American Notes

THE PRESIDENT Back to Bethesda

In a regularly scheduled six-month follow-up to his surgery for colon cancer last July, President Reagan paid a return visit last week to an operating room in Bethesda Naval Hospital. What had been billed as a routine examination proved to be a complicated series of tests. Doctors clipped three tiny polyps from the wall of the President's colon and shipped them off for examination. A surgeon shaved off a tiny growth on the right side of Reagan's face and sent it, too, for a biopsy. The six-hour medical work-up also included X rays, blood tests and a CAT scan, which provides images of internal organs.

To the waiting press corps, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes issued a one-paragraph statement, including the assurance that "all indications are that when the lab results are in they will confirm the President to be in excellent health." Next day the results were released: all the growths were found to be benign. That came as no surprise to Reagan. When he departed from the hospital the day before, he said he felt "just fine" and flashed the thumbs-up sign as he and Nancy boarded a helicopter and headed off to Camp David for the three-day weekend. MONEY Counterfeiting Made Easy

When the plain-paper copying process was discovered in 1938, its revolutionary potential was so little appreciated that Inventor Chester Carlson wound up selling it to the Battelle Memorial Institute, a research foundation in Columbus. In 1947, Battelle in turn sold the technology to the company that eventually became Xerox. Now Battelle has warned that Carlson's invention, which has become not only an office fixture but something of a technological wonder, will by the end of the decade be capable of duplicating the delicate shadings of U.S. currency. In a study for the Federal Reserve, Battelle predicts that as many as 20% of those with access to the super copiers will use the new machines' extraordinary color capability to roll off near-perfect counterfeits of paper money.

Worried about the funny-money threat, the U.S. Treasury is considering plans to issue harder-to-copy greenbacks. Some proposals: subtle watermarks and plastic security threads woven into the currency. But Treasury Secretary James Baker still must approve the changes, and it will be at least a year after that before new bills are printed--on legitimate Government presses. DIPLOMACY Rules of Engagement

The President Taylor, a U.S. merchant vessel with a small cargo of cotton, was cruising in the Gulf of Oman 26 miles out of the United Arab Emirates port of Fujaira when it happened. An Iranian frigate warned the Taylor to prepare to be boarded. The U.S. captain reluctantly consented. For 45 minutes an Iranian officer and six seamen, three equipped with submachine guns, searched for materiel that might be destined for Iraq, Iran's enemy in the five-year-old gulf war. Finding none, they departed.

Though the incident was the first in which a U.S. vessel had been searched by the Iranians, the American reaction was unexpectedly mild. State Department Spokesman Bernard Kalb noted that Iran may have acted lawfully, explaining that a nation at war has "certain rights to ascertain whether neutral shipping is being used the provide contraband to an opposing belligerent." Why the moderate tone? Said one Navy officer: "The White House rapidly grasped that not only do we do this sort of thing ourselves, but we may want to do it again." The U.S., for example, often intercepts ships suspected of smuggling illegal drugs to the mainland. CONGRESS The Comforts of Office

Spanish lessons. TV makeup. A $2,800 tab at Washington's swank Fourways restaurant. These are just some of the "office expenses" that Republican Senators have billed to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A report in Common Cause magazine charges that the committee, set up to help elect Republicans to the Senate, has created a "slush fund" that funneled almost $1.4 million to Republican Senators in 1983 and '84 and nearly $450,000 during the first eight months of 1985. The fund grew out of the fact that the G.O.P. raises far more money than it can legally spend on Senate campaigns.

Although Senate rules allow such payments for legitimate office expenses, Common Cause claims that some Senators (the report cited Pete Wilson of California, Paula Hawkins of Florida and Chic Hecht of Nevada) may have violated federal law by not including the income on their tax returns. Wilson, Hawkins and Hecht apparently relied on assurances from an NRSC legal adviser that they did not have to do so. Across the aisle, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has avoided the problem: it can't raise enough money to offer any extras. NEW YORK A Victory for the Vigilante

After he gunned down and wounded four youths he believed were menacing him on a New York City subway in December 1984, Bernhard Goetz was celebrated by some as a vigilante hero, justly defending himself in an underpoliced urban jungle. To others, the seemingly meek electronics technician was a self-righteous zealot who had sought trouble and found it. In January 1985 a grand jury indicted Goetz only on charges of illegal gun possession, angering those who maintained that the jury had ignored the rights of Goetz's victims. Last March a second grand jury, acting on testimony from two of the youths, charged Goetz with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon.

Last week New York Supreme Court Justice Stephen Crane threw out the more serious charges. His reasoning: prosecutors had not properly instructed the jury on the standard to be used in judging whether or not Goetz had reacted reasonably under the circumstances. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said he would appeal the dismissal; he could also take the case to a third grand jury. Goetz's lawyers, meanwhile, said they will move to have the remaining charges dropped.