a federal appeals court in overturning his conviction and ordering new hearings.

Walsh acknowledged that he would have no way to stop the Senate committee from granting immunity to witnesses in the Gates’ hearing. But he could delay it for a month, because Congress is required to give 10 days’ notice before immunizing a witness, and Walsh could obtain an automatic stay of 20 days after that.

A CIA spokesman, asked about the postponement of the confirmation hearing, said he was “confident it will move forward.”

But other CIA sources were less optimistic. “Looks like it may be down the tubes,” said one official at the agency, adding quickly that his judgment was based only on what he was reading in the newspapers.

Republicans rallying to Gates’ defense noted that nothing in the Fiers testimony has so far implicated the 47-year-old career intelligence officer in the Iran-Contra scandal.

“No evidence has yet been brought to my attention that shows a connection between Gates and Iran-Contra,” Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), the committee’s ranking Republican member, said.

President Bush bristled at word of the delay, telling reporters at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me., that “they ought to get on with the confirmation.”

To suggestions that Gates may not be telling all he knows about Iran-Contra, Bush said, “I believe firmly in Bob Gates’ word, and he’s a man of total honor and he should be confirmed as director of central intelligence.”

“I don’t think this nomination is in trouble, and I don’t believe it should be delayed,” added Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, who summoned Republican members of the Intelligence Committee to his office Thursday morning to discuss the nomination.

Gates found himself in a similar position in 1987, when he was first nominated to head the CIA. Then, as now, his nomination at first appeared assured. But he withdrew from consideration when questions about his role in the then-unfolding Iran-Contra affair began to surface. Now, with Fiers’ admissions, Gates must convince skeptical lawmakers that he did not share in a knowledge that several agency officials, both immediately below and above him, apparently had about the illegal diversion of funds to the Contras.