A federal judge Friday threw out an Iran-Contra charge against former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger that was brought four days before the election and prompted allegations prosecutors were trying to harm President Bush's re-election campaign.
Four felony charges remain against Weinberger - for trial Jan. 5.But U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, in a major setback to independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, barred Weinberger from being tried on the charge that suggested Bush knew more than he had admitted about the arms-for-hostages deal. The count says that Weinberger lied to Congress.
Hogan said the charge, contained in an indictment handed up Oct. 30, violated a five-year statute of limitations.
Coincidentally, Hogan's ruling came the same day that Attorney General William Barr refused to authorize an independent counsel's investigation into whether the Oct. 30 indictment of Weinberger was politically timed to wreck Bush's re-election campaign.
Barr instead referred that allegation against prosecutor Walsh, made primarily by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., to the Justice Department's Criminal Division.
"This is the latest failure by Lawrence Walsh's high-cost, low-result crusade against Republicans," Dole said in a statement.
Dole said Walsh had committed political "mischief" in obtaining the indictment.
"It's incredible to me that the independent counsel continues to bumble along trying to get an indictment right," Dole added.
Walsh's office pointed out that it has brought 14 cases and obtained 11 convictions, the latest on Wednesday of former CIA official Clair George, on two counts of lying to congressional committees that investigated the Iran-Contra affair. But convictions in its two biggest cases to date, against ex-White House aide Oliver North and former national security adviser John Poindexter, were set aside or overturned on appeal.
The count that Hogan is throwing out details a Jan. 7, 1986, meeting where the participants, including then-Vice President Bush, discussed trading 4,000 TOW missiles for five American hostages. Bush has always maintained he didn't understand the Reagan White House to be trading arms for hostages until mid-December 1986.