Out, Out

IT IS SOMEWHAT SURPRISING that taping scandals did not ring a bell in President Reagan's mind, when he went to bat for Charles Wick last week. As usual, though, the President showed surprisingly little grasp of the serious implications of a member of his staff.

Charles Wick, director of the United States Information Agency, is guilty of several rather damning actions, few of them illegal but most of them certainly unethical. First and perhaps most depressing from the man who runs the Voice of America. Wick lied to New York Times reporter Jane Perlez and columnist William Safire when they questioned him about his taping activities. Although Wick had been taping conversations for some time and may well have carried about a tape device for use when away from the office, he denied to Safire and Perlez that he had ever taped without the consent of the caller, and then later conceded that he sometimes forgot to get that consent. The worst example of his failing memory seems to have been the day he allegedly took a pocket tape recorder to Florida and taped a phone call to Chief of Staff James Baker III without telling him. Baker wasn't the only one to find that taping incident "unethical"; the district attorney of Palm Beach, where such taping may well be a felony, presently has the event under investigation. Similarly displeased are two Congressional committees and the Federal Services Administration, who are also looking over Wick's taping activities.

Indeed, the only one who is not displeased by the USIA chief's conduct is the President, who last week called Wick "honorable," and pledged to let him "continue" in his post. Perhaps Wick's previous Wattian statement this summer that the reason Margaret Thatcher opposed the Grenada invasion was that she was a "woman" should have clued the President earlier on that another staff member was falling by the wayside. Perhaps the USIA chief's alleged summer redecoration of his house with public funds should have alerted Mr. Reagan that Wick was spluttering. Let us at least hope that the Congressional investigations prompt the President into appropriate action. Nor should he just put Mr. Wick on the waiting list for Secretary of the Interior. He should remove the Chief of the United States Information Agency from his post.