First lady Barbara Bush said yesterday that the Secret Service investigation of a late night White House tour that reportedly included two male prostitutes has not raised security questions the first family is worried about.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the July 3, 1988, tour arranged by former Washington lobbyist Craig J. Spence, Mrs. Bush said she and her husband have no fears of a security breach.

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Mrs. Bush added that ... it was "good" that The Washington Post wasn't following The Times' story.

[...] That investigation centered on a homosexual call-boy service that operated out of a house on 34th Place NW. The ring's clients, according to hundreds of credit-card vouchers obtained by The Times, included government officials, military officers, foreign and U.S. businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides, media representatives and other professionals.

The vouchers showed that Mr. Spence spent as much as $20,000 a month for call boys from various escort services run by the ring. [Spence] strongly hinted of having "firsthand information" about people "high in government" who also were involved.

During the past few weeks, Mr. Spence told several friends that he knew "for a fact" that the call-boy operation was being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office and other federal authorities as a CIA front. He told the friends the CIA used the service to compromise other federal intelligence officials and foreign diplomats.

Mr. Spence claimed in the interview that he had worked for the CIA on numerous occasions and had been instrumental in a number of covert actions in Vietnam, Japan, Central America and the Middle East - a claim denied by the agency.

"How do you think a little faggot like me moved in the circles I did?" he said. "It's because I had contacts at the highest levels of this government.

"They'll deny it. But how do they make me go away, when so many of them have been at my house, at my parties and at my side?"
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The Times, in contacting a number of principal witnesses and active participants in the case, discovered that few of them had been interviewed and only a handful asked to testify before the grand jury. Several key figures had not been contacted at all. Those who were questioned were being asked mainly about national security concerns and possible security breaches at the White House.

Among those not contacted by law enforcement officials or the grand jury were officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations who were identified in The Times as having used the call-boy service and paid with credit cards.

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A participant in one of the late-night White House tours testified before the grand jury two weeks ago and was asked about the tours, missing china out of the presidential mansion and Mr. Spence's interest in the U.S. military's top-secret Delta Force. .. The sergeant, who also participated in the July 3 White House tour, allegedly was asked by Mr. Spence for information on Delta Force, a special forces counterterrorism unit based in Fort Bragg, N.C.

"They asked me what I thought Spence wanted to know about the Delta project," the witness said. "I said it could mean he was just interested in the young guys there or something else."

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Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, Maryland Republican, for one, recently questioned the former lobbyist's ties to the Japanese government in a speech on the floor of the House. Citing news articles in the United States and Japan, Mrs. Bentley asked whether plans for the F-16 jet had been transferred by Mr. Spence to a Japanese government official, Motoo Shiina, and later turned over to the Soviet Union.