Immunity Thwarts Prosecutions, Walsh Complains

Any immunity granted to potential targets of the Iran-Contra cover-up investigation would eliminate chances of prosecuting them, independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh told The Times Wednesday.

Lawyers for a former and a present CIA official implicated in Walsh’s inquiry have said that without immunity they will not testify at Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of White House national security aide Robert M. Gates to be director of central intelligence.

Last week’s guilty plea by Alan D. Fiers, the CIA’s former Central American Task Force chief, to charges of withholding information from Congress about the diversion to Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista rebels of profits from arms sales to Iran confirmed prosecutors’ hypothesis of a cover-up by some CIA officials, Walsh said.

And--although there has been no evidence that Gates was involved in a cover-up while he served as the agency’s No. 2 official--the Senate Intelligence Committee has voted to delay his confirmation hearings until Sept. 16 in the hope that Walsh can complete his investigation by then. The present focus of that inquiry is to determine which CIA officials were involved in the cover-up.

The independent counsel said that he is pleased by the Intelligence Committee delay. “Two months is a lot better than two weeks,” Walsh said. But he said that there is little prospect of winding up his complex inquiry by mid-September.

Walsh expressed satisfaction that the conviction of Fiers has allowed prosecutors to “leapfrog the obstacles” that he said intelligence agencies had created for his investigation.

He indicated that he expects further attempts to derail his inquiry as he follows leads to other former or present CIA officials implicated by Fiers and by other evidence. But he refused to discuss his concerns, saying only that he would not shy away from a “public confrontation” if intelligence agencies seek to block prosecution by objecting to the disclosure of sensitive information.

On the question of immunity, Walsh cited “the present state of the law,” declaring that “anyone who grants immunity would have to assume it is destroying a prosecution.”

He was referring to the Supreme Court’s refusal in May to review an appellate court decision overturning the Iran-Contra convictions of Oliver L. North--a ruling that hinged on North’s having given congressional testimony under a grant of immunity in July, 1987.

“There’s no realistic way that I can think of (of) taking additional precautions beyond those we took” to keep North’s immunized testimony from affecting his later court trial, Walsh said.

Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has not ruled out giving immunity to Clair E. George, former head of CIA covert operations, and Jerry Gruner, Fiers’ immediate superior in 1986, who is now a CIA station chief in Europe.

Fiers has said that he told both men by late summer of 1986 that profits from the Iran arms sale were being used to aid the Nicaraguan rebels.

The testimony of the two men could be important, because Gates has said that he did not know of the diversion, even though, as deputy CIA director, he was George’s superior and even though his superior, the late William J. Casey, who was CIA director, also took part in the diversion.

Boren has said only that the committee wants to question the two men after the Gates hearings are resumed. But they could cite the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination and refuse to testify without immunity.

Although Walsh clearly suspects that other high CIA officials took part in the cover-up that allegedly began in 1986, he said that he does not believe the CIA as an institution participated in the scheme.

“I don’t think you can look at the CIA as an institution in that sense,” Walsh said. “I think there are people over there who do one kind of activity and people who do another kind.” He would not elaborate.

Walsh, who predicted last fall that his investigation would be over by last spring, refused to make any further estimates on how long it will take. He said also that he has not considered the possibility that his final report could have an impact on next year’s presidential election.

The report is expected to review in detail his office’s investigative successes and failures and to discuss obstacles that hampered the inquiry.