Lurching from Crisis to Crisis, Meese Clings Tightly to Justice Post

WASHINGTON —  For three days at the end of March, there was news from the Justice Department, and it promised extraordinary change.

Arnold I. Burns, the deputy attorney general; William F. Weld, the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, and four of their assistants resigned, reportedly for reasons of conscience. Their view that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III’s enduring legal troubles were seriously impairing the department’s ability to enforce the law confirmed what conservatives and liberals had been saying for half a year, and what some had said since Meese was sworn in three years ago: It was time for him to go.

Meese could no longer brush off these statements as “unscrupulous charges from liberal media critics.” Now they were coming from Reagan-approved conservatives who had loyally served as top Administration officials. By all accounts, Meese was shocked. Contrary to claims that he intended to stay even if indicted, some lawyers at Justice report conversations indicating that Meese, William Bradford Reynolds and others in the inner circle were seriously considering resignation as a result of the previous departures.

Since then, Meese has accomplished a Meesean feat: He appeared to achieve a remarkable recovery by heavily emphasizing the management of appearances--and then bungled the job.

First, the damage control: Within days after Burns and Weld officially resigned, the media were reporting Meese’s version of these departures. (Burns was tired of being cut out of decisions, Weld’s ambition to run for office motivated him to distance himself from the embattled Meese by making a grandstanding exit). Meese seemed to have found a respected former judge, Arlin Adams, to fill the No. 2 slot at Justice, and solid appointees for some other high-level vacancies.

Meese also survived perhaps the most serious short-term threat to his remaining at Justice. Burns and Weld had apparently expected Solicitor General Charles Fried to resign as well and, according to some accounts, to force Meese’s resignation because of his position as the temporary second-in-rank at Justice. Fried agonized publicly while taking part in a mysterious private drama. According to some of his associates (Fried has refused to comment), he advised Meese to go. After Meese rebuffed him, Fried emerged thinking his integrity was intact and his independence from Meese’s ideological hold increased, Fried associates contend. Fried then announced his intention to stay on.

The ambiguities caused by these events illustrated the serious weaknesses of the private counsel-public silence approach adopted by Burns, Weld and Fried and recently popularized by George Bush regarding Iran-Contra matters. By not publicly discussing their reasons for resigning, Burns and Weld gave up important leverage in their apparent effort to bring about Meese’s departure.

Fried’s action was more complex. His allies say his conduct underscored his principles. His critics say it was spineless, for three reasons: Fried’s advice to Meese carried weight only if supported by a will to resign. Fried could have fulfilled his obligations to the Supreme Court by following Burns’ example and making his resignation effective at the end of the current court term. And, by staying, Fried did little for the solicitor’s office that couldn’t be accomplished by one of his deputies, who would have been his likely successor. In any event, Fried seems to have played into Meese’s hands.

At the height of Meese’s revival, even his major legal troubles seemed to go away. In part at the request of Meese’s lawyer and in part to quiet rumors that Burns and Weld had left because they believed Meese’s indictment was imminent, independent counsel James C. McKay issued a press release saying that, to date, he didn’t have enough evidence on which to indict. During an April 1 press conference held in the Justice Department’s impressive auditorium, the attorney general tried to put the best light on matters. He said he was “gratified” by McKay’s announcement, that he would soon have a new team in place to keep Justice running “as usual” and that he had the full support of attorneys in the department. He was amiable, firm and, as often at events where he seems to conjure triumph out of trouble, sounded surprisingly convincing.

In reality, Meese managed to boot what initially seemed a great rally. The conference was postponed twice while the attorney general and his team tried to persuade prospective new members to join. When it finally took place, Meese stood before five empty chairs. His declaration that he had the full support of Justice attorneys prompted some of those lawyers, who were off camera, to laugh out loud. Others whistled and booed.

Their actions indicated what had become clear at the department during the previous month, when anti-Meese graffiti (“Resign,” “Leave,” “Sleaze”) began to appear inside the building on walls near the executive offices. Six months earlier, “Meese Is a Pig!” posters had been plastered in downtown Washington. Career lawyers in the department joked among themselves about these polemics. Now they seemed to express embarrassment, anger and frustration about Meese’s continuing tenure. The department switchboard sometimes answers “Ninth Street Disillusionment Center.”

Events soon prompted more snickering, inside Justice and out. It turned out that, despite repeated phone calls from Meese and one directly from President Reagan, Adams had expressed “strong reluctance” to join the department. When he wasn’t given assurances Meese was close to resigning, reports say, Adams declined the job. Having demanded that the White House waive FBI and other background checks so that the new team could be quickly assembled, Meese got another lesson why shortcuts and sloppy work don’t pay off. One candidate had “personal legal problems” that led the White House to reject him.

The selection of John C. Shepherd, a former American Bar Assn. president, as deputy attorney general and Francis A. Keating II as associate attorney general did little to check cynicism about the Meese effort to minimize his staffing problems with fast action. He failed to follow protocol and notify ranking congressional Republicans about his choices. The White House called them recommendations and withheld immediate approval. Even Meese aides called the situation embarrassing.

The upshot was a minicourse on the degeneration of power. The attorney general was important enough to command the attention of the country, to which he presented a spin-meister’s version about what happened the week before, but not to hide the continuing disintegration of his authority.

The costs to the Justice Department of Meese’s continuing stewardship have mounted. Soon after he became attorney general, according to some department lawyers, it became clear that U.S. attorneys and others representing the department in court were no longer treated as government officials but as advocates for the Reagan social agenda. Civil-rights lawyers, in particular, felt this change. In recent months, however, say some U.S. attorneys around the country, the problem has worsened. Occasionally they feel they are greeted as if their arguments are laughable.

Inside the department, much time is spent chasing rumors. The normal chain of command, already tested by Meese’s reliance on his ideological circle, has in many cases broken down. Meese has had to recuse himself from 75 or so cases involving his private lawyers and has been unable to take part in some of the government’s most prominent cases, including one about the constitutionality of the independent-counsel statute now in the Supreme Court.

Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds has stepped into the breach--even moving to an office near Meese’s. Having been rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1985 for a promotion to associate attorney general, because, in the words of Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), he hadn’t “told the truth,” Reynolds has, in effect, been attorney general while Meese has been distracted.

The last time the Justice Department was similarly demoralized was during the Nixon Administration. Rather than some calculus of justice, the standard for decision under Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell often seemed partisan politics. Over the years, the biases and misdeeds of the Nixon team prompted an exodus of career attorneys.

By the time the 1973 Watergate crisis prompted the resignations of Atty. Gen. Elliot L. Richardson (who has called for Meese’s departure) and Deputy Atty. Gen. William D. Ruckelshaus, the Nixon Administration had engaged in a series of episodes that eroded the Justice Department’s integrity.

A primary difference between the Nixon and Reagan approaches lies in how they have pursued their goals at Justice. Despite the contempt some of its officials showed for high legal standards, the Nixon team attempted to succeed by using the apparatus of Justice. The Reagan team, widely judged the most ideological in memory, has run things through an informal network of ideologically approved operators, short-circuiting normal channels.

Now that an orderly Justice Department--with a legal process functioning to traditional standards--would be useful to the Administration as well as the government, the place appears severely hampered and incapable of swift repair.

For the them-against-us Meese circle, this is a detail susceptible to a public-relations fix. Behind the scenes, business proceeds as it has since Meese took over: Things fall apart. In February, long after deterioration had set in, the attorney general’s office distributed a memorandum by Reynolds to senior Justice officials that summed up the Meese legal outlook and unwittingly indicated its costs to U.S. law. The memo urged the officials to maintain a practice of provocation during the Administration’s last months, to “polarize the debate” on prominent legal issues.

“We must not seek ‘consensus,’ we must confront,” the memorandum declared. To the Reagan team, polarization remains a means and an end, not merely a negative side effect--the Justice Department and other important institutions of the law be damned.