Dukakis Denies Knowledge of Leak on Biden

Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis, responding Monday to a Time magazine story, said he had no personal knowledge that his campaign workers sabotaged the White House bid of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and would be “very, very angry” if they did.

“Anybody who knows me and knows the kind of campaigns I run knows how strongly I feel about negative campaigning,” the Massachusetts governor told a news conference. “I make it very clear to my staff people and I think they know what to expect of me and what I expect of them. I can’t be more emphatic than that.”

Dukakis said he would be astonished if any of his campaign workers supplied to the news media, without knowledge of his staff, a videotape damaging to Biden’s campaign.

Time reported in this week’s editions that a videotape containing clips of speeches by Biden juxtaposed against remarks by British politician Neil Kinnock was leaked to the New York Times and the Des Moines Register by someone connected to Dukakis’ presidential campaign.

Biden at times used quotes from Kinnock’s speech without attribution. The resulting furor over the unattributed words, as well as reports of law school plagiarism, led the Delaware senator to withdraw last week from the Democratic presidential race.

The New York Times denied the Time magazine report and the Des Moines Register refused to discuss anything about its source, the Associated Press reported Monday.