Panel Calls for Perjury Probe of Clinton Aides

A Republican-controlled House panel Thursday asked the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation of Clinton administration diplomats that it said may have lied under oath about a secret U.S. policy to allow Iranian arms to be shipped to Bosnia.

The House International Relations select subcommittee on Bosnian arms, issuing its final report on the matter, said that officials gave conflicting testimony on the administration decision in 1994 to stop enforcing the arms embargo on Bosnia and on what subsequent signals were given to the governments involved.

The committee identified Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, as the chief subject of suspicion.

Democratic members dismissed the panel’s action as purely partisan and timed to coincide with the homestretch of the presidential campaign.

“We have looked at the facts. We have reviewed the evidence. It is our belief that no laws were broken, no wrongdoing occurred, no covert actions took place, no false statements given, no U.S. interests harmed,” said panel Democrats Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana, Howard L. Berman of Panorama City, Calif., and Alcee L. Hastings of Florida in a joint statement.

John Russell, a Justice Department spokesman, said that federal prosecutors will examine the panel’s allegations to determine whether perjury charges are warranted.

“We will take a look at it to see if there is any violation of law,” he said. “It will probably go to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.” Russell added that, while the Justice Department often gets such criminal referrals from congressional leaders, “we don’t have that many perjury prosecutions.”

The panel’s inquiry focused on events that unfolded in mid-1994 after the Croatian government secretly proposed allowing Iranian arms to flow across its border to the Bosnian Muslim forces, who were then badly outgunned by rival Serbian troops in a civil war.

The Croatians asked whether the Clinton administration, which was honoring the United Nations arms embargo for the region, would protest. Sympathetic to the Muslims’ plight, Galbraith told the Croatians that he would have “no instructions” on the matter--meaning that the United States would not object. Secret weapons shipments took place over the next year.

Republican members of the panel, denouncing the increased Iranian role in Bosnia that the shipments allowed, have questioned whether Galbraith and other diplomats went too far in the arms operation and actually encouraged and expedited the shipments. Administration officials have contended that they did not actively participate, so no formal notification of a U.S. “covert action” for the operation was needed.

The panel charged specifically that Galbraith’s account of his communications with his Washington superiors and Croatia conflicts with that given by National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, Deputy National Security Advisor Samuel “Sandy” Berger, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and U.S. diplomat Jenone Walker.

Further, it said that Galbraith’s testimony and that of Charles Redman, another diplomat involved in the Croatian discussions, “is not supported by evidence uncovered through this investigation.”

The panel did not elaborate, noting that much of the evidence is classified. However, it did accuse Galbraith of exceeding his State Department instructions in an episode in 1995 in which he allegedly intervened to free an Iranian missile shipment that had been delayed by a Croatian inspection at the Bosnian border. Congressional sources said the committee discovered that Galbraith kept a journal that provides details of some of his actions but complained that the administration has sought to keep parts of it classified.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the subcommittee, said that it could not determine beyond doubt who was telling the truth about the secret communications and wants the Justice Department to decide.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns dismissed the allegations, saying that the administration’s Bosnia diplomacy succeeded in ending the fighting in Bosnia and that “I don’t think the public servants ought to be subjected to grandstanding.” The accusations about events in 1994 and 1995 are “being raised in October 1996,” before the presidential ballot. “I don’t believe that’s a coincidence.”