Living in Glass Houses

Politicians and their lieutenants know better than anyone that amid the feverish intensity of an important campaign ethical lapses can occur. "Morals in Washington, DC" says Carter Administration Attorney General Griffin Bell "are different from morals in the rest of the country." Bell and other once and future Washingtonians do not defend political transgressions, particularly if they involve campaign intelligence gathering that shades into active campaign espionage. But concerning the Carter briefing-book affair, most political professionals have avoided easy pieties. TIME asked several Democratic veterans what each would have done had his camp been offered, unsolicited, an opponent's confidential campaign material.

"It would take a strong character to reject it," conceded George McGovern, whose 1972 Democratic presidential campaign was the object of a few Watergate dirty tricks. "I'm not going to say what I would have done. I will say that I hope I would have said 'No--we don't resort to that stuff around here. Send it back.' But I don't know."

Two principal figures in the Carter campaign and White House were no more sure of how they would have reacted. "It would sound precious and self-righteous to say I would have turned them down," said former Press Secretary Jody Powell, "so I'm not going to say it. I think and hope that I would have."

Even less certain was Pollster and Adviser Pat Caddell. "I hope we'd return it , he said, but I don't know. It's easy to jump up and say, I'd do the right thing.' " Besides, Caddell explained, he would have suspiciously looked the gift horse in the mouth: I'd wonder whether we were being set up."

California Senator Alan Cranston, a contender for next year's Democratic presidential nomination, said he too would resist the offer partly on practical grounds. You're apt to be caught," he said, "aside from it being morally wrong."

Colorado Senator Gary Hart, McGovern's 1972 campaign director and now a candidate for the Democratic nomination, was the most unequivocal. "Without hesitation and unopened, the briefing book or any materials from a rival's campaigri that came into our hands would be returned, Hart asserted. "I have asked my campaign manager to circulate a memo to that effect."

Terry Bracy, now a Washington lobbyist, is one former presidential campaign aide for whom the dilemma is not hypothetical. During the campaign for the 1976 Democratic nomination, he served as policy director for Contender Morris Udall, the Arizona Congressman. In the summer of 1975, Bracy says he was "kind of horrified" to be offered "inside strategy and plans" from the Carter organization by a putative Carterite turncoat. He refused, and told the Georgians. Of course, for all of Bracy's admirable fair play, the documents may not have been so tempting: the offer came some eight months before the first primaries, when Udall's adversary was still "Jimmy Who?" This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.