FBI ‘Promises’ Cited for Lack of Presser Charges

The Justice Department made its controversial decision not to seek the indictment of Teamsters Union President Jackie Presser after his lawyer argued in June that “promises” FBI agents had made to Presser should bar any prosecution of him, sources said Wednesday.

“Until then, it was a ‘go’ ” for prosecution, a department official said of the crucial June meeting in Washington between Cleveland attorney John R. Climaco and officials of the department’s criminal division.

Fraud, Conspiracy Studied

The disclosure provides further evidence that Presser’s role as an FBI informant in recent years was the prime reason he was not prosecuted on charges of fraud and conspiracy and it raises new questions about whether the FBI followed its own guidelines on use of informants.

Two Senate committees moved Wednesday to investigate why the department did not learn for almost two years that Presser had been an informant and whether political considerations played a part in the decision not to prosecute him.

Sources familiar with the government’s investigation said that top Justice Department and FBI officials are trying to determine whether FBI agents in the field improperly promised Presser, who had acted as an FBI informant in labor cases, immunity from prosecution in exchange for his coopera tion.

Presser himself, in private conversations with Teamsters officials earlier this year, repeatedly expressed confidence that he would not be indicted, sources said.

“Thank God it’s over,” a Teamsters spokesman quoted Presser as saying Wednesday. “I’m happy with the outcome.”

The Justice Department’s decision to reject a federal strike force’s recommendation that Presser be indicted in a payroll-padding scheme is politically sensitive because Presser has been President Reagan’s sole supporter among major labor leaders and has enjoyed wide access to top Administration officials.

Sens. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Government Operations permanent investigations subcommittee, ordered a staff investigation Wednesday into handling of the case by the Justice and Labor departments.

Raises ‘Serious Questions’

Nunn said reports by The Times that Labor Department investigators in the field had been overruled and that a grand jury had complained about Justice Department foot-dragging in the case “raise serious questions about the government’s ability to effectively combat labor racketeering.”

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, ranking minority member Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said in a letter to Deputy Atty. Gen. D. Lowell Jensen that he is “very concerned” about the case. Jensen made the final decision not to prosecute Presser after Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III removed himself from the case.

Biden, saying he was seeking cooperation of committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), asked whether Presser’s FBI relationship and any assurances made to him had jeopardized the government’s investigation. Biden also questioned whether the FBI had followed its own guidelines for dealing with informants.

“Was Mr. Presser given the required warning about avoiding illegal activity, and were there any circumstances requiring attorney general or Justice Department approval of the use of Mr. Presser, because, for example, it was anticipated he might have to engage in illegal activity?” Biden’s letter said.

Department officials have said that they believe the FBI misled them about its relationship with Presser when Labor Department investigators working for a federal strike force in Cleveland initiated an investigation of him in 1982.

Lawyer Sought Meeting

Climaco, Presser’s lawyer, requested the June meeting to appeal a preliminary decision by officials of the criminal division to seek an indictment of Presser, sources said Wednesday. Climaco did not return a reporter’s telephone call.

David Margolis, chief of the Justice Department’s organized crime and racketeering section, who before the meeting had endorsed seeking an indictment, reversed it afterward, they said.

Margolis, through a spokesman, declined to discuss the Presser investigation Wednesday. But he said he had never been overruled on a decision to prosecute during his 6 1/2 years as chief of the section, which oversees strike forces around the country.

Although Justice Department and FBI officials avoided comment about the Presser case Wednesday, the department went out of its way to underscore that Meese had no role in it.

A senior department official said Meese had taken himself out of the case because it had been in progress long before he became attorney general in February, and because he wanted to “avoid any appearance of political influence in the case coming from the White House,” where he had been counselor to the President.