Tempting The Truth Squad

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

ROSS PEROT SAYS HE'S NOT A POLITICIAN, BUT HE CERTAINLY has a talent for causing political controversy when he starts talking. Last week when Perot told C-SPAN that President Reagan had encouraged him to accept a 1987 invitation from Vietnam to go to Hanoi and that he delivered an important report to the President when he returned, some former White House officials were outraged. They say that everyone -- the President included -- was totally opposed to Perot's trip but that the tenacious Texan could not be dissuaded. Once in Hanoi, these former Reagan aides say, Perot inappropriately contradicted American policy by talking grandly to the Vietnamese of major development aid programs. Some of the insiders even groused that he had come close to violating the Logan Act, which forbids civilians to conduct diplomacy. "Perot set us back by months with the Vietnamese," says a former official.