Ex-CIA Official Denied Classified Documents for Iran-Contra Trial

A federal judge Thursday rejected a request by former high-ranking CIA official Clair E. George for millions of documents to defend himself against Iran-Contra charges, saying that George wanted “to search for a needle in a haystack of the country’s most classified secrets.”

George failed to give “the slightest indication of what the needle might be and how it might be material to his defense,” U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said.

The ruling, handed down Tuesday, was kept secret until Thursday so security experts could remove classified information from it.

Lamberth, appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan, said that George was trying “to turn an Iran-Contra case into a three-ring circus involving all of the CIA’s covert activities throughout the world.”

“Such an absurdly overbroad request for documents admittedly not related to Iran-Contra in any way is nothing less than an attempt to put all of the CIA’s activities on trial. . . . “ Lamberth said.

The ruling represented a significant victory for prosecutors. But potential difficulties over the disclosure of secret evidence involving the ex-CIA covert operations director still cast a cloud over the case because of documents that George previously had obtained.

George, who was third in command at the CIA from 1984 to 1987, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he perjured himself, obstructed investigations and made false statements to cover up the Iran-Contra scandal--the Reagan Administration’s covert plan to sell weapons to Iran and use profits to arm Nicaraguan rebels.