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

DATE: THURSDAY, November 25, 1993                   TAG: 9311250163
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

GROUPS ASK RELEASE OF IRAN-CONTRA REPORT

A research group and two organizations representing journalists asked a federal appellate court Wednesday to make public in full the final report by an independent counsel on the Iran-Contra scandal.

The motion was filed with a special panel of three federal appellate judges, who have kept the report under seal since August. It expressed concern that lawyers for those involved in the 1986 scandal would seek to have the documents suppressed or heavily censored.

"If this report, or any part of it, is suppressed, public understanding of the lessons of the Iran-Contra affair . . . will be forever impoverished," the motion argued.

It was filed on behalf of the National Security Archive, a private research group; the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh issued his final report last August, closing the investigation of the scandal.

The scandal involved the sale of weapons to Iran to obtain the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East and the diversion by Oliver North, then on the National Security Council staff, of revenue from those sales to help supply the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

by CNB