Another Top Meese Aide Joins Exodus : Legal Counsel to Leave July 8, Looking for Job

Asst. Atty. Gen. Charles L. Cooper, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, today became the latest close aide of embattled Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to hand in his resignation.

Cooper said in a letter to Meese that he will leave the department July 8. The resignation is “wholly unrelated to the controversy of today,” the letter said in a reference to Meese’s legal troubles and a recent series of departures by key aides at the Justice Department.

Cooper, who has been at the department almost seven years, said he had long planned to leave the department this summer to enter private law practice, but the letter said he did not have a job lined up yet.

While he has remained loyal to Meese, Justice Department sources said, Cooper had serious doubts about remaining at the Justice Department two months ago, after the abrupt resignations of Deputy Atty. Gen. Arnold I. Burns and criminal division chief William F. Weld.

Cooper’s announcement comes weeks before independent counsel James C. McKay is to issue a report on his year-old criminal investigation of the attorney general that is expected to raise questions about Meese’s ethical conduct.

Cooper, who played a leading role in the unsuccessful efforts to win a Supreme Court seat for Robert H. Bork, has been negotiating with several law firms for some time, sources at the Justice Department said.

Cooper is the latest Justice Department official to announce his departure in an exodus which began March 29 with the protest resignations of Burns and Weld, who both quit out of concern that Meese’s refusal to resign was hurting the Justice Department’s operations, morale and public image.

Cooper recently traveled to Panama to participate in negotiations with Panamanian Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, and he was one of a handful of political advisers chosen by Meese to conduct a weekend inquiry in November, 1986, into the Administration’s secret arms sales to Iran. The inquiry uncovered the diversion of some of the arms sale proceeds to the Nicaraguan rebels, triggering the Iran-Contra scandal.

Complete Turnover

There has been a complete turnover of personnel in key sections of the Justice Department in the last two months.

Five of Burns’ deputies left following his resignation, virtually emptying the No. 2 office in the department, and two of Weld’s aides quit when he did.

Last week, Meese’s chief spokesman, Terry H. Eastland, disclosed the attorney general had fired him for not defending him strenuously enough. The head of Meese’s speech-writing unit resigned within hours of Eastland’s disclosure.

It took Meese nearly two months to find replacements for the posts vacated by Burns and Weld. Burns’ successor, Utah trial lawyer Harold G. Christensen, will fill the slot on an acting basis, pending completion of the Senate confirmation process. Weld’s replacement, Edward S. G. Dennis Jr., the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, also will serve on an acting basis.