INDEPENDENCE, Mo., June 1--Ex-president Harry S Truman was reported tonight packing his bags for an impending visit to the Boston area.

Truman is scheduled to tour Expo 67 in Montreal at the end of the month, but sources indicate that he is planning a surprise stop in New England along the way.

The 81-year old one-time haberdasher has been miffed in past years because Harvard University (in Cambridge, Mass.) has consistently denied him an honorary degree, despite published reports saying he would get one before each and every graduation during the last 20 years.

Sources think that the occasionally unpredictable, often salty Truman may show up at the graduation ceremonies this year whether he gets an honorary degree or not. The possibility of his commandeering the microphones to say a few words is not remote, they believe.

CAMBRIDGE, June 1--Harvard officials contacted here last night said they will arrange to have the sheriffs of Middlesex and Suffolk Counties on hand at the ceremonies this year, just in case.

CAMBRIDGE, June 1--Informed sources far from the administration have released their annual list of honorary degree recipients. For the year 1967, they are: Harry S Truman, ex-President; Leonard Bernstein '39, author of the Quincy House play; John U. Monro '34, retiring Dean of Harvard College; Buck minister Fuller '17, geodesic-dome builder; Bernard Malamud, Pulitzer-Prize-winning lecturer in General Education; Barbara Tuchman, historian; John H. Finley Jr. '25, Master of Eliot House and Eliot Professor of Greek Literature.

Also Herbert Wechsler, Stone Professor of Law at Columbia; Gerard Piel '37, publisher of Scientific American; Lincoln Gordon '33, new president of Johns Hopkins; Konrad Lorenz, author of on Aggression; Meyer Schapiro, Columbia art historian completing his year as Charles Eliot Norton Visiting Professor of Poetry; Sen. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.); Roy Orval Greep, former dean of the School of Dental Medicine and now head of the Med School's Reproduction Center.