Reagan Still Getting Dialogue From a Script

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd emerged from the White House the other day, after leading a Senate delegation to a series of foreign affairs meetings in Europe, and told gathered reporters that President Reagan was “deeply appreciative” of his efforts.

It was by no means accidental that Byrd was left with this impression.

A detailed script prepared by Reagan’s staff for the private meeting instructed the President to say: “Bob, I want to thank you especially for undertaking this and for handling your discussions over there so effectively.”

That Reagan uses note cards containing “talking points” for many of his meetings has long been known--and critics have cited such preparations as an indication that he has not mastered the details of his job. Staff members preparing for a meeting are also expected to provide notes that he can use on the topic of the session, much as is the case for any busy executive.

However, the apparently accidental release of one detailed script for meetings this week has provided a broad and specific indication of just how extensively Reagan is prepared.

The script, replete with lines of conversational dialogue as well as main points to cover, somehow was included Thursday with routine press releases left for the news media in bins in the White House press room. It was discovered by ABC News, which used it for a caustic report by correspondent Sam Donaldson that poked fun at Reagan that night.

According to the ABC report, Reagan’s script recommended that, during a meeting with industrialist Armand Hammer, a longtime acquaintance who is heading a presidential advisory panel, Reagan should say at the start of the session: “Thank you, Armand, for coming here to present the report of the President’s cancer panel.”

He was then directed to say: “Can you tell me more about your efforts?”

Reagan, turning to Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen at the meeting, was to ask the Cabinet member: “Otis, what are your thoughts?”

According to the ABC report, the President’s script included such details as his farewell at the end of a meeting with leaders of the Easter Seal fund-raising drive and the national Easter Seal child.

The script contains the reminder to say: “God bless you all.”

Several White House officials refused to comment on the report, although one senior official said: “I consider it an episode--a vindictive, hateful episode--trying to embarrass the President on what is good staff work.”

On a day in which the White House was deeply involved with developments in Panama, where President Eric A. Delvalle sought to fire Gen. Manuel A. Noriega as head of the Panamanian Defense Forces, little notice was paid to the televised report, the official said.

But one source said that some within the White House reacted to the report with disappointment.

Some officials, the source added, “were embarrassed.”

Such embarrassment was evident in the fact that all copies of the daily White House News Summary--which contains a digest of newspaper stories and verbatim transcripts of television news reports about the White House, including Donaldson’s--were scooped up from secretaries’ desks in the White House press office and were not made available to reporters.