American Notes WASHINGTON

In an otherwise undistinguished office building at 1025 Connecticut Avenue, an ordinary suite has been packed with highly classified documents and "tempest- tested" computers that give off no electronic emanations that spies could pick up. A new hush-hush CIA facility? No, just a room in which lawyers for Oliver North and his fellow defendants can examine Government documents that they might need during the forthcoming Iran-contra conspiracy trial.

The four defendants -- North, former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord and Businessman ! Albert Hakim -- are demanding to see 300,000 pages of classified documents. But a Government team has so far produced only 35,254 pages, leading Presiding Judge Gerhard Gesell to grumble last week, "There is a stone wall being built up between this court and the trial. The responsibility lies with the Attorney General and the White House."

Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh concedes that disclosure of some documents, presumably those that reveal U.S. intelligence sources in the Middle East and Central America, could lead to "torture and death." At a minimum, the trial may be delayed for months while the Government dribbles out documents, the defense lawyers select those they deem essential to their case, and Judge Gesell decides, one by one, whether the chosen papers are relevant. What if he rules that some are necessary but the Government still refuses to declassify them? Then, warns Gesell, there might be no trial at all.