A federal judge sharply criticized Iran-Contra prosecutors on Thursday for charging a former CIA station chief in the nation's capital with committing crimes across the Potomac River in Virginia. U.S. District Judge Aubrey E. Robinson Jr. questioned a proposal by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh to dismiss all the charges against Joseph F. Fernandez so prosecutors could seek a new indictment from a federal grand jury in nearby Alexandria, Va. ``I don't think it's a simple matter of I'll dismiss it and let you go to Virginia and re-indict it,'' Robinson told Laurence Shtasel, an associate independent counsel. The judge did not indicate how he would rule on Walsh's request, which was made in a response to a defense motion to dismiss four of the indictment's five counts on the ground those alleged offenses occurred at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. instead of in Washington. Fernandez, who used the pseudonym Tomas Castillo when he was the CIA's station chief in Costa Rica, is accused of conspiring with former National Security Council aide Oliver L. North to illegally ship arms to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. Robinson said he found no basis for dismissing that count, since the alleged conspiracy took place both in Washington and elsewhere. But the judge sharply questioned the prosecution decision to indict Fernandez, 51, in Washington on four counts of making false statements in Virginia to CIA superiors and to a presidential commission that investigated the Iran-Contra affair. Robinson also lectured the prosecutors about fairness saying: ``There has to be a sense of justice in the process as well as the outcome, otherwise public confidence in the system is destroyed.'' Laurence Shtasel, an associate independent counsel, said prosecutors had not misled the grand jury about the venue _ or location _ of the four alleged crimes, and had advised the panel that Fernandez could waive his right to be tried in Virginia. The grand jury included the four Virginia charges because they were related to the conspiracy, Shtasel said. ``That doesn't give it any right to indict when the venue of the case is not here,'' Robinson said. ``It's the government's responsibility to advise the grand jury what it can or cannot do under the law.'' Defense attorney Thomas E. Wilson argued that Walsh should be barred from bringing the charges anew in Virginia, saying prosecutors ``were trifling with the process.'' ``They intentionally pursued an indictment where they knew there was not even a colorable basis of venue on four of five counts,'' Wilson said. ``The prosecutors in this case are not beleaguered, overworked assistant U.S. attorneys,'' Wilson said. Walsh ``assembled the prosecutorial equivalent of a Roman legion: 29 lawyers, 33 FBI agents, 11 IRS agents, four Customs agents.'' ``They are trifling with the process _ they ought to be stuck with the consequences,'' Wilson said. But Robinson said he ``didn't know any basis for dismissing'' the conspiracy charge against Fernandez. ``The nub of the case is the conspiracy indictment, any way you look at it, everything else is superfluous really,'' the judge told Shtasel. But he said allowing Walsh to try Fernandez in Washington on the conspiracy count and obtain another indictment in Virginia ``places an intolerable burden on a single defendant.''
