560 ARRESTED AT CIA HEADQUARTERS

THRONG PROTESTING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY SNARLS TRAFFIC IN MCLEAN

About 560 demonstrators were arrested yesterday when 1,500 people thronged the gates of CIA headquarters in McLean in a protest of U.S. foreign policy that impeded access to the agency and snarled traffic in Fairfax County.

The nonviolent protesters, well organized remnants of the tens of thousands who gathered in Washington over the weekend for a "Mobilization for Justice & Peace in Central America & Southern Africa," were met by more than 200 Fairfax County and federal police, many dressed in riot gear and carrying chemical Mace.

Waves of singing and chanting activists, many of them students and clergymen, linked arms and sat cross-legged in the access road leading to the Central Intelligence Agency's gates while police methodically dragged or carried their limp bodies into waiting wagons.

The result was a strikingly cordial display of civil disobedience, with most protesters and authorities cooperating in an orderly process of arrests, handcuffings and bookings that began in the predawn chill shortly before 7 a.m. and was over four hours later. A handful of minor scuffles occurred, but order was quickly restored and no serious injuries were reported.

"They're very gentle and making it very easy for those of us getting summonses," said William J. Price, director of World Peacemakers, a Washington activist group, and former civilian director of the Office of Scientific Research in the Air Force.

The target of most of the protesters yesterday was U.S. policy in Nicaragua, where the Reagan administration has pursued a "secret war" against the Sandinista government through funding and covert aid to the antigovernment contra rebels. In addition, the protesters took issue with the American government's policy of "constructive engagement" with the minority white regime in South Africa.

Many of the activists, who regard those stances and the accompanying violence as immoral, spent the weekend in the capital calling attention to their issues with a benefit concert Friday night, a march of 75,000 Saturday and a special interfaith worship service Sunday. They arrived in busloads from around the nation, a cross section of trade unionists, clergy, liberal activists, blacks, whites, Hispanics, middle-class Americans and the homeless.

Most of those arrested were charged with "obstruction of free passage" by Fairfax police, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The activists succeeded in blocking vehicles from entering the main CIA gates at Dolley Madison Boulevard and Georgetown Pike, and the cheering crowds chanted, "Hey, hey, CIA, you didn't get to work today."

A CIA spokeswoman said, however, that employes had been able to use other entrances to the wooded facility on the Potomac River and that the demonstration had not kept employes from getting to work or caused much disruption.

"Basically, it's been business as usual," said Kathy H. Pherson, chief of the agency's media relations staff.

Of the approximately 560 people arrested, most were charged, given court dates and released by Fairfax County police. Ninety-four were in the county jail late yesterday afternoon and were expected to spend the night there. Federal authorities, who made about a third of the arrests, released most of their prisoners but sent 33 to U.S. Magistrate's Court in Alexandria, where some pleaded guilty and were fined $50, and others were given a trial date after pleading not guilty.

The protesters started gathering around 6 a.m. in a staging area at Langley Fork Park, next door to the agency about six miles from Washington. Organizers using bullhorns issued final instructions to the milling demonstrators who stood in knots under oak trees at the side of the main entrance.

It was a predominantly young and almost entirely white crowd, with a large contingent of students and a smattering of clerics; organizers said that many of the middle-aged and older people who attended the events of the weekend had departed Sunday night to be at work Monday morning.

Chanting "U.S.A., CIA, out of Nicaragua," they filed down to the concrete access road to the main agency gate, police helicopters chopping the air overhead and a half-dozen robe-clad Buddhist monks thumping "prayer drums" along the route.

Along the way, they were twice greeted by eight marchers who pulled down their pants and bared their posteriors revealing the letters "N-O R-E-A-G-A-N," a display that was to be repeated several times during the day, much to the amusement of some police officers.

Shortly before 7 a.m., with a few straggling demonstrators still arriving and CIA employes unable to get into the facility from the south entrance off Dolley Madison Boulevard, traffic in the area slowed to a crawl, backing up on the George Washington Parkway and Georgetown Pike.

When organizers announced over the public address system that roads in the vicinity were snarled, the demonstrators whooped and clapped their approval. The worst of the tie-up was over in about an hour, according to authorities.

Among those arrested was Daniel Ellsberg, the antiwar activist who as a Pentagon analyst leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press, and Philip Berrigan, a former priest and veteran peace activist. Amy Carter, daughter of former president Carter, was expected to attend yesterday's protest, but did not.

The presence of Vietnam-era activists, as well as the profusion of tie-dyed garments, love beads and long hair, led to inevitable recollections of the protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. That comparison was resented by many of yesterday's protesters, who were trying to stake out an identity of their own.

"We're a new generation," said Daria Casinell, 25, who works with poor people in Framingham, Mass. "We believe in some of the same things as the people in the '60s, but we're not nostalgia freaks, we're not an anachronism and we're not a throwback."

Said Mike Spurrier, 28, who works in a homeless shelter in Vermont: "Calling this a '60s-style rally takes away from the issue. The issue is that Nicaragua is another dirty war the U.S. is involved in."

One Fairfax County policeman, a veteran of the "May Day" disruptions in 1971 in which hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War protesters converged on Washington, said the contrast with yesterday's affair was sharp.

"That was different," said Officer D.A. Stopper, who was at the McLean District station where 262 of those arrested yesterday were taken and processed. "That one was more frightening. These are just regular ol' people."

Several in the crowd carried signs imploring the Reagan administration to "boycott South Africa, not Nicaragua." Others paraded gruesome photographs of maimed youngsters in Central America, the victims, according to the demonstrators, of CIA intervention in the region. Others carried placards around their necks with the names and dates of those killed, maimed or missing in Nicaragua, El Salvador and South Africa.

Across the road from the mass of protesters at the main gate were three college Republicans from Towson State University in Baltimore County, bearing a large American flag and demonstrating against the demonstrators. "They're willing to get arrested and I'm willing to lay down my life," said Karl Strohminger, who wore a button proclaiming "I'm a contra too" -- a reference to the U.S.-backed rebels who seek to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.

As the arrests took place throughout the morning, a few CIA employes walked behind police lines and on to the agency grounds past the protesters. While two agency workers in beige trench coats were jeered by the crowd, a number of women who arrived for work around 8:15 a.m. were greeted by sympathetic pleas to rethink their employment and "join us."Staff writers Patricia Davis, Sandra Evans, John F. Harris, John Lancaster, Caryle Murphy and Dana Priest contributed to this report.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.