Perot Candidacy Hinges on Interpretation of His Past : Image: Questions about his private and public record don’t always jibe with his official self-portrait.

Four months after its unlikely birth on a TV call-in show, Ross Perot’s all-but-announced presidential candidacy is suddenly hinging on a central area of inquiry: Does the can-do billionaire have a disturbing impulse to go too far?

Does the blustery Texan’s country charm conceal a harsh, inflexible side? Has he sometimes played too rough and ruthlessly with those who opposed him in business and public life? Most of all, does he have such a taste for snooping and conspiracy that he cannot be entrusted with the federal government’s vast investigative and law enforcement apparatus?

Such questions, coming into focus as details emerge about Perot’s record as a businessman and sometime-participant in public controversies, have brought him to a turning point that could decide the fate of his extraordinary bid for the presidency.

If doubts crystallize about whether he would use the enormous powers of the Oval Office judiciously, his campaign could falter and fade. If, on the other hand, voters conclude that Perot’s past actions reflect strength and determination but not menace, then he could emerge stronger than ever.

“There seems to be a mean side, a gut-fighter aspect to him, coming into view,” said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. “The voters may buy it, they may reject it--but Perot’s going to have to deal with it. The American people, they don’t have much tolerance for that kind of stuff.”

White House aides, hoping to fan the sparks of doubt, call Perot a “monster.” The challenger, forced to defend himself for the first time in the campaign, accuses the Republicans of Nazi-style smear tactics.

“This isn’t my personality . . . I’m not running around like Sherlock Holmes trying to do anything,” he said at a press conference Wednesday. “The Republican dirty tricks committee has been putting this together for weeks.”

Beyond the partisan rhetoric on both sides, what does the record show about how Perot handles power? The answer is necessarily incomplete because much remains to be learned about the hundreds of ventures in which the 62-year old Texan has been involved.

The Perot organization, meanwhile, did not respond to written questions sent June 17 on this story. James Squires, Perot’s press secretary, did not return telephone calls.

Nonetheless, a substantial amount of information has become known about how Perot uses power when pursuing his goals or defending himself against what he sees as threats.

The simple self-portrait that Perot presents is glowing: The son of a Texarkana cotton-broker who built a company and created an industry with a computer-services concern called Electronic Data Systems Inc.

He became a hero to many Americans in Christmas, 1969, when he tried unsuccessfully to fly gifts, food and medicine to American prisoners-of-war in Vietnam; wider fame came 10 years later when he organized a commando-style raid on revolutionary Tehran to free two jailed employees.

But sprinkled throughout his career are deeds that flatter him less. And while Perot has been forceful in rebutting some of the charges that have recently surfaced, critics see a pattern that runs through many of his undertakings.

Here are the major elements in Perot’s life that have become the center of controversy:

POW/MIA probes: Perot crusaded in 1986 and 1987 to find out if any American soldiers declared missing in action during the Vietnam War remained alive in Southeast Asia as prisoners. He interviewed sources, reviewed documents--and concluded Administration officials were covering up their knowledge of MIAs. Some were inept, he came to believe, and possibly corrupt.

Recent admissions by government officials show that Perot was right in concluding that, during the war’s final phase, the Defense Department and the White House were less than candid with the public and concealed evidence suggesting that some prisoners were left behind.

What has stirred concern about Perot’s conduct, however, is his pursuit of one government official--Richard L. Armitage, the Reagan Administration’s point man on the POW-MIA issue.

Perot tried to get him fired, and at one point passed on a thick folder of allegations about him to the FBI. The papers accused Armitage and others of involvement in drug-dealing, arms trafficking and money laundering--charges that have gone nowhere and have been vigorously denied by Armitage, who is now the Bush Administration’s coordinator of aid to the former Soviet republics.

Perot insists, as he has when called upon to explain his actions in other matters, that he acted only after another person approached him. James Badey, a retired Arlington, Va., plainclothes police officer “wanted to see me” and delivered the file, Perot says.

But Badey tells a different version. “Perot called me,” he says.

The FBI was not alone in hearing from Perot about Armitage. Perot once waved a photograph of Armitage and a Vietnamese woman in front of Washington Post reporter David Remnick to press his point that Armitage’s government position was compromised by his relationship with the woman, who was a frequent gambler.

The woman was “sleazy,” Remnick says Perot told him.

Perot has acknowledged that he showed Remnick the photograph. But he says the discussion was “off the record” and insists that he only did what any citizen would do.

“I’m a law-abiding citizen. I am given this. I turn it over to the law enforcement agencies,” he said at the press conference Wednesday.

Land deal: Perot said he paid a Washington law firm $10,000 in the 1980s to probe a $48-million tax break given to Pennzoil, a company chaired by one of Bush’s former oil-business partners. The former partner, J. Hugh Liedtke, got the break on the sale of 100,000 acres of New Mexico ranchland, a deal Perot told the Post could have been part of a “mini-Teapot Dome” scandal.

Perot said he had the tax break investigated only after it was brought to his attention by Post reporter Bob Woodward in 1988. Perot said he himself had considered buying the land and was suspicious about the break because a decade earlier he had been offered the tract and another 400,000 acres for $25 million.

But he has not explained why the three thick binders of information he obtained were delivered, not to the IRS, but to a newspaper that could have embarrassed Bush while the vice president was campaigning for the presidency.

Perot these days insists he will only speak of Bush as a “fine man, fine family.”

But many have heard Perot’s sharp private denunciations of Bush as a weakling who can’t finish what he starts. Even as he was denying last week that he harbored any dislike of Bush, Perot was charging that the President must have known about the Iran-Contra affair.

“He was in charge of counterintelligence,” Perot said.

October Surprise: Perot has acknowledged that earlier this year he sent an aide to interview a prison inmate who claimed--apparently falsely--to have information on Bush’s role in the so-called “October Surprise.” The term refers to an alleged effort by the Reagan-Bush campaign to forestall release of the Iran hostages until after the 1980 election.

Perot earlier described the interviewing of the prisoner as a “credibility check” on Bush. Last week, Perot amended this explanation slightly, saying he went to the man’s aid because of entreaties from the inmate’s relatives.

Searches: In 1988, Perot was widely quoted as suggesting that Dallas police cordon off sections of that city’s poor neighborhoods for house-to-house searches for guns and drugs. Perot has said he never made the comment, but others, including the head of the Dallas Police Assn., say he did.

Intimidating opponents: While Perot insists that he has no interest in compromising information, Richard Shlakman, EDS general counsel under Perot, saw it differently, according to Todd Mason’s book, “Perot: An Unauthorized Biography.”

Viewing a situation as “them versus us” was “almost a Ross Perot genetic disposition,” Shlakman is quoted as saying in the book. “If you are in a fight with someone . . . find the dirt.”

Shlakman did not return a reporter’s calls for further comment.

Here is a look at specific cases that have surfaced in which Perot’s tactics have been questioned.

* Richard L. Connor, the publisher of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, recently wrote that Perot, angered by a 1989 Star-Telegram account of his son’s business dealings, called Connor to suggest he had compromising pictures of a newspaper reporter and a city official.

Perot has denied he made such an accusation and has claimed he has a yet-unidentified witness to support his side of the story.

* Also in 1989, a former Perot aide accused him of threatening to expose the aide’s alleged affairs to gain leverage in a business dispute with him. In court papers filed in Dallas, former EDS attorney Richard Salwen said Perot had information about hotel reservations that Salwen had allegedly made and flowers he had allegedly sent to women. Salwen’s suit was settled, and Perot has denied his allegations.

* In the late 1970s, as he crusaded against the proposed design of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., Perot hired Roy Cohn, the late counsel to one-time Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, to press his view that there should be an audit of the accounts of the group in charge of the design.

Foes of the design were circulating allegations that the committee was guilty of self-dealing, improper record-keeping and waste. But a General Accounting Office investigation found no basis for the accusations.

* After General Motors bought EDS in 1984 for $2.5 billion, Perot became embroiled in a dispute over how the auto maker operated itself and his computer firm. At one meeting with EDS executives, Perot proposed “nuking” GM--shutting down its computer systems and thereby paralyzing its manufacturing, The Times has reported.

A senior adviser to Perot acknowledged that the proposal was made, but excused it as coming “in the heat of battle.”

EDS contracts: In business, Perot has said he prides himself on being someone who “plays in the middle of the field, not on the sidelines.”

But while his skill as a capitalist is beyond doubt, his bare-knuckle style has been questioned, particularly concerning the big government contracts that made up a large share of EDS’ work. A series of federal audits have turned up a variety of alleged problems with past EDS work.

During a 1982 bid competition to upgrade Social Security’s computer system, EDS was found to have obtained improper information, including details of other companies’ bids.

In the late 1960s, a congressional committee investigated the way Perot launched EDS with lucrative contracts for Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the aged. While EDS was never alleged to have broken any law, the investigation turned up accusations of excessive charges, conflict of interest and EDS denying the government use of a software record-keeping system the firm had developed with $250,000 in government money.

The conflict of interest charge arose after Perot in 1966 landed the subcontract from the Texas Blue Cross organization to handle Medicare claims. A disgruntled employee disclosed later that Perot won the contract even though--unbeknown to the government--he was also being paid $22,000 a year as head of data-processing operations for Blue Cross.

Blue Cross gave Perot the contract without competition. Although a federal official warned Blue Cross in 1967 that competition was required, the next year Blue Cross--with no advance warning to its federal clients--gave EDS a new no-bid subcontract.

The government estimated that EDS might be earning profits of 200% for the 1968 subcontract. And in the 1970s, EDS was accused of over-charging on the processing of claims for California’s Medicare program.

Perot and EDS officials maintain EDS has saved the government many millions of dollars, and that its good performance is demonstrated in the fact that it still holds so many government contracts.

Brokerage firm: In 1970, Perot bought the troubled Wall Street brokerage firm duPont Glore Forgen, then quickly began alienating his sales force by setting the kind of strict rules that had worked at the highly regimented EDS. The rules included bans on colored shirts and long hair, as well as defined work hours for brokers who had enjoyed a large degree of autonomy.

About 700 brokers quit--and took their customers with them.

Perot began denouncing what he termed Wall Street’s slack management practices. Other Wall Street firms, in turn, became less eager to cut duPont in on the securities-underwriting business it needed. Soon the Texan was forced to liquidate the firm, losing more than $60 million.

Many on Wall Street say the firm probably would have collapsed anyway, but they believe Perot’s style did not help. “The street turned its back on him,” said retired executive Walter E. Auch, who had held a top post with Perot’s team.

Embattled attitude: Last week, Perot suggested that the recent spate of more critical news coverage of his record had been orchestrated by the GOP’s “dirty tricks committee” to undermine him on the week of his birthday, when many believed he would announce his candidacy.

Similarly, after he faced probing questions at an April meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Perot asserted in an interview with The Times that most of the questions were given to reporters and editors “by the Republican people. . . . Keep in mind, everything you see the Republican Party doing to me is coming straight from the top.”

During an earlier controversy, his efforts on the POW/MIA issue, Perot asserted that in 1970 Viet Cong agents infiltrated Canada and sent instructions to the United States for the Black Panthers to assassinate him and his family.

FBI officials say they can find no evidence of such assassination orders.