CIA, NSA Surveillance of Lawmakers, Aides Detailed : Intelligence: Senate panel told that talks with Sandinista officials were monitored and distributed within government. Gates is cleared of impropriety.

The State Department, Pentagon and CIA made 11 requests to the National Security Agency for intercepted conversations between members of Congress and Nicaraguan officials in 1986 and 1987, when debate raged over U.S. aid to that nation’s rebels, the Senate Intelligence Committee was told Friday.

At the same time, the CIA distributed within the government about 80 pieces of intelligence data on three House members, two senators and three congressional aides, the committee was informed.

The details were presented at a closed briefing prompted by testimony last month during the committee’s hearings into the nomination of Robert M. Gates to be CIA director.

Former CIA official Alan D. Fiers Jr. testified that the agency regularly intercepted conversations between congressional Democrats and officials of the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

After Friday’s briefing by intelligence officials, committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.) told reporters that there is no evidence that Gates, who was deputy CIA director at the time, had participated either in requests for surveillance data or in dissemination that was improper.

On two occasions, he said, Gates had properly turned over data requested by a congressional panel investigating the Iran-Contra scandal.

Boren would not disclose the names of those monitored, but it has been reported that three congressional Democrats who opposed aid to the Contras--former House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas, Rep. David E. Bonior of Michigan and former Rep. Michael D. Barnes of Maryland--were monitored in the 1980s.

Boren said that it had been established that lawmakers or their aides were inadvertently monitored as part of a properly authorized intelligence-gathering operation, apparently focused on Sandinista political leaders.

He said that there was no indication that any lawmaker or aide had been overheard disclosing classified information damaging to national security.

“There was nothing illegal, improper or really embarrassing,” he said.

Boren said that the committee had found only one set of data that was distributed improperly. Ironically, he added, “the information was the most harmless in all the files.”

The panel found also that former CIA Director William J. Casey had intended to improperly distribute some unspecified materials but may not have done so, Boren said.

The senator said that his committee will continue investigating who at the State and Defense departments requested information on lawmakers and why.

The one CIA request, he said, was by the agency’s counterintelligence division and turned up nothing improper. Based on testimony by CIA witnesses and Gates himself, it was determined that Gates had not been involved in this request, Boren said.