White House Spokesman Calls Fakes ‘Outrage’ : Fitzwater Assails Speakes’ Quotes

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called it “a damned outrage” Tuesday that his predecessor, Larry Speakes, had attributed fake quotes to President Reagan on at least three occasions.

Fitzwater, clearly concerned about his own reputation for truthfulness, blistered Speakes at his daily news briefing for having “cast aspersions on the presidency and on my position.”

“I have not talked to the President about it this morning, but I’m sure he would be upset about it,” said Fitzwater, who succeeded Speakes as chief White House spokesman 14 months ago. “I guarantee you that he does not approve of making up statements or of misleading in any way.”

Says He Told Reagan

Speakes, who writes in a new book about the fabrications, said in a telephone interview from New York that he had informed Reagan after feeding a pair of phony quotes to reporters at the President’s 1985 summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Geneva.

“He never objected,” said Speakes, now vice president for communications at the Merrill Lynch brokerage firm.

However, Speakes added, he did not tell either Reagan or Secretary of State George P. Shultz that he had “put Shultz’s words in Reagan’s mouth” when describing to reporters a 1983 Cabinet meeting on the downing of a Korean airliner by the Soviet Union.

In retrospect, Speakes said, the fabrications were a mistake, although he insisted that the statements faithfully reflected the President’s thinking.

Won’t Ask President

Fitzwater did not return repeated phone calls on the question of Reagan’s awareness of the fake quotes. White House Communications Director Thomas C. Griscom said that he had “no idea” whether the President had been aware, “and I don’t intend to ask him.”

In his book, “Speaking Out,” Speakes said that Reagan was losing a public relations battle with Gorbachev at the Geneva summit and so he felt compelled “to spruce up the President’s image” by telling reporters that Reagan had said to the Soviet leader during one interlude: “There is much that divides us, but I believe the world breathes easier because we are talking here together.” He said Reagan also remarked: “Our differences are serious, but so is our commitment to improving understanding.”

The fake quotes were widely used by news organizations.

Regan Recollection

A spokesman for former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, who was present at the summit, said Tuesday that Regan remembers Speakes relaying the quotes to reporters.

“Regan’s presumption until this morning was that Larry had gone in and gotten the quotes from the President,” said the aide, Tom Dawson. “They were great quotes too. They sounded like they came from either Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt.”

In attributing to Reagan statements actually made by Shultz, Speakes suggested that the President had taken an active role in the 1983 Cabinet meeting, when in fact he had said little. Speakes wrote that “my decision to put Shultz’s words in Reagan’s mouth played well and neither of them complained.”

Shultz Unaware of Action

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said Tuesday that Shultz had been unaware of Speakes’ action.

“Obviously, we don’t do that sort of thing here,” Redman added.

In his book, Speakes throws darts at numerous Administration officials and reporters with whom he dealt in his six years in the Reagan White House.

He said that it “would be like re-inventing the wheel” to get Reagan prepared for a news conference. First Lady Nancy Reagan, he said, is “likely to stab you in the back.” Vice President George Bush is “wishy-washy . . . the perfect yes man,” and former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger is “a small man, a whiny type of guy,” Speakes wrote.