IN SEARCH OF SKELETONS

By Michael Duffy/Washington

Sometimes in politics, the best offense is a good defense. So when Pete Wilson's ex-wife telephoned the California Governor's office six weeks ago with the news that the long-divorced couple had once employed an undocumented immigrant as a maid -- and neglected to pay her Social Security taxes -- Wilson's chief of staff, Bob White, knew what to do. Before anyone could say "Zoe Baird," he requested John Davies, a San Diego attorney, to look into the matter. Davies, in turn, hired a bilingual tax preparer to check the laws, speak with the housekeeper and Wilson's former wife, and clean up the mess -- quickly.

Presidential candidates are often unable to recall -- or reluctant to reveal -- deep, dark secrets; their aides are forced to hire special gumshoes to unearth them instead. In fact, as the 1996 presidential race gets under way, investigating the boss before an opponent does it for you has become as integral a part of fledgling campaigns as fund raising and free media are. "It's essential," said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College. "You really need to see where the other side is going to come at you." Done right, counter-oppo (short for counter-opposition research, as the strategy is called) isn't defense at all. It's good offense.

That was what Wilson's team learned last week. Even as the story leaked, the campaign had ready a four-page memorandum from John Davies explaining that in 1978 Wilson's ex-wife Betty Hosie had hired an undocumented housekeeper from Tijuana named Josefina Klag. The revelation was more than a little awkward-Wilson made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his re-election campaign for Governor. But Davies had to address two legal questions as well: Did the Wilsons "knowingly" hire an illegal immigrant, even though such hiring was not prohibited by law at that time? (No, says Davies: Even though Wilson was mayor of San Diego at the time, neither he nor his wife, who did the actual hiring, knew of Klag's undocumented status.) Did Wilson himself owe back Social Security taxes? (Yes, says Davies: "Because you and Betty shared a household, you share the liability for failure to withhold Social Security taxes prior to your separation.")

In classic counter-oppo fashion, Wilson hoped to extinguish the story quickly by making amends fast, rushing the Treasury a check for back taxes and late penalties. Though the story was embarrassing, its brief arc pleased campaign aides. By week's end Wilson's new campaign manager, Craig Fuller, was praising his boss for bravely tackling the issue "head on."

Wilson's aides are not alone in running hurried background checks on their man. Though Bob Dole has run twice before, he has hired an experienced researcher to review his record. Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican, has paid a deputy sheriff turned private eye more than $9,000 so far this year to gather materials about Gramm that, as his spokesman Gary Koops puts it, "aren't in the data bases." This week, Time has learned, the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Co. is expected to complete a yearlong study for the campaign of Lamar Alexander of the candidate's tax records and business transactions going back 17 years. A team of lawyers led by A.B. Culvahouse, a former White House counsel, reviewed the findings for any impropriety. Alexander plans to release all his returns, dating back to 1978, this Friday. "I wanted to find out before anybody else did if I had done anything that would be an embarrassment or keep me from being a candidate," Alexander said Friday during a discussion with Time correspondents. "I was confident I hadn't, but I wanted to be sure about it."

Counter-oppo is easier said than done: candidates often can't (and may not want to) remember what, or who, they did, said, smoked, slept with or profited from during their lives. "It's forgivable that people don't routinely offer up the most damaging information about their pasts," said David Tell, who was in charge of oppo for George Bush in 1992. "We like to think well of ourselves. But you don't want to rely on the frailties of human psychology."

Practitioners say the best way to defuse a story before it explodes is to gain immediate access to the best possible information. For quick reference, Mark Merritt, Alexander's communications director, maintains a manila file folder of indexed responses to potentially damaging questions in the top-left drawer of his desk in Nashville. "If I hear Phil Gramm is moving an attack piece on us," Merritt says, "I can open my left-hand drawer and kill it before it becomes a story." Similarly, Wilson's spokesman Dan Schnur says his campaign rents storage space near its headquarters in Sacramento to store 200 boxes full of documents "that began the day Wilson decided to run for state assembly in 1966 and ends yesterday."

Once sticky details surface, full disclosure -- or at least the appearance of it -- is imperative. Alexander, for one, hopes that the release of 17 years of tax returns will put to rest suggestions that he profited unfairly from financial arrangements when he was not in government service. "I wanted to organize the material," Alexander said, "so that if someone called an hour before deadline and asked me what side of bed I got out on in 1983 I could hopefully answer it." --With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Sacramento

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Sacramento