What was going on when I was born?

President Reagan today praised the performance of William J. Casey as Director of Central Intelligence, but offered no comment on a Congressional report charging that crimes might have been committed in the 1980 Reagan Presidential campaign, which Mr. Casey directed. While the White House dismissed questions about Mr. Casey's possible resignation as ''highly farfetched,'' the President kept an engagement to visit the Director here in the pastoral setting of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. Walking side by side with Mr. Casey on the agency's well-guarded 219-acre campus, Mr. Reagan broke ground for an addition to the headquarters building and praised the work of the agency and its director as ''an inspiration to your fellow Americans.'' Evaluation Is Under Way Privately, White House officials assessed the political implications of the Congressional report, a two-volume study that called for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the behavior of Reagan officials in preparing for the 1980 debate with President Carter.

A Federal judge today announced a $48.5 million settlement of the civil suits stemming from the fire at a Stouffer's Inn that killed 26 executives. The families of 25 of the executives as well as the 14 people who were injured in the 1980 fire will share the award. The money will be paid by 12 corporations, including the Stouffer Corporation. Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of Federal District Court here, who announced the agreement today, said it settled all civil cases brought after the fire at the hotel in Harrison, N.Y. Neither the amounts that each defendant will pay nor the awards that each beneficiary will receive were announced. But a lawyer for some of the defendants, David G. Miller, said the families of two unidentified victims would receive ''well over $5 million each.''

Because of a transcription error, a dispatch from Bahrain Wednesday on the Persian Gulf conflict referred incorrectly to the Gulf Cooperation Council. Oman is a member; Jordan is not.

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company has decided against building a three-story communications museum that had been part of an agreement with New York City, a company spokesman said yesterday. In exchange for the museum and other public amenities, the company was granted permission to exceed zoning limits and add the equivalent of four extra floors to its new 36-story headquarters at 550 Madison Avenue, between 55th and 56th Streets. The musuem, which company officials had estimated would attract 750,000 visitors a year, was to be in the rear of the new headquarters John Geoghegan, media-relations manager for the company, said the change in plan resulted from the company's court-ordered divestiture of local operating companies and a consolidation of its offices. ''A lot of things have happened in the business,'' he said. ''In our divested state, our needs for space have changed.''

The Charter Company reported yesterday that it lost $36.2 million in the first quarter in contrast to earnings of $952,000 in the corresponding quarter a year earlier. Charter, an oil and insurance conglomerate that filed on April 20 for protection from its creditors under Federal bankruptcy law, added that it expected to report a ''substantial provision for losses'' in the second quarter that may result in ''a significant reduction or elimination of stockholders' equity.'' Charter executives also met yesterday with about 150 of the company's estimated 20,000 creditors in Jacksonville, Fla., Charter's headquarters.

Archeology, as someone once said, is a lot about pots - a maxim whose truth has been borne out here with the major discovery of an unlooted, painted Mayan tomb dating from the fifth century A.D. Along with some elaborate wall paintings and a male skeleton wrapped in the disintegrated remnants of a textile shroud, the crypt yielded the inevitable ceramics: six tripod vessels, six shallow-bowl platters, a water jug, a pot stand and a beautiful little screw-top jar, banded with glyph medallions in painted stucco. It's the jar with its glyphs that is most likely - in the absence of any other immediate clues - to give information on the identity of the tomb's occupant. Like many early peoples, the Mayas - that is, Mayan women, since making pottery was strictly a woman's occupation - were pot producers on a grand scale. Lacking the potter's wheel, they still made ceramics of great sophistication. And they gave their best to the dead, often using pots as manuscripts on which, with hieroglyphics and other markings, they recorded dates, place names, information about events and other details.

AS spring arrives in New York City, so does the weekend walking tour. An urban institution by now, the tour may have its walkers staring up at the schooners of the South Street Seaport or scrutinizing art at Harlem's Studio Museum. A group may take to the shores of Crotona Lake in the Bronx to study its aquatic insect life, or to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn to survey its gravestones. Other tours may provide a compact history of an area, from Chelsea to Staten Island's Richmondtown Restoration, suggesting ways to look at the rest of the city as we walk through it at other times.

SPRING enters its second phase this Memorial Day weekend. The big splashes of bloom are gone, and the flower colors are more subtle. Many perennials - peonies, irises and columbines - are banked against the reds, pinks and oranges of azaleas. Dogwoods linger in some places, and the horse chestnuts join in. These flowers can be seen in some of Manhattan's small neighborhood gardens as well as in the botanical gardens, They can also be seen in larger spaces outside the city, blooming in gardens that were once private estates and are now in the public domain. Two of Manhattan's least-known green spaces are church gardens, where the color from flowers is subtle and the mood is peaceful. At St. John's in the Village, at Waverly Place and 11th Street, the purple finches are singing and the sun's rays are filtering through the trees so that the peonies, first roses and rhododendrons can bloom.

The House of Representatives approved $61.75 million in emergency military aid for El Salvador today but voted against further financing for Nicaraguan rebels. The vote appeared to be at once a vote of confidence for President-elect Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador and a rebuff to President Reagan's policy toward Nicaragua. Reversing what had been a fairly strong Democratic vote against aid to El Salvador two weeks ago, 115 Democrats joined an almost solid Republican vote to approve the emergency military aid package for El Salvador by 267 to 154. Only five Republicans joined 149 Democrats, mostly liberals from California and northern states, in opposing the measure.

New attacks on Persian Gulf shipping were announced by Iraq and Iran. Iraq said its planes had attacked two ''naval targets'' leaving Kharg Island, Iran's main oil terminal in the gulf. Hours later, Iran said its planes had retaliated by attacking an oil tanker off the coast of Saudi Arabia. (Page A1, Columns 5-6.)

Five former members of El Salvador's national guard were convicted of aggravated homicide today in the 1980 deaths of four United States churchwomen. Salvadoran judges said it was the first time a jury had convicted any member of the armed forces for a slaying with political overtones. A five- member jury returned the verdict in the one-day trial after deliberating for an hour. The case has figured prominently in debate in the United States Congress over whether El Salvador should continue to receive American military aid without showing that it was making progress in bringing to justice human rights violators, including the killers of the churchwomen. Congress voted last year to withhold $19 million in military aid pending a verdict in the case.

Because of an editing error, an article in some copies of Sports Pages yesterday about drug dependency in major league baseball misidentified Barry Rona. He is counsel to the Player Relations Committee.