What was going on when I was born?

Former Sheriff Harold White of Marion County, who was elected on a pledge to clean up drug trafficking, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for lying to a grand jury and taking money from a drug dealer. Rey Orta, a drug dealer granted immunity for cooperating, testified that he paid Mr. White about $1,000 a month for about 18 months, in return for which the sheriff would tell him when the authorities were investigating his dealings. Federal District Judge James H. Meredith sentenced Mr. White to five years for conspiracy and five years for lying to the jury.

Art dealers and gallery owners are reporting new thefts by an indicted Manhattan man in what they say is one of the largest New York City art swindles in decades. Since the indictment was announced Tuesday, the dealers and gallery owners have called prosecutors to report thefts of art and cash by the suspect, Dennis R. Anderson. Prosecutors said the total losses amounted to about $2 million. Among the latest works reported missing were at least five paintings, including works by the American artists Milton Avery, Charles Burchfield and William Glackens. Earlier, prosecutors reported a missing painting by the French artist Jean Dubuffet and said the swindle also involved works by Degas, Matisse and Seurat.

Three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee suggested today that Edwin Meese 3d should return for questioning about whether he knew that Ronald Reagan's 1980 political campaign had obtained information from within President Carter's camp. Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats, and Charles McC. Mathias Jr. of Maryland, a Republican, proposed that Mr. Meese, the Presidential Counselor, should appear before the committee again before it acted on his nomination to be Attorney General. However, Senator Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Republican who heads the committee, said through an aide that Mr. Meese had declined an invitation to return. Reagan Assails Questions Mark Goodin, Mr. Thurmond's press secretary, said the Senator regarded the hearing record as closed and had advised Senators with further questions to direct them to Mr. Meese's White House office.

The national unemployment rate fell an additional two- tenths of a point in February, to 7.7 percent, the Labor Department reported today. It was the 15th straight month in which the overall unemployment rate has either fallen or remained unchanged since the recession high of 10.6 percent in November 1982. At the end of December 1983, the Reagan Administration forecast the 7.7 percent rate would be achieved in the closing months of this year. Analysts said they were particularly impressed with the ability of the economy to generate 700,000 new jobs in February, absorbing nearly 500,000 new workers and 200,000 more people who had been unemployed.

Reagan Administration officials said today that United States military activity in Central America was being stepped up in advance of El Salvador's presidential election March 25. Officials said the actions included new small-scale United States military maneuvers in Honduras; doubling to 1,700 the number of United States military people in Honduras, and arming United States military advisers in El Salvador with heavier weapons to protect themselves. The officials said that small United States ground units would conduct limited maneuvers, some of which will take place in the region of Honduras between El Salvador and Nicaragua, from now until the start of a large exercise in June. The exercises are intended to intimidate Salvadoran guerrillas and their Nicaraguan backers, one official said.

Some key members of Congress have begun an effort to stop the Reagan Administration's proposed sales of portable Stinger antiaircraft missiles to Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The legislators said the move had the backing of Republicans and Democrats in both houses and the support of a leading pro-Israeli lobbying group. So far, the drive has been conducted largely behind the scenes. Nevertheless, the effort is regarded with serious concern by Administration officials who view the proposed sales as important to American standing with moderate Arab nations in the aftermath of the setback to American interests in Lebanon.

Two of the nation's largest steel producers, the United States Steel Corporation and National Intergroup Inc., said yesterday that they had called off an agreement to merge their steel operations because of the Justice Department's opposition on antitrust grounds. U.S. Steel, the nation's largest steel producer, announced in early February that it planned to acquire National Steel, the seventh-largest producer, for $575 million and the assumption of more than $400 million in long-term debt. The decision to cancel the agreement comes just three weeks after the Justice Department said it would sue to block a proposed merger by two other large steel companies, the LTV Corporation and the Republic Steel Corporation, the nation's third- and fourth- largest steel producers, respectively. 'Punitive Conditions' ''Obviously we're disappointed,'' David M. Roderick, chairman of U.S. Steel, said yesterday. ''It would have been a marvelous fit. We called it off because the Justice Department very clearly put such onerous, economically punitive conditions on a solution that we obviously couldn't proceed.''

Governor Cuomo proposed legislation yesterday to permit the sale of wines - but only those made in New York State - in grocery stores. He said the move could help to prevent widespread bankruptcy among the state's grape growers. ''We are trying to save an industry that is in terrible trouble now,'' Mr. Cuomo said. ''Many New York State grape growers face bankruptcy this year.''

The water table in New York City has risen as much as 10 feet over the last 30 years, eroding some subway tunnels so badly that they may have to be rebuilt, transit officials said yesterday. The Transit Authority is now pumping more than 13 million gallons of water a day from the system, officials said, but parts of the roadbed are nevertheless soaking in water. ''The water rots everything - it corrodes steel, it rots out rail ties, it shorts out signal systems,'' said Morris Loshinsky, deputy chief engineer for the authority. ''You don't want it in the subway.''

If Chancellor Helmut Kohl really wanted to please the Communist authorities in East Germany, he would arrange for Carl-Hermann Retemeyer to close down his operation on the second floor of a police station here in the foothills of the Harz Mountains. Mr. Retemeyer, 56 years old, a prosecutor, runs the Central Data Registration Agency, which since 1961 has been meticulously keeping track of crimes he believes were committed by East German judges, border guards and jailers. He says he hopes his cross- indexed files amount to the promise of a day of reckoning when Germany is reunited. The Salzgitter center was born of the trauma that accompanied the building of the Berlin wall and the sealing of the West German-East German frontier in 1961. As East German border guards shot down Germans fleeing west, the justice ministers of West Germany's states met and resolved that such crimes would not be forgotten.

The Kremlin announced today that the Supreme Soviet, the nominal Parliament, would meet here on April 11, an occasion that could produce a successor to Yuri V. Andropov as head of state. A common expectation among Western diplomats is that the post will go to Konstantin U. Chernenko, appointed Communist Party leader after the death of Mr. Andropov last month. Both of Mr. Chernenko's predecessors in the party job, Mr. Andropov and Leonid I. Brezhnev, combined it with the title of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the head of state. The diplomats say they believe that the appointment of anybody but Mr. Chernenko to the second post would give rise to speculation that his hold on power is less secure than that of his predecessors, something it is assumed the Kremlin would prefer to avoid.

Two Cabinet ministers said today that they had rejected a proposal from the Canadian Sealers Association that there be a formal Government ban on killing seal pups, which have not been hunted since 1982. The sealers said Thursday that the 1984 hunt had been discontinued. At the same time, they asked for a Government moratorium on the hunt for the pups of harp and hooded seals, saying they hoped the attendant publicity would get across the point that sealers are no longer clubbing 180,000 pups to death each year.