Baker Predicts Bork Will Be Confirmed

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. predicted Sunday that the Senate will confirm Judge Robert H. Bork as a Supreme Court justice after a “controversial, tumultuous, even pyrotechnic debate” produces a “searching evaluation” of President Reagan’s nominee.

Baker, former Republican leader of the Senate, said he based this judgment on conversations with the bipartisan leadership of the Senate and the Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on the nomination. Baker said those talks evoked the “general view . . . that it would be a controversial nomination, but that the President had a right to make his choice.”

The majority leader, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), gave “no indication that there would be a delay for the sake of delay on the nomination,” Baker said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

Byrd to Play ‘Hard Ball’

Despite Byrd’s assurance, it was noted that the majority leader had told reporters after the Bork nomination was announced Wednesday that he did not want to “stall for the sake of stalling,” but did intend to play “hard ball when it comes to this nomination” unless GOP senators stop their current “strategy of stalling the Senate” to prevent votes on issues they oppose.

Baker said he had not discussed the nomination with Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, who predicted Saturday that the Supreme Court will begin its October term without confirmation of Bork as the successor to Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., who is retiring.

While Reagan might well have picked a less controversial nominee than the rigidly strict-constructionist Bork, Baker said, the President’s selection was “very Ronald Reagan-like” in that he acted to carry out his stated beliefs.

‘Very Presidential’

“This man is not going to become a lame-duck President for a long, long time,” said Baker, who has worked hard during his three months at the White House to head off such a development. “He is acting very presidential. He is acting on long-held beliefs, and I think it’s going to be an interesting time.”

When the questioning turned to the Iran- contra affair, a continuing problem facing the Reagan White House, which will be the focus of more attention when former National Security Council aide Oliver L. North testifies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Baker characterized as impossible a report that North had ready, private access to the President that went unrecorded in White House logs.

Baker said he and the President had read the report in Washingtonian magazine and both had found the charge “astonishing.” Based on his knowledge of White House operations, Baker said, such a situation “could not have happened.” North’s “second- or third-level” staff job gave him no direct access to the President, Baker said, and a thorough search of White House records gives no sign that “North ever saw the President by himself, one-on-one, ever.”

On another tough issue, Baker predicted that the current deadlock between the Republican White House and the Democratic Congress over spending priorities will be resolved because both sides are aware that “we’ve got to have a budget.”

Baker said he believes Reagan will be willing to negotiate personally with Congress on the budget if it becomes necessary. But he said he had failed in repeated meetings with his one-time colleagues in Congress to work out a “mechanism for carrying out any agreement we made,” which Reagan has set as a prerequisite for such a meeting.