Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/101992/1019992.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 2KB | 38 lines

                                                                                THE WEEK, Page 19

NATION

Oh, Those Documents


The CIA admits misleading prosecutors in the Iraqgate affair


    The timing could not have been worse for the Bush campaign.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is burrowing into the
possibility that the CIA and the Justice Department collaborated
to mislead prosecutors looking into the Banca Nazionale del
Lavoro's illicit loans to Iraq. Blaming an "honest mistake," CIA
officials have conceded responsibility for a Sept. 17 letter
that failed to advise prosecutors and a federal judge that the
agency possessed a cache of classified cables relating to the
case. Late last week, according to the New York Times and the
Washington Post, CIA officials testified in closed hearings that
a senior Justice Department official had pressured them to
dispatch the misleading letter. The CIA and Justice denied the
reports. Said the Justice official in question, Laurence
Urgenson, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General: "I can't pressure
the CIA. I can't even get them to return my phone calls."

    Immediately at stake is the fate of BNL's former Atlanta
branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, who faces trial for
allegedly engineering $4 billion in illegal loans to Iraq. But
of increasing concern is the credibility of the CIA, the Justice
Department and the Bush Administration. Even if it amounts to
a mere bureaucratic botch, the tussle over who misled the public
allows Democrats to renew calls for a special prosecutor to
examine whether the White House tried to cover up its efforts
to coddle Saddam Hussein before the invasion of Kuwait.