THE WASHINGTON SUMMIT : Tass Not Amused by Reagan’s Jokes

MOSCOW — The Soviet news agency Tass said Sunday that President Reagan’s anti-Soviet joke-telling was “dubious in taste and tact” and complained of a massive U.S government disinformation campaign being launched on the eve of the superpower summit.

Reagan often ends speeches with a joke about Soviet inefficiency and shortages and contradictions in the communist system, a practice the Kremlin has complained about in the past.

Tass complained that the official press information kits being distributed to each journalist arriving for the summit by the U.S. Information Agency, an official U.S. government department, showed “indiscretion and the obvious lack of conscientiousness on the part of its authors.”