Speakes Quits Job; Furor Over Quotes Cited

Former White House spokesman Larry Speakes resigned his job as chief spokesman for Merrill Lynch & Co. on Friday, three days after a miniscandal erupted over disclosures that he bragged in his new book of making up quotes attributed to President Reagan during the 1985 Geneva summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

At Merrill Lynch in New York, officials who declined to be identified said that Speakes had not been pressured to quit his $250,000-a-year job as vice president for communications, which he took in February, 1987, after six years at the White House. However, the sources said, Speakes’ superiors had made clear that they were “uncomfortable” with the controversy he had caused.

Reagan Declines Comment

Reagan declined to comment when asked about the resignation. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, who earlier in the week had described Speakes’ action in manufacturing quotations as a “damned outrage,” said only that he was “sorry for him personally.”

In a statement issued by the firm’s press office, Speakes was quoted as saying that his departure was “the best course of action for Merrill Lynch and for me, personally.”

The company, in an apparently unconscious irony, continued the statement by supplying a quotation from unidentified “Merrill Lynch officials” who “said: ‘We accept Larry Speakes’ resignation with regret. Larry has made a significant contribution to our firm during his time here.’ ”

When asked if the remark could be attributed to any individual at the firm, spokesman Peter T. Leach said no. But, he insisted, “it’s a genuine quote from Merrill Lynch generally.”

Speakes’ book resulted in an uproar heard in all quarters of the nation’s capital, a place where even the most innocuous statements are regularly interpreted as having great significance. It was only logical, therefore, that the unusually blunt and biting passages of the memoir would go off like a bombshell.

White House reporters, including many who disliked Speakes for his sarcastic manner as Reagan’s spokesman, widely reported the ensuing outrage by many officials over the memoir.

“It’s a book that was not kind to many people,” said UPI White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas, one of the few prominent White House reporters not attacked in Speakes’ book. “The chickens have come home to roost.”

Many here and elsewhere questioned whether the details of Speakes’ ghostwriting--a technique employed commonly in official Washington--had crossed the line into unacceptable behavior. On Wednesday, Reagan, speaking to newspaper editors, denounced “kiss and tell books” but said that he had not been aware of the widely circulated fake quotation until this week.

The brouhaha mushroomed from what began as a simple self-promotion effort gone awry.

Stressed Negatives

Earlier this month, Speakes’ publicists began circulating around Washington advance copies of his new White House memoir, “Speaking Out.” As a primary selling point, the publicists trumpeted the book’s negative comments--critics called them vindictive--about First Lady Nancy Reagan, former presidential staff rivals and members of the White House press corps.

At first, the effort appeared to be working when comments from the book immediately began appearing in People magazine, USA Today and the New York Times. Among them were passages calling columnist George Will “arrogant” and saying that Nancy Reagan is “likely to stab you in the back.”

On Tuesday, however, the Washington Post reported that the book also boasted that Speakes made up a pithy remark which he then told reporters Reagan had said to Gorbachev at the Geneva summit. The remark--”there is much that divides us, but I believe the world breathes easier because we are talking here together”--was widely reported.

Speakes conceded in the book that “it was clearly wrong to take such liberties” because the Soviets could have told reporters that Reagan had never said any such thing. But he sought to justify his actions by saying that Gorbachev was winning “the media version of ‘Star Wars’ ” over Reagan.

The ghostwriting of statements for senior government officials by speech writers and press secretaries is a widely followed practice in Washington and elsewhere. Speakes’ book itself was ghostwritten by magazine writer Robert Pack.

The book, which carries a $19.95 list price, is scheduled to be officially published May 2. Earlier this week, Speakes said that he had circulated his yet-to-be-published manuscript to three longtime friends, asking them to take out “anything that would get me in trouble.”

None noted the summit incident. Neither, apparently, did any of the many reporters who read the book before Tuesday’s article, which was carried by The Times.

Staff writer Michael A. Hiltzik contributed to this story.