Stefan Halper
An operation to collect inside information on Carter Administration foreign policy was run in Ronald Reagan's campaign headquarters in the 1980 Presidential campaign, according to present and former Reagan Administration officials.

Those sources said they did not know exactly what information the operation produced or whether it was anything beyond the usual grab bag of rumors and published news reports. But they said it involved a number of retired Central Intelligence Agency officials and was highly secretive.

The sources identified Stefan A. Halper, a campaign aide involved in providing 24-hour news updates and policy ideas to the traveling Reagan party, as the person in charge. Mr. Halper, until recently deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and now chairman of the Palmer National Bank in Washington, was out of town today and could not be reached. But Ray S. Cline, his father-in-law, a former senior Central Intelligence official, rejected the account as a ''romantic fallacy.''

Investigations Under Way

The disclosure of the information-gathering operation added to the furor over revelations that Reagan campaign officials came into possession of Carter debate strategy papers before the candidates' televised debate. The matter is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Congressional committee.

Responding to inquiries about the gathering of information in the campaign, a high Reagan Administration official said there was a memorandum from a junior campaign official to several senior Reagan campaign aides citing the need for information from within the Carter Administration on foreign policy decisions. The official said Mr. Halper was not the junior official.

Tonight, The Washington Post said it had obtained documents that had been passed to officials in the Reagan campaign by a campaign volunteer, Daniel Jones, who said he had got them from a secret agent inside the Carter Administration. Notes by Mr. Jones on the documents described their source as a ''reliable mole.'' The Post said the memos were addressed to William J. Casey, Bob Gray and Edwin Meese 3d, all prominent officials in the Reagan election effort.

Mr. Meese, now the President's Counselor, and Mr. Gray indicated they did not remember seeing the memos. Mr. Jones told The Post and The Associated Press that he had written the memos and said he had met the ''mole'' but did not know his identity.

Mr. Halper, the former campaign aide said to have headed the information-gathering operation, nominally worked for Robert Garrick, the director of campaign operations. Mr. Garrick said in a telephone interview recently that Mr. Halper was ''supposed to help with communications, but I kind of thought he had another agenda going -he was always on the phone with the door closed, and he never called me in and discussed it with me.''

Speaking of Mr. Halper, David Prosperi, a Reagan campaign aide, now with the Superior Oil Company, said, ''He provided us with wire stories and Carter speeches, but people talked about his having a network that was keeping track of things inside the Government, mostly in relation to the October surprise.''

The Reagan campaign team used the term ''October surprise'' to refer to the possibility that President Carter might take some dramatic action with regard to the hostage situation in Iran or some other action to try to turn the tide of the election.

Mr. Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence, who was Mr. Reagan's campaign director, said in an interview Tuesday that such a surpise was of special concern to Reagan strategists. He said Mr. Garrick had spoken of using retired military officers to watch military airfields for the dispatching of hospital aircraft for the hostages.

A source from the Reagan campaign who asked not to be named said, ''There was some C.I.A. stuff coming from Halper, and some agency guys were hired.'' He added that he was never aware that this information was particularly useful and that he and others had their own sources within the Administration who provided unsolicited information.

Receipt of Security Papers

The same source said Richard V. Allen, Mr. Reagan's chief foreign policy adviser in the campaign and his first national security adviser, received classified National Security Council documents from a Carter Administration official. Mr. Allen has previously acknowledged receiving material, which he described as being ''innocuous,'' that dealt with morale on the N.S.C. staff.

According to the sources, Mr. Halper worked closely with David R. Gergen on the staff of George Bush when Mr. Bush was seeking the Republican Presidential nomination. The sources said that Mr. Gergen, now director of White House communications, and James A. Baker 3d, another top Bush campaign aide now an assistant to Mr. Reagan, brought Mr. Halper onto the Reagan campaign staff after the Republican convention.

Mr. Bush was Director of Central Intelligence under President Ford, and former Bush aides said today that many former C.I.A. officials had offered their help in the Bush campaign. The former aides said Mr. Bush himself was against anything that might smack of ''C.I.A. support.''

No Response From Gergen

Mr. Gergen declined to return several telephone calls. Instead, he telephoned Mr. Cline, Mr. Halper's father-in-law, and Mr. Cline got in touch with The New York Times.

Later, a source close to Mr. Gergen telephoned to say that Mr. Gergen was ''unaware of any organized intelligence operation of the kind described, but that he was aware that Mr. Halper was working on issues and the development of information for the campaign.''

The source added, ''There was definitely no reporting relationship to either Gergen or Baker during the campaign effort.'' Mr. Cline said Mr. Halper, his son-in-law, was on a ''special staff to analyze campaign issues, just as he did in the Bush campaign, and that he was responsible for looking for booby traps and studying what Carter people were saying to look for vulnerabilities.''

He added: ''I think this is all a romantic fallacy about an old C.I.A. network. I believe I have been close enough to the intelligence community for the last 40 years that I would have discovered it. Such an effort would not have been worthwhile and I believe it was not executed.'' He added, ''That does not mean that some individual or individuals didn't do something, but there was not a deliberate effort to penetrate'' the Government.

Mr. Halper's personal secretary, who now works at the White House, was reached at her home through the White House switchboard, and when asked about an information-gathering network run by Mr. Halper in the campaign, she hung up. White House operators then said she was ''unavailable.''

None of the sources said they knew of any relationship between Mr. Halper and Mr. Casey in the campaign. Tuesday, Mr. Casey denied that there was a campaign ''intelligence organization as such.''

Mr. Halper served for almost two years as deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs. State Department officials said the White House, and Mr. Gergen in particular, had applied a great deal of pressure to create this position for Mr. Halper.

Mr. Halper, 37 years old, also served in various capacities in the White House under Presidents Nixon and Ford. In an interview two weeks ago, Mr. Halper recalled that ''there was this material, the existence was widely known or at least generally known in the campaign.''

''I may have seen a few pages of it,'' he continued, ''but I can't confirm any particular subject or format. If pages of material had come my way, I would have routed them over to the debate group.'' Mr. Baker and Mr. Gergen were in charge of the debate group.

Mr. Halper said it was his recollection that ''the whole thing was not significant,'' and that ''it was pretty tightly held at some other level above me.''

Aide Tells of Memos

WASHINGTON, July 6 (AP) - Daniel Jones, a Reagan volunteer, says he sent memorandums to top 1980 campaign officials attributing attached information to a ''mole'' in the Carter White House, The Washington Post said in its Thursday issue.

The newspaper said it had obtained the memos from a collector of campaign memorabilia who found them in the trash at Reagan campaign headquarters shortly after the election. Mr. Jones said, ''I can't deny it,'' adding ''you've got the documents,'' when shown some of the memos, the newspaper said.

Mr. Jones said he met with the secret agent only once and, declining to identify his source, added, ''I literally never knew his name.''

The memos were addressed to Edwin Meese 3d, now counselor to the President; William J. Casey, now Director of Central Intelligence, and the campaign's deputy director for communications, Bob Gray, now a Washington public relations executive.

Mr. Gray told The Associated Press, ''I don't remember them at all,'' though he remembered Mr. Jones. He also said, ''If I had tossed them in the trash can, then it's pretty obvious I did not think much of them.''

A call to the home of Mr. Casey's spokesman went unanswered. Mark Weinberg, assistant White House press secretary, read a statement from Mr. Meese that said: ''I recall that there was a volunteer on the campaign named Dan Jones. So far as I can recall, he would never have had any reason to write any memo to me. Certainly I do not have any recollection of any memo from him or anyone else which mentioned a mole in the White House.''

One Jones memo to the three campaign officials said: ''According to latest information from a reliable White House mole (at) 6:30 on Oct. 27, the following is President Carter's itinerary for the remainder of the campaign.'' The itinerary had been given to reporters by the White House two days earlier, the newspaper said.

Contents of Memos

At the bottom, the memo said: ''Attached is recent White House memo re certain economic information.'' A check mark was beside Gray's name.

The White House memo, dated Oct. 24, was from two Presidential assistants, Anne Wexler and Alonzo McDonald, to members of the Cabinet outlining possible comments on the latest movements in the Consumer Price Index.

Another White House memo from the two, dated Oct. 10 and also on economics, bore the handwritten notation at the top: ''Bob - Report from White House mole.''

On the second page was the notation: ''Bob - expect this line of attack next week, Dan.'' Typed across the top of the first page was: ''To: William Casey (for transmittal to Martin Anderson.)'' The collector who made the memos available did not want to be identified, the newspaper said. According to the collector's account, he visited the Reagan campaign headquarters in suburban Arlington, Va., a few days after the election, seeking bumber stickers and campaign buttons. He was told they had just been thrown out and he was welcome to help himself to the trash behind the building.

There he found advertising layouts, which he took, and the documents, of which he took a carton-load.

Gray's Opinion of Jones

The newspaper quoted Mr. Gray as saying Mr. Jones was the ''kind of fellow who'd love to elevate his importance,'' adding, ''He liked to use the term 'White House mole' to build his sense of drama, and to show he had contacts.''

But Mr. Gray told The Associated Press: ''I did not tell them that. He's the kind of guy who might say that to feel important, that's the way I assess his personality.''

Mr. Gray also said of the material he was shown by the newspaper, ''There's no indication on the memo that it was received by any of us,'' and ''I would bet money that Casey and Meese never saw them.''