Kalb Quits State Dept. in Disinformation Row : Spokesman Protests Deception of Kadafi, Defends Credibility

Bernard Kalb, vowing to protect his integrity “as an American, as a spokesman and as a journalist,” resigned Wednesday as State Department spokesman to protest a U.S. deception and disinformation program designed to undermine Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

“I do not want my own credibility to be caught up, or subsumed, in this controversy,” Kalb said. “The controversy may vanish but, when you are sitting alone, it does not go away.”

Kalb, 64, has been chief spokesman for Secretary of State George P. Shultz since Jan. 1, 1985. Before accepting the post, his first in government, Kalb was a correspondent for the New York Times, CBS and NBC for almost 40 years. His deputy, Charles Redman, was named acting spokesman.

Avoids Specifics

In a final sparring match with reporters, Kalb refused to confirm the existence of the disinformation effort that prompted his decision to quit. “My resignation does not endow me with a sudden freedom to act on what might be secret,” Kalb said.

Nevertheless, Kalb’s actions served to further confirm the substance of the effort, which already had been confirmed in less dramatic fashion by other officials. Details of the plan have not been officially declassified.

After a Washington Post report on the program published last week, several Administration officials confirmed its existence but denied that its basic purpose was to mislead the American public or press.

According to a variety of sources, President Reagan and his top advisers, including Shultz, in August approved what the secretary of state later called a “psychological warfare” campaign against Kadafi. As part of the program, misleading information was given to reporters implying that a new U.S.-Libya showdown was imminent.

After a spate of newspaper stories in late August, Vernon A. Walters, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was sent to Europe to confer with U.S. allies about Libyan terrorism. Although Walters apparently reassured the Europeans that no attack was likely in the immediate future, his mission underlined the issue and resulted in additional news coverage, especially in Europe.

When asked Wednesday if he planned to follow Kalb in resigning, Walters said: “I have no intention of doing so. I never carried any hard evidence (of Libyan plans for terrorism) to anyone, nor was I asked to do so.”

Statement by Shultz

The first word of Kalb’s decision came from Redman, who made a terse announcement during the regular daily briefing and read a one-paragraph statement by Shultz: “I am sorry to see Bernie Kalb go. I admire him as a fine journalist, respect him as a colleague and adviser and value him as a friend. Bernie has my thanks for the job he has done and I wish him well.”

Redman refused to say what prompted the resignation, but Kalb was given an opportunity to state his case half an hour after the regular briefing.

Kalb said he had not been asked personally to mislead anyone. But he said he had been “grappling” with the issue since the original accounts of the disinformation program appeared. Last Thursday, Kalb had been at Shultz’s side at the United Nations when the secretary of state said there was nothing wrong with efforts to keep Kadafi off balance.

But, on Wednesday, Kalb said: “Now a controversy has swirled up about credibility. You face a choice . . . whether to allow oneself to be absorbed in the ranks of silence or voice a modest dissent.”

Could Pressure Others

Kalb’s action could put pressure on other government officials who knew of the program, such as White House spokesman Larry Speakes, to defend their own integrity.

When asked for a comment by reporters aboard Air Force One as he accompanied Reagan on a political campaign trip, Speakes said: “I don’t have any comment on B. Kalb.”

Kalb’s resignation recalls the protest of White House Press Secretary Jerald F. terHorst, who quit Sept. 8, 1974, “as a matter of conscience” over President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon following the Watergate scandal.

In a more parallel case, Leslie Janka, a Reagan White House spokesman, resigned after the United States invaded Grenada in 1983, citing the Administration’s deliberate misleading of the public about the invasion.

Powell Cites Arrogance

Jody Powell, White House spokesman during the Carter Administration, said he doubted that the resignation would cause the public to “storm the barricades,” but that “it ought to underscore a significant problem: Over the course of four or five years, this government has become arrogant and contemptuous of their responsibility to tell the truth.”

Hodding Carter III, who was State Department spokesman from 1977 to 1980 in the Carter Administration, said he found it “refreshing that in a town full of careerists, someone decided that what brought him into government was what took him out--integrity.”

Norman J. Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based research organization, sees in the resignation the possibility of broader significance.

He said that because of the timing, just before the Iceland meeting between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the resignation constitutes “an embarrassment to the President” because it is “at least a tacit acknowledgement that there are differences on foreign policy.”

Also, he said, the resignation is “more than just another flack who quit,” calling Kalb “a figure who’s been a celebrity in his own right.”

Kissinger Biographer

Kalb joined the New York Times in 1946 and later became a foreign correspondent for the newspaper in Southeast Asia.

He went to CBS News in 1962, covering the early part of the Vietnam War before returning to the United States as an anchorman. He later covered the State Department and, with his younger brother, Marvin, wrote a biography of Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state.

Both brothers later joined NBC, where Marvin continues to serve as chief diplomatic correspondent.