Report of Arms Transfers to Iraq Draws Senate Inquiry

WASHINGTON — Senate investigators are checking reports of covert assistance to Iraq by the Reagan and Bush administrations, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said Sunday.

Appearing on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” Mitchell said he had not been informed of any such assistance, if it occurred, and he did not know whether other members of Congress were told.

“I do not know whether a violation of law occurred or not,” he said. “We are going to look into this tomorrow. I have asked for a report on the information that’s available with respect to the transfers as well as the applicable law.”

The Times reported Saturday that both President Bush and his predecessor secretly allowed Saudi Arabia to provide U.S. weapons to Iraq and other nations for almost 10 years in an effort to sidestep legal restrictions imposed by Congress.

The Times report was based on classified documents.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported today that information uncovered by Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) gives a step-by-step account of how one federal agency--the Department of Energy--dealt internally with information in early 1989 that Iraq was on a mission to build a nuclear bomb.

The report details internal disagreements over whether “technical clues” developed by Energy Department employees advanced what was already known about Iraq’s bomb-building intentions enough to warrant newly appointed Energy Secretary James D. Watkins going directly to Secretary of State James A. Baker III with the information.

The New York newspaper said the Energy Department’s deputy assistant secretary for intelligence concluded: “It may be worthwhile to apply Department of Energy resources to concentrate on the Iraq issue. However, we are uncomfortable with a secretarial level initiative.” The report says the intelligence official subsequently told Congress he felt the warning developed by subordinates was “overstated.”

The newspaper reported that “just where the initiative died is unclear.” It did not address whether the information that so alarmed the staff members was already known to U.S. intelligence agencies or whether it found its way to them via some less formal mechanism than direct contact between Watkins and Baker.

Bush, talking to reporters in Kennebunkport, Me., denied that he had allowed the Saudis to secretly transfer U.S. arms to Syria and Bangladesh.

He did not discuss the reported transfers to Iraq.