'The President Looked Scared'

Once again the President's life was endangered last week, only this time the threat was not from a muddleheaded woman with a gun in her hand, but from simple negligence by police and the Secret Service.

Leaving Hartford's Civic Center, where Gerald Ford had just addressed a G.O.P. fund-raising dinner, a presidential motorcade of seven cars headed fast for Bradley International Airport. The procession was led by four Connecticut state police cruisers, none sounding sirens or flashing emergency lights. Worse, the cars were spaced so far apart that the President's Lincoln limousine was about five seconds behind the cruisers when it approached an intersection just three blocks from the civic center.

The light was red, but Driver Andrew Hutch, a Secret Service agent, went through. He assumed that as always, local police had sealed off the intersection. But no cop was at the corner. Seeing a green light, James Salamites, 19, proceeded to cross the intersection from a side street at about 30 m.p.h. Ford yelled at his driver: "Be careful!" It was too late. Salamites' 1968 yellow Buick Le-Sabre smashed the presidential limousine on the right front fender, forcing it six feet off course. Ford was unhurt. But Frederick K. Beibel Jr., the Republican state chairman, was slammed against Ford and broke a finger. One eyewitness later reported, "The President looked scared. I'd have been scared too."

Salamites and his five teen-age companions, all bewildered, were examined and let go; they obviously had meant the President no harm. Hartford police manfully assumed the blame for not having a cop at the intersection, as they had said they would, but the responsibility for the disorganized motorcade belonged to the Secret Service. It was the agents' duty to make sure that the intersections were blocked off, no matter what the local police promised, and to see that the escorting cruisers flashed their warning lights and did not significantly outdistance Ford's limousine. (The Secret Service rarely requires sirens to scream, feeling that they attract undue attention.)

Another apparent security weakness was reported by a Hartford private detective, Richard Sulman, 36, who specializes in sophisticated electronic gear. With an inexpensive and readily available police-band radio, Sulman claimed, he had easily tuned in on Secret Service messages about Ford's movements. The disclosure raised the possibility that any plotter could fairly easily pick up conversations describing Ford's itinerary, or even jam radio messages between the agents by broadcasting on the same frequency. But the Secret Service maintains that anyone who wanted to do harm to the President could get much more valuable information about his schedule simply by reading a local newspaper. Besides, in a real emergency, the agents guarding Ford talk back and forth on a special channel that they feel sure is secure against eavesdroppers. ler. In the latest California poll, taken in August among Republicans, Ford leads Reagan, 54% to 45%, but Pollster Mervin Field regards Ford's lead as uncomfortably thin.

Even though most political experts agree with Callaway that Ford will eventually win, the President acts as if he is running scared, an odd posture for an incumbent. For the rest of the year he plans to spend about half of his time away from Washington. In addition to scheduled trips to Florida and California, he will participate in an economic summit meeting in Paris in mid-November, followed around Thanksgiving by a visit to China and possibly other Asian countries. By a show of statesmanship abroad, he hopes to cultivate support at home.

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