Speakes Spars With Media : Reagan Honors Truman; Ceremony Closed to Press

WASHINGTON —  President Reagan honored President Harry S. Truman today with a Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony that his spokesman, Larry Speakes, barred the news media from covering.

The medal was authorized by Congress in honor of the 33rd President who died at age 88 in 1972. Truman’s daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel, received the award in the Oval Office.

Reagan often invoked Truman’s feisty spirit in his political campaigns, and the Missourian was the last Democratic presidential candidate Reagan supported before his eventual conversion to the GOP.

Daniel told reporters later, “We both made reference to the fact that he helped Dad in 1948. He told a lot of stories.”

Asked how she felt about Reagan campaigning on her father’s themes, she said, “If they want to run on his coattails, that’s all right with me.” She also mused that Democrats angered at Reagan’s use of Truman’s old campaign train last year were “incensed--but they didn’t think of it first.”

During last year’s campaign, Reagan presented a similar medal to the late Hubert H. Humphrey, mentor of his opponent, Walter F. Mondale, in a well-publicized ceremony in the Rose Garden.

This time, however, Speakes barred news coverage, saying, “That’s just the way I want it.”

He denied that closing the event, and a later reception for GOP donors, had anything to do with the President’s preoccupation with today’s MX vote in the House.

When a network correspondent asked why the event was closed, Speakes said camera crews would be allowed to cover it “if you could stand right here and guarantee me that the Harry Truman congressional medal will make your evening news. . . . Otherwise, forget it.”

Speakes later relented and let still photographers in to record the event.