A Mole in the Garbage Can

By Ed Magnuson

Reagan aides spar over the Carter campaign-papers case

Washington's noisy debate over Jimmy Carter's debate book refuses to fade away. President Reagan last week made a rare appearance at a meeting of his senior aides and ordered them all to cooperate fully with Justice Department and congressional investigations into how his top 1980 campaign advisers had acquired Carter's briefing papers. He told reporters that any adviser found guilty of wrongdoing in the affair could be fired. And as FBI agents began quizzing former Reagan and Carter campaign advisers, the mystery of whether the Reagan staff had systematically sought political information from the Carter White House was deepening.

In the finest tradition of intelligence gathering, the week's most sensational disclosure came from a garbage can. According to the Washington Post, an unidentified collector of campaign memorabilia had gone to Reagan headquarters in Arlington, Va., after the election to seek souvenirs. He was told that everything had been tossed out, but he was welcome to rummage in the trash cans. He filled a box with a batch of papers and last week showed some of them to the Post. They provided ostensible verification of a report by TIME White House Correspondent Laurence Barrett in his new book on Reagan that "a mole" had operated in the White House to help Reagan's campaign staff.

Among the papers were economic memos prepared by Carter aides for the Cabinet. Marked " Not for public distribution," they were attached to a covering note addressed to Reagan campaign officials "Bob Gray, Bill Casey, Ed Meese." The note was signed by a low-level Reagan volunteer, Daniel Jones. Jones had written on one of the papers: "Bob--Report from White House mole." Another Jones note to Gray, Casey and Meese included the final week of Carter's campaign schedule, labeled by Jones the "latest information from reliable White House mole." Jones, now a Washington stockbroker, told the Post, "You found the author. I can't deny it. You've got the documents."

Gray, who had been communications director on the Reagan campaign staff, conceded that he may have seen the Jones memos, but he contended that Jones had no stature on the staff and no credibility. "I think those papers went from the garbage can of the Carter White House to the garbage can of the Reagan campaign," Gray scoffed. Indeed, the economic memos appeared routine and Carter had released his final campaign itinerary to reporters two days before Jones passed it to Gray.

Still, if a mole did operate within Carter's staff, it is certainly possible that he or she also supplied information not found in the garbage can. Jones claimed that he had met his Carter source only once and had not even learned "his" name, but promised to help the FBI identify the person if asked to do so. The fact that Jones' memos were addressed to such senior aides as Meese, now Counsellor to the President, and Casey, who is CIA director, complicated their attempts to isolate themselves from the brouhaha. Declared Meese: "I do not have any recollection of any memo from Jones or anyone else that mentioned a mole in the White House."

As for Casey, he took the unusual step of walking into the Washington bureau of the New York Times, sitting down with three reporters, and claiming that he would never have used Carter documents to help Reagan, whose campaign he directed. "I wouldn't tolerate it," Casey said of the briefing book. "I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole."

Casey had been put on the spot by White House Chief of Staff James Baker, who claimed that the Carter debate papers had been given to him by Casey. Budget Director David Stockman has admitted using the papers to rehearse Reagan for the 1980 debate. Casey earlier had said that he had "no recollection" of having seen the papers. Last week, despite deriding the idea of using them, he conceded that it was possible he might have passed some papers to Baker without reading them. But he said if Baker did acquire Carter documents, Baker was "remiss" in not telling higher campaign officials about them.

Clearly, the briefing-book fuss had renewed old rivalries among the Reagan aides. Casey and Meese seemed to be trying to focus responsibility on Baker, a relative newcomer in the Reagan staff hierarchy who is viewed by the Republican right as too much of a moderating influence on the President. Meese, however, cannot separate himself that neatly from another instance of Carter White House information reaching the Reagan election staff. Richard Allen, Reagan's former National Security Adviser, has admitted receiving on three occasions what he calls "innocuous, trite, useless, nonsubstantive, nonclassified and unsolicited material" from Carter's National Security Council. At the time, Allen reported directly to Meese. Allen gave the name of his NSC source to a House subcommittee headed by Democrat Donald Albosta, which is probing the affair, but he refused to divulge it publicly.

The apparent multiple sources of Carter campaign papers reaching the Reagan team, however trivial much of them seemed to be, fed the suspicion of those with a conspiratorial bent that a political espionage operation may have been conducted by the Reagan aides. To Washington Post Columnist Mary McGrory, the incident reinforced her theory that "Republicans think of political campaigns as war--in contrast to Democrats, who see them as sporting events."

A staff member of the Albosta subcommittee doubts that a Reagan campaign spying operation will be found. Said he: "It's gone beyond something just coming over the transom, but we don't see it heading into a major organized effort." Meantime, for the majority of the press, most Democrats and those Washington officials not directly involved, the "Who Stole the Briefing Book?" story remained primarily a summertime diversion from their usual heavy arguments over nuclear arms control and what to do about El Salvador.

--By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Douglas Brew/Washington

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