Senate Kills Covert Action Initiative

WASHINGTON--The Senate yesterday voted down an effort to let the White House withhold details about covert operations from Congress.

The 65-23 vote came as the chamber worked on a bill which would require that Congress be notified about all covert actions within 48 hours after they start.

Senate leaders had been hoping to pass the bill yesterday, but the chamber became bogged down in a lengthy and unresolved debate about a pair of unrelated issues. That blocked a final vote until after the Senate returns March 21.

The vote killed an amendment proposed by Sen. James McClure, (R.-Idaho) which would have allowed a president simply to tell Congress that a covert action had started, but withhold details until later.

McClure called his proposal a compromise which he said "gives the president some flexibility" about when to tell Congress.

Sen. William Cohen (R.-Maine) chief author of the bill, said McClure's amendment "is not a compromise; it's a capitulation...This lets the president play 'I've got a secret' but not tell."

The bill's future is unclear. The Reagan administration strongly opposes the measure as an unconstitutional limit on a president's ability to conduct foreign policy. A similar measure is pending in the House, but has not yet reached the floor.

Cohen is vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee and was also a member of the Iran-Contra committee which investigated the sale of U.S. arms to Iran and the diversion of some of the profits to the Contra guerrillas. President Reagan withheld notice from Congress for 10 months about the Iranian arms sales.

The bill overhauls procedures for notifying Congress about intelligence actions. The chief provision requires that notification be sent to Capitol Hill within 48 hours of the time a covert operation begins.