All Iran-Contra Findings Likely to Be Disclosed

The final report by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh on the Iran-Contra scandal soon will be made public with few if any deletions, a federal appeals court said Friday.

“The court not only considers it appropriate but in the public interest that as full a disclosure as possible be made of the final report of the independent counsel,” the special three-judge panel said.

“The possibility exists,” the court added, that federal law or court rules “may require limited deletions.” But, the panel said: “We anticipate that these deletions, if any, will be minor.”

Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive, one of three groups that asked the court to release the report uncensored, praised the decision.

“The public is finally going to have access to the full story of the Iran-Contra operation, access that has been denied by repeated efforts to obstruct and distort the record,” he said.

Without specifying a date, the court said it will release the massive report in “some short period of time.”

Friday was the deadline set by the court for lawyers representing former President Ronald Reagan to respond to findings by Walsh, whose office spent $35 million investigating the scandal after it was revealed in 1986.

The appeals court said that any further delay in releasing the report would be to allow for compiling the responses into an appendix to be made public along with Walsh’s findings.

The report has been kept secret since Walsh finished it in August.

The special panel of three appellate judges, which appointed Walsh seven years ago, had the authority under the Ethics in Government Act to suppress all or part of the final report.

The scandal involved the sale of weapons to Iran to obtain the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East, and the diversion of the profits by former White House aide Oliver L. North to buy arms for Nicaraguan Contras when U.S. military assistance to them was barred by law.