Panel Delays Hearings on CIA Nominee

WASHINGTON —  The Senate Intelligence Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to delay until mid-September confirmation hearings for Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s embattled nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, while it seeks to learn more about the CIA role in the cover-up of the Iran-Contra scandal.

Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), the panel’s chairman, said that, in the meantime, he will seek immunity for one former CIA official, Alan D. Fiers, and probably subpoena several others who are targets of the Iran-Contra investigation of independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh.

The chairman identified two of those the committee plans to subpoena as Clair E. George, the former head of the CIA’s covert operations division and Gates’ immediate subordinate; and Jerry Gruner, a current CIA officer who directed the agency’s Latin American division at the time profits from the secret sale of weapons to Iran were being illegally diverted to the rebels in Nicaragua.

Boren and Sen. Frank H. Murkowski of Alaska, the committee’s Republican vice chairman, said that the decision to delay the hearings was taken unanimously and with the concurrence of both the White House and Gates, who met with the two senators in Boren’s Senate office late Monday night.

But, despite the gloss of bipartisanship on the decision, it appeared to be a major blow to Bush.

He has been pressing hard for Gates’ early confirmation and has made no secret of his impatience with the committee’s reluctance to open the hearings before the monthlong congressional recess that begins Aug. 5.

Although the senators portrayed the delay as procedural--stressing that it did not reflect any doubts the committee may have about Gates’ suitability to be CIA director--the Administration’s concurrence in the decision was seen as a tacit admission by the White House that the nomination is in trouble.

Murkowski strongly denied that the nomination is in jeopardy, saying that the delay would give the committee time to acquire the information it needs to lay to rest all “the dark rumors” about Gates’ alleged role in the Iran-Contra cover-up. “This nomination is not in trouble,” he declared. “It is still on track.”

However, Gates’ supporters on the committee conceded that the delay means that his confirmation will be pushed back until sometime in the fall, at the earliest.

Boren said the committee will formally convene the hearings on Sept. 16. The date was chosen in part to give Walsh enough time to complete his questioning of Fiers and his investigation of George and the other former and currently serving CIA officials that the committee wants to interview.

Confronted with mounting indications that more senior CIA officials knew about the diversion to Nicaragua’s rebels of funds from the sales of arms to Iran long before it became public, even some of the Republican members of the committee are reluctant to confirm Gates until the results of Walsh’s investigation become known.

“Ongoing legal procedures have made it impossible for the committee to get all the information it needs at this time,” according to a joint statement issued by Boren and Murkowski. “(The delay) is also a reflection of the committee’s desire to avoid . . . interference with the work of the independent counsel.”

After intensive consultations with the White House and two phone calls to London, where Bush is attending an economic summit, Boren offered the Administration the choice of waiting until September or beginning the hearings now, to give Gates a chance to testify, and then recessing them until next month, when Fiers and the other witnesses can be called.

Faced with that choice, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater told reporters in London, the President decided to wait.

Walsh, whom Boren consulted before setting a date for the hearings, called the delay “helpful.” However, sources familiar with Walsh’s investigation said that the Sept. 16 timetable could still be a problem if the committee decides to give immunity to anybody besides Fiers, formerly head of the CIA’s Central American task force.

Last week, Fiers pleaded guilty in federal court to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress. Walsh said that Fiers and other senior CIA officials knew of the diversion months before it became public in November, 1986.

Boren said that Fiers is willing to appear before the committee if he receives immunity from prosecution, which the senator said would be granted within the next 30 days.

But he indicated that the committee is reluctant to give immunity to George or Gruner, two of the three other officials Fiers named as having known about key parts of the Iran-Contra scandal. Attorneys for both men have told the Intelligence Committee that they would not testify without receiving immunity, sources close to the inquiry said.

George, who retired from the CIA in 1987, testified during the Iran-Contra hearings that he knew nothing about the scandal until it was publicly disclosed by then-Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

Gruner, Fiers’ immediate superior at the time, is now a CIA station chief in Europe. His name had not been publicly disclosed in connection with the scandal until Boren identified him Tuesday as one of the officials who have refused to testify before the committee unless they receive immunity.

Notes and calender entries by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the former National Security Council aide who ran the Iran-Contra diversion, show that he was in contact with Gruner during 1986. Gruner was also identified--although not by name--in the statement that prosecutors introduced with Fiers’ guilty plea in court last week.

According to that statement, North told Fiers by late summer of 1986 that the United States was selling arms to Iran and using proceeds from the sales to aid the Contras. Fiers in turn reported that to Gruner, who told him to tell George, the statement said.

But William G. Hundley, Gruner’s attorney, said that his client is “sure it was not late summer of 1986” that Fiers told him of North’s comment. Instead, Gruner has told Hundley that it “happened when everything was unraveling,” with the disclosures that followed the Oct. 5, 1986, shooting down of a Contra resupply plane in Nicaragua.

But even if Gruner’s timetable turns out to be correct, it would not let George off the legal hook, because Fiers contends that George directed him to withhold critical information from the House Intelligence Committee about the downing of the plane.

Although making it clear that the Intelligence Committee could not proceed with the hearings until it talks to the three men, Boren and Murkowski stressed that nothing the committee has uncovered so far links Gates to the cover-up.