The ‘Independent’ Counsel Isn’t

Here’s how it works. You are a former official on trial for Iran-Contra crimes. You claim that government documents prove your innocence. The Administration refuses to release the documents. The judge then dismisses the case against you because you have been prevented from defending yourself.

That’s how it worked in October, 1990, when then-Atty. Gen. Richard L. Thornburgh refused to release documents requested by former CIA station chief Joseph F. Fernandez.

When the case against Fernandez--accused of gunrunning for the Nicaraguan Contras--was dismissed because of Thornburgh’s stonewalling, Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh said, “No matter how the Administration rationalizes the non-production of this (classified CIA) information, it shows a lack of concern for applying the rule of law to officers of the intelligence community.”

President Bush, like his predecessor, has been embarrassed by nothing so deeply as by the Iran-Contra scandal. How much confidence can the American public have that his appointees are not withholding information for political rather than security reasons?

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, properly furious, took aim at the anonymous interagency panel that is stonewalling requests by Clair E. George, the former No. 3 official in the CIA, who is accused of perjury, among other things. The panel, appallingly, has refused to release to George material already cleared for use by others. How can the release of the same information both be and not be a national security risk?

Iran-Contra is not a witch hunt. Seven guilty pleas plus three upheld convictions prove the opposite. And note well: The convictions of Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter were overturned not because the judges said the two were innocent but because the key disclosures came first before Congress and under a grant of immunity.

The real scandal within this scandal is the sham of calling Lawrence Walsh an “independent counsel” when, all too clearly, his independence stops where the determination of the Justice Department to withhold evidence begins. The cover-up continues, and we fully share Judge Lamberth’s outrage.