Campaign Crib?

The case of the purloined book

White House Chief of Staff James Baker remembers a thick black notebook. Budget Director David Stockman remembers a set of unbound papers. CIA Chief William Casey says he has no recollection of the document at all.

Administration officials gave those hazy and conflicting accounts last week to a congressional subcommittee probing a revelation that Ronald Reagan may have got an unfair advantage during the 1980 presidential campaign from a purloined briefing book. Both Baker and Stockman confirmed that they had received one of President Carter's confidential briefing books, which was used to help prepare Reagan for his nationally televised debate with Carter in October 1980.

The inquiry by Michigan Democratic Representative Donald J. Albosta, chairman of the panel that oversees the Ethics in Government Act, was sparked by a new book on Reagan, Gambling with History, by TIME White House Correspondent Laurence Barrett. Barrett wrote that "apparently a Reagan mole in the Carter camp had filched the papers containing the main points" Carter planned to make in the debate. Baker, Stockman, Casey and Communications Director David Gergen, all former Reagan campaign aides, sent Albosta letters explaining what they knew about the papers. Meanwhile, Administration officials debated whether to ask the Justice Department to launch a search for the mole and the book.

Baker said he recalled seeing a book "that was thought to have been given by someone with the Carter campaign." He reckoned that he received it from Casey and passed it on to Gergen and Frank Hodsoll, head of the debate team. Hodsoll, now chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, recalled the book. But Casey claimed to have "no recollection" of it and Gergen hedged, saying that he did not remember "ever receiving or seeing" it but may have seen "some pages."

Hodsoll maintained that the book dealt with routine policy issues and did not reveal strategy. But Stockman, who impersonated Carter in a rehearsal debate with Reagan, said that its "advocacy point of view" was "useful as I prepared outlines of possible answers representing the 'other side.' "

President Reagan said he had known nothing of the shady episode. He would like to get to the bottom of the controversy, he said, but he characterized it as "much ado about nothing." Said Reagan: "Look, ask me what paper came to my desk last week and I couldn't tell you." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.