CIA Nominee Denies Knowing of China Plan

WASHINGTON — Anthony Lake, President Clinton’s outgoing national security advisor and his controversial nominee to head the CIA, said Tuesday that he was never informed of an FBI warning to two members of his agency’s staff about an alleged Chinese plot to buy influence in U.S. elections.

On the first day of his long-delayed confirmation hearings, Lake told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he “should have been informed” by the staff members so that he could have then passed the information on to Clinton.

In the wake of the recent revelation of a possible influence-buying scheme by China, Clinton said Monday that, had he received such a warning, the aggressive fund-raising tactics used as part of his reelection campaign might have been conducted with more caution.

Still unresolved are conflicting versions of why the NSC staff members did not pass along the information. But the administration sought to calm the controversy Tuesday, suggesting that it may be a simple matter of miscommunication.

The two NSC staff members, who handle counterintelligence issues, were told by FBI agents in June that U.S. intelligence had detected a Chinese effort to funnel money into congressional campaigns.

On Monday, the White House said that the two were told by the FBI to keep the information to themselves and were abiding by those ground rules.

But the FBI issued a conflicting statement, saying that the bureau’s agents did not place any restrictions on sending the information up the chain of command. In fact, the FBI provided additional briefings aimed at informing more than 30 members of Congress on the matter, including those serving on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry faced a barrage of questions on the differing versions of the episode offered by the White House and FBI. McCurry and other senior administration officials said that the problem may have resulted from a misinterpretation.

One senior administration official said FBI agents told the NSC officials--including one FBI official who was working at the NSC--that the information about China was highly sensitive and should be closely held. The NSC officials apparently interpreted that as a directive not to tell their superiors.

Lake, whose nomination to become CIA director has drawn intense Republican fire because of his role as a key architect of foreign policy in Clinton’s first term, refused to criticize the two staff members for not informing him or his deputy, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, who has been named to be his successor as national security advisor.

He also said that he has purposefully avoided asking the two about the incident because the matter is now the subject of an investigation by the White House counsel. He added that both are “very fine career officers” still serving at the NSC. “I don’t want to hang them out to dry.”

Lake testified before a packed Senate hearing room at the start of a scheduled six days of confirmation hearings. His has turned into the most contentious among Clinton’s nominations for his second term.

While the president’s other major foreign policy appointees sailed through the Senate earlier this year, Lake’s nomination has become a proxy for GOP efforts to attack the White House on a wide range of national security issues, from controversial contacts with fund-raisers linked with foreign interests to administration policies in Haiti and Bosnia.

Above all, Republicans question whether Lake, after serving as Clinton’s closest foreign policy advisor for four years, can suddenly change jobs and offer impartial analysis both to the White House and to Congress on policies that he helped craft. Lake’s critics question whether he will inject politics into what is supposed to be an independent intelligence process.

In his testimony, Lake conceded that it was a legitimate question, one that he had asked of himself.

“The answer, unequivocably, is yes,” Lake said. “I know firsthand how important it is to defend the bright line separating policy and intelligence. If I attempted to hide bad news, or soften harsh facts for the president, he could make mistakes that would damage the security of our nation and our people.”

Lake pledged that, if confirmed, he will stay on the job through the end of Clinton’s term to provide badly needed stability at the CIA, which has been wracked by spy scandals and revolving-door management since the end of the Cold War.

If confirmed, Lake would be Clinton’s third CIA director and the fourth since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Lake made it clear that he wants to run the CIA, a job that rarely leads to bigger things in Washington. Lake emphasized Tuesday that when Clinton asked him to run the CIA, “I immediately accepted.”

Lake also dealt head-on with many of the most sensitive issues that have been raised about his record at the NSC. In his opening statement, he defended personal stock dealings that were the subject of a Justice Department investigation and offered a detailed explanation of his role in Clinton’s secret 1994 decision to give a green light to covert Iranian arms shipments into Bosnia.

Testifying under oath on the Iran-Bosnia matter for the first time, he publicly acknowledged that Congress should have been told about that decision.

He did not apologize for failing to inform Congress, stressing that he believes that the policy did not constitute a covert action and therefore held no “legal obligation” for the White House to notify Capitol Hill.

“But I do appreciate that it would have been better to have informed key members of Congress on a discreet basis.”

He added that “this experience, and my own role in it, reinforces my pledge to you about the need to work together. I pledge that if confirmed, I will not only supply the committee with all information legally required. When in doubt, my rule will be to inform.”

More broadly, Lake said that he does not believe he owes Congress or the public any apologies for his role in the making of Clinton foreign policy over the last four years.

“I stand by my record,” he said.