Meese Fills Two Top Posts After Two Choices Decline : Ex-Chief of ABA Gets No. 2 Job

After a week of frustration, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III today announced replacements for two top Justice Department posts, following refusals earlier in the day by a Philadelphia lawyer and a Labor Department official to fill important vacancies in the department created by politically embarrassing protest resignations.

Meese, who is leaving Wednesday on a weeklong trip to South America, named John Shepherd, a former president of the American Bar Assn., as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 post in the department.

Meese also named Francis A. Keating II, assistant Treasury secretary for enforcement, to the No. 3 job, that of associate attorney general.

The former vacancy came about when Deputy Atty. Gen. Arnold Burns, along with Assistant Atty. Gen. William Weld, in charge of the criminal division, abruptly resigned last week out of concern that the nearly 11-month-long criminal investigation of Meese by independent counsel James McKay was hurting the Justice Department’s operations and image, department sources have said.

The latter vacancy was caused not by a protest resignation but by the planned departure of Associate Atty. Gen. Stephen Trott, to become a federal appeals court judge.

Weld’s post remains unfilled.

Burns’ No. 2 position in the department had been offered to Philadelphia lawyer Arlin Adams, who said earlier today that a heavy caseload prevented him from taking the position.

“Unfortunately, the request came at a time when I was involved in a number of matters that made my immediate availability quite difficult,” Adams said. “I have so reported to the attorney general and I’ve expressed to him my regrets.”

Meanwhile, a Justice Department source said that Salvatore R. Martoche, now an assistant secretary in the Labor Department, also had rejected a request from Meese to take the job of assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division.

Martoche decided today not to take the job “because of the taint factor,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The turndown by Martoche represented the second unsuccessful attempt by Meese to fill Weld’s position in two days.

On Monday, the White House blocked another planned replacement for Weld, James I.K. Knapp, Justice Department sources said. (Story on Page 4.) Knapp, 45, is a deputy assistant attorney general in the department’s tax division.

Meese had planned to announce Knapp as his choice to succeed Weld last Friday. But the White House blocked that announcement, urging that all possible nominations first be subjected to routine background checks to avoid the catastrophe that accompanied the Supreme Court nomination of federal appeals Judge Douglas Ginsburg, who later withdrew after admitting he had smoked marijuana while a Harvard law professor.

In his statement, Adams said he was unable to take the post offered to him by Meese because of a heavy caseload at his Philadelphia law firm, where he took a job last year after stepping down from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after 17 1/2 years on the bench.

“If I had more time perhaps I could work it out,” Adams said. He was referring to the fact that the Reagan Administration has slightly more than nine months remaining in office and that Meese must fill the position quickly.

In a brief interview today at the Justice Department, Weld said that the resignations of last week and the criminal investigation of Meese “were intertwined.” He refused to be more specific.

Martoche served as U.S. attorney in Buffalo from 1982 to 1986, when he became head of the Labor Department office that enforces the Landrum-Griffin Act, which is designed to stamp out corruption in labor unions.