Ex-CIA Aide Denied Papers for Trial : Iran-Contra: The judge says that, in requesting millions of documents, defendant Clair George wanted ‘to search for a needle in a haystack of the country’s most classified secrets.’

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 that security experts could remove classified information from it.

Lamberth, appointed to the bench by former President 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 highly secret evidence involving the former 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 the profits to arm Nicaraguan rebels.

Lamberth expressed “frustration” that--despite several months of negotiation between Richard A. Hibey, George’s lawyer, and lawyers for independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh--the defendant “continues to seek literally millions of documents not related to the Iran-Contra affair in any way.”

George’s justification for seeking the documents is that they will help him explain his role as deputy director of operations, the judge noted. He said that George might delve into the day-to-day tasks of his job as the CIA’s deputy director for operations, including the type and volume of information that crossed his desk.

“But he certainly does not require documents containing the most highly classified information in the United States to do so,” Lamberth said.

The judge was particularly critical of George’s request for all “presidential findings”--documents setting forth approval of CIA covert operations--when he was deputy director for operations. In addition, George sought all documents for the planning group meetings that considered the presidential findings and all CIA cable traffic on the findings.

“The logic of (George’s) request would make everything about the defendant’s life--from the traffic he faced in the morning every day while he was DDO to what he had for dinner every night for four years--material to his defense because it describes the context in which he worked and things which might have occupied his mind,” the judge said.

“The documents include some of the country’s most sensitive secrets (and the) defendant would saddle the government with the production of over 1 million cables,” Lamberth said.