Key Democrats Still Undecided on Gates : Intelligence: CIA confirmation hearings end with an extraordinary defense of nominee by Sen. Boren. Republicans say vote will be close.

CIA Director-designate Robert M. Gates concluded three weeks of dramatic and sometimes sensational confirmation hearings Friday by appealing to a sharply divided Senate panel to “return me once again to the agency I love.”

But despite an extraordinary defense of the embattled nominee by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.), some key Democrats on the 15-member panel said that they still were undecided about Gates’ suitability to be director of central intelligence.

Confident that damaging allegations of intelligence-slanting have been at least partly countered, Republicans predicted that the committee would vote to recommend confirmation when it meets again on Oct. 18. But some GOP strategists conceded that it could be a very close vote that would set the stage for another uphill fight on the Senate floor next month.

Indeed, Gates’ support among undecided Democrats appeared to be slipping, with Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) disclosing that he is troubled by new questions that could cause him to vote against Gates. Up until the final day of the hearings, Cranston had been describing himself as “leaning toward” Gates.

The two most critical votes, however, are expected to be those cast by Boren and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), not only in terms of affecting the committee’s decision but in shaping debate on the Senate floor, where their judgments are likely to carry great weight with fellow Democrats.

Although both men said that they remain undecided, Boren may have helped save the nomination by departing from his referee’s role at the close of the hearings to praise Gates. He described the embattled nominee as the one person in the intelligence community who had tried the hardest in recent years to respect congressional oversight by keeping the committee informed of covert activities conducted by the CIA.

After noting that Gates’ defense of congressional oversight sometimes brought him into direct conflict with President Bush, Boren said that there “was no single person in the intelligence community, without exception, who supported the efforts of this committee to get access to information and to have truthful reporting” more than Gates.

Boren conceded that he believes Gates had made “some mistakes,” especially in not following up the “hints and bits and pieces of information” he received in 1986, when he was deputy director of the CIA, that profits from secret arms sales to Iran were being illegally diverted to the rebels in Nicaragua.

“He must have had suspicions. What he didn’t do was follow up. He didn’t dig,” Boren told reporters after the hearings.

But he roundly praised Gates’ cooperation with the committee in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair. Boren said that Gates had fought the Administration to open up the CIA’s secret bank accounts to congressional audit, to establish an independently appointed inspector general for the CIA and, on more than one occasion, to “take on . . . President Bush and some of his preconceived notions” about intelligence oversight.

“I don’t care who the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency is--I want someone there who is not only not going to be hostile to the oversight process but who believes in the oversight process,” Boren said.

Boren’s strong praise delighted Republicans, who have had to fight hard to save the nomination in the wake of damaging allegations that Gates slanted intelligence reports to please the anti-Soviet biases of the Ronald Reagan Administration.

“It comes at a very critical time,” said Sen. John W. Warner of Virgina, the committee’s second-ranking Republican.

Knowledgeable sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Boren took the unusual step of moving outside his role as chairman of the committee to speak as a witness for Gates at the behest of some of the nominee’s friends. Those supporters, in the words of one source, were “concerned about the erosion” of committee support for Gates after Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) announced on Thursday that he would vote against him.

Boren’s apparent willingness to respond to the approaches reflects the respect that Gates managed to forge during his tenure as a high CIA and National Security Council official. His frequent trips to Capitol Hill to brief Boren about sensitive intelligence operations “clearly paid dividends this morning,” one government official said.

Two other Democrats on the committee, Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio, are expected to vote against Gates, and a third member of the panel, Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), is known to be leaning heavily against him.

Cranston said that a fourth Democrat confessed to him that he is so deeply split over the conflicting testimony that he felt “like flipping a coin” to decide which way he would vote. Cranston did not identify the Democrat, but he is believed to be John Glenn of Ohio, who said Thursday that he wished the witnesses who have appeared over the last three weeks could all be given lie detector tests so “we can find out what’s going on.”

Administration officials and others close to Gates said Friday that they were all but certain that Boren would vote in favor of confirmation and predicted that, at worst, Gates would be approved by a 9-6 margin. But they remained concerned about Nunn, whose opposition could play a crucial role in turning other Democrats against Gates in what could be a hotly contested floor fight.

Boren stressed that, in praising Gates, he was not “advocating” his confirmation to the rest of the panel but merely “setting straight” one aspect of his record that had not received much attention but should be “weighed by the committee along with everything else.”

Boren’s praise for Gates’ openness with the panel, first as deputy to CIA Director William H. Webster and then in his present job as White House deputy national security adviser, underscored the concern of committee members that top CIA officials provide them with the information they need.

Although Gates’ nomination had been clouded from the outset by doubts about his knowledge of the Iran-Contra affair, most members appeared willing to overlook that issue in return for his assurances that he would continue to cooperate with the committee.

Cranston, who until Thursday had said that he was inclined to vote for Gates, said Friday that he was deeply troubled by disclosures that in 1986 the CIA circulated within the government intelligence information on House and Senate members and their staffs in connection with contacts they had had with officials of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. After a closed session Friday, however, Boren said there was no evidence that Gates had been involved in the intelligence gathering.

In his concluding testimony Friday, Gates defended his record and made a final appeal for support. “I hope that this committee and the whole Senate will see fit to return me once again to the agency I love and to which I dedicated my life a long time ago,” he said.

Staff writers Paul Houston, Douglas Jehl and Sara Fritz contributed to this story.