Bell Book Says Officials Told Racist Jokes : Reagan Aide Says He Doubts Claim by Ex-Education Secretary

President Reagan’s first secretary of education says mid-level Administration officials made racist jokes and other scurrilous remarks during civil rights discussions, but Reagan’s chief spokesman said Tuesday he does not believe it.

Terrel H. Bell, in a memoir of Reagan’s first term, said the slurs included references to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as “Martin Lucifer Coon” and calling Title IX, a federal law guaranteeing women equal educational opportunity, “the lesbian’s bill of rights.”

Bell’s memoir is titled “The Thirteenth Man: A Reagan Cabinet Memoir.” In it, he says that “since I had heard Ronald Reagan speak out convincingly against all forms of discrimination, I felt that my own dedication to enforcement of the civil rights laws as they applied to education would have the full support of the President.”

Instead, he said, he was confronted with “evidence of apparent bias among mid-level right-wing staffers at the White House and at (the Office of Management and Budget). I was shocked to hear their sick humor and racist cliches.”

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, asked Tuesday to comment on Bell’s statements, said: “I certainly haven’t heard of any (racist remarks), and I think that would be wrong and, frankly, I don’t believe it.”

Asked whether he would ask Reagan about Bell’s statements, the spokesman said he thought that would be “beneath the dignity of the President and myself.”

Bell did not identify those who made the racist or scurrilous comments. He could not be reached for further comment.

In his book, he says the jokes about King were made as Reagan was deciding whether to sign or veto a bill establishing King’s birthday as a national holiday. He eventually signed it.

Bell said: “I do not mean to imply that these scurrilous remarks were common utterances in the rooms and corridors of the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, but I heard them when issues related to civil rights enforcement weighed heavily on my mind.”

Bell added: “It seemed obvious they were said for my benefit, since they often accompanied sardonic references to ‘Comrade Bell.’ ”

Elsewhere in his book, he depicts Edwin Meese III, the former White House counselor and now attorney general, as “a man who literally detested the federal government.” He calls Meese “the champion of the far right in the White House.”

Bell, now a professor of educational administration at the University of Utah, said Meese led a group of “movement conservatives” who operated “almost like a secret society” and fought to abolish the Education Department and steer Administration policies to the right.

They despised Bell and other “pragmatists,” including Vice President George Bush and then-White House chief of staff and now Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, according to Bell’s memoirs.

A Justice Department spokesman, Patrick Korten, said that Bell’s comments “are the musings of a moderate who has a phobia about movement conservatives.”