Reagan Notes Private, White House Contends : There Is No Likelihood They Will Be Volunteered to Any of Iran-Contra Inquiries, Aide Indicates

The White House confirmed Sunday that President Reagan records some events in “personal notes,” but contended that their release to congressional investigators of the Iran- contra affair “would infringe on the privacy of the President and others.”

Responding to a report that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the select committee that is taking over the investigation want to see notes that Reagan is said to have kept on his activities, Assistant White House Press Secretary Don Mathes said that Reagan does keep such notes.

But Mathes indicated no likelihood that the notes will be volunteered to any of the congressional committees investigating the use of profits from the clandestine sale of U.S. arms to Iran for the secret purchase of weapons for Nicaragua’s rebels.

“The White House is confident,” Mathes said, “that by the end of these investigations there will be no significant questions that would warrant use of the President’s private papers. Their release would infringe on the privacy of the President and others.”

When asked how the White House will respond if a committee undertakes to subpoena Reagan’s notes, Mathes said that Reagan “is committed to getting all the information out,” but not to “turning over his personal papers,” and refused to predict the reaction.

Mathes said the White House has heard nothing to confirm a report in Sunday’s Washington Post--also carried in The Times--that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), were interested in seeing Reagan’s records. Cohen was said to be out of the country and unavailable for comment.

On the question of the use to which Reagan might put the notes, Mathes said he had no specific knowledge and could neither confirm nor deny parts of the Post report, which said Reagan kept the notes, including material dealing with the Iran-contra scandal, to assist him in writing his memoirs.

According to the Post report, the question of a presidential journal was raised when White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan was questioned in closed session last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Regan was said to have taken offense at the idea that the committee might want the notes, which he held to be private and personal.

Mathes also confirmed that Edmund Morris, a free-lance writer who has been working for the last year on Reagan’s official biography, has met with the President “for about an hour about once a month, or possibly a little more frequently.”

Morris, who lives in New York, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying no congressional investigator has made contact with him and that he has agreed not to disclose the contents of his talks with Reagan until after his book is published.

Larry Speakes, who ended nearly six years as Reagan’s chief spokesman Saturday, said in an interview Sunday on CBS television’s “Face the Nation” that the report of a presidential journal was “a new one on me.”

‘Very, Very Open’

When asked if he thought Reagan would invoke executive privilege to withhold the notes, Speakes replied that the President has been “very, very open . . . with all of the investigations.”

“I guess it would be a question of whether the President felt that he was giving in on something that might bind future presidents to a precedent,” Speakes said. “That would be his main consideration, but his whole idea is to give as much as he can to the congressional committees.”

Under the principle of executive privilege, private papers of presidents and their staffs and many communications bearing on the presidential decision-making process are deemed to be outside the reach of Congress. The principle has been jealously guarded by presidents since the Administration of George Washington.

The Supreme Court in 1974 rejected former President Richard M. Nixon’s claim of executive privilege to block demands for tapes and records sought by the Watergate special prosecutor in the trial of six former White House aides, because it involved a criminal case. The Iran-contra affair has thus far produced no criminal action on which to base a parallel request for Reagan’s records. There is, however, an inquiry into possible illegalities headed by Lawence E. Walsh, a former deputy attorney general who is serving as independent counsel.