Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, October 16, 1993                   TAG: 9310160089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

REPORT DETAILS COVER-UP EVIDENCE TOO LATE TO PROSECUTE MEESE

The still-secret report says prosecutors would have considered seeking Meese's indictment after discovering new evidence in 1992, but the statute of limitations had expired, several sources said.

The report concludes top Cabinet officers participated in a broader cover-up, plotting to make "scapegoats" out of Oliver North and national security advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter, according to the sources and notes they took from the report.

The report also portrays Reagan, who has given conflicting accounts of his role in the scandal, as being personally involved in directing advisers in a failed arms-for-hostages deal in Iran in May 1986, the sources said.

Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's report was completed in August but has been sealed from public scrutiny by a federal appeals court to give those named in it time to submit responses.

The sources, who insisted upon anonymity, said their notes indicate the final report depicts key officials of the Reagan administration as scrambling to deflect blame from the president and his Cabinet.

"The president's most senior advisers and the Cabinet members on the National Security Council participated in the strategy to make National Security Council members McFarlane, Poindexter and North the scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect the Reagan administration in its final two years," the notes quote the report as saying.

"In an important sense, this strategy succeeded. Independent counsel discovered much of the best evidence of the cover-up in the final year of active investigation, too late for most prosecutions."