CIA Nominee’s Hearings Are Again Delayed

Anthony Lake’s nomination as CIA director suffered a major setback Tuesday when Senate Republicans delayed his confirmation hearings again.

The senators voiced concerns about yet another issue: previously undisclosed contacts between a senior member of his National Security Council staff and a Thai businesswoman enmeshed in the Democratic campaign donations scandal.

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, delayed Lake’s hearings two more weeks, until March 11.

Shelby complained that Lake has failed to answer 25 detailed questions about a range of sensitive subjects. Included among them is the committee’s request for an explanation of three meetings between Pauline Kanchanalak, a lobbyist for Thai interests and formerly a major Democratic Party contributor, and Sandy Kristoff, a top Asian specialist on the NSC.

The delay, the second two-week postponement, is another strong signal of Republican displeasure with Lake’s nomination, and it came as a surprise to the White House.

The White House responded by stepping up its pro-Lake campaign Tuesday. President Clinton talked personally with Shelby about the Lake nomination for the first time, urging confirmation, the White House said.

Administration officials had thought Lake’s prospects brightened after Friday’s announcement by the Justice Department that it had cleared Lake of any potential charges stemming from his personal stock dealings and his testimony to Congress about his role in Clinton’s 1994 decision to give a green light to Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia.

Lake agreed to pay $5,000 to settle the probe into whether his failure to promptly sell energy stocks was in violation of federal conflict-of-interest laws. The Justice Department concluded Lake’s error was inadvertent.

But Shelby indicated that he was dissatisfied with the two Justice Department investigations, and that his committee was continuing to look into Lake’s stock dealings and his role in Iran-Bosnia. “While the Justice Department’s report issued last Friday will certainly be considered, it raises as many questions as it purported to answer, and was not as satisfactory as I had hoped,” Shelby said.

“I continue to find Mr. Lake’s nomination to be director of central intelligence troubling,” Shelby added in a detailed statement. The statement listed a wide range of unresolved issues related to Lake’s four-year tenure as national security advisor.

As the administration stepped up pressure on the Senate, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry told reporters that further delays could hurt Clinton’s ability to gear up his “very ambitious and active foreign-policy schedule in the coming weeks and months.”

Clinton will need “a strong and effective director of central intelligence, who can help prepare the information and analysis that’s necessary for good policy-making,” McCurry said.

Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, also criticized Shelby, saying the delay was “at best, premature. At worst, it risks turning a position that is extremely important to the nation’s safety into a political football.”

A spokeswoman for Shelby downplayed the significance of the phone conversation between Clinton and Shelby, and suggested that Shelby does not believe Clinton has mounted a vigorous effort to save the nomination.

She said that the two connected by phone only because Shelby was trying to track down Kerrey to inform him of the delay in the hearings. When Kerrey called him back from Capitol Hill, Clinton was with him and got on the line.

But Clinton and Shelby “spent more time talking about other things besides the Lake nomination,” the spokeswoman said. The president “has not placed any separate calls [to Shelby] about this nomination that I am aware of, outside this little contact today.”

Kanchanalak’s meetings with Kristoff are an issue because last November, the DNC returned $253,500 in contributions that Kanchanalak made after The Times reported the money came from another source.

At the first meeting on April 7, 1993, the two discussed issues related to the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference, while in the other two meetings--June 27 and Aug. 20, 1996--they discussed the U.S.-Thai Business Council, the White House said.

In 1994, Kanchanalak helped form the U.S.-Thai Business Council, designed to promote business ties between the two countries. At the time she and her husband also ran Ban Chang International, a consulting firm that represents U.S. companies seeking business in Thailand.

In September 1994, Kanchanalak telephoned John Huang at the Commerce Department. That same day, Huang--now a central figure in the fund-raising scandal--wrote a memo urging a senior Commerce Department official to support the establishment of the business council, and to try to get Clinton to attend the first meeting.

Huang noted in the memo that NSC officials like Kristoff might object to involving the administration in promoting the council.

Initially, the NSC staff wanted to scrap a planned meeting between Clinton and the Thai prime minister, as well as a White House reception for the business council, Kanchanalak told The Times in a telephone interview from Bangkok last November.

But Kanchanalak said her relationship with Kristoff may have helped overcome opposition to creating the business council. “I knew Sandy Kristoff . . . “ Kanchanalak said. “She knew I was honest. That’s one thing that probably saved me.”

Ultimately, the council was established, and at its first meeting at the White House, Clinton and Thailand’s prime minister stopped in to congratulate the group. Clinton’s tacit endorsement of the council gave it extra clout in Thailand.

The White House said Tuesday that while Kanchanalak met with Kristoff, the NSC’s top Asia specialist, she never met with Lake.

A White House spokesman added that Lake never attended any of the controversial White House coffee klatches with large campaign contributors that are now at the heart of the fund-raising controversy.