Stephen Hart, a spokesman for the Vice President, said that he had talked to Mr. Bush about the story and that the Vice President denied any involvement with the agency before President Ford named him its Director in 1975.

''He was an oilman in the early 1960s, and in 1963 he was running for the Senate,'' Mr. Hart said.

Bill Devine, a spokesman for the intelligence agency, declined to comment on the possibility that Mr. Bush, or someone else with that name, worked for the agency in the 1960s.

''It's our standard policy on allegations that people have worked for the C.I.A. or that sort of thing,'' Mr. Devine said. ''We neither confirm nor deny.''

The magazine said Mr. Hoover's memo was recently discovered among 98,755 pages of bureau documents released in 1977 and 1978 in connection lawsuits brought under the Freedom of Information Act.

At the time the memo was written, Mr. Bush was running the Houston-based Zapata Off-Shore Company, which the magazine said gave Bush an opportunity to do extensive overseas travel, including trips throughout the Caribbean. In 1964, Mr. Bush ran unsuccessfully for the Senate.