Wallach Linked Meese to Wedtech ‘Fix,’ Jury Told

A former Wedtech Corp. executive testified Friday that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III’s close friend, Robert Wallach, assured him in late 1986 that he was working with Meese to get the investigation of the Wedtech scandal “quashed.”

Former Wedtech President Anthony Guariglia said Wallach made the statement to him at the last of three meetings at La Guardia Airport near the end of 1986, when federal and state investigators were closing in on Wedtech’s corrupt activities.

“Do you remember the last meeting when he told you, ‘Take it easy. Hang tough. I spoke with Ed Meese and we’re trying to get this investigation quashed’? Did he use those words?” defense attorney James LaRossa asked.

“Yes, he did,” Guariglia replied.

Under cross-examination at the Wedtech racketeering trial of Rep. Mario Biaggi (D-N. Y.) and six other men, Guariglia said the meeting was the third at an airport restaurant with Wallach in an effort to “fix” the investigation.

Prosecutors protested at the end of Friday’s session that defense attorneys were trying to obscure the evidence against their clients by, in effect, putting Meese on trial. But U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley said it was a legitimate tactic.

“What this jury has to decide is whether these defendants . . . committed any federal crime,” she said of Biaggi and the other New Yorkers accused of taking bribes from Wedtech in the Bronx firm’s quest for government contracts.

Motive for Payoffs

The judge added, however, that the defense has a right to try to show that Wedtech had no need to pay off Biaggi and “lesser people” if they had such high-powered backing in Washington.

“It’s like a drumbeat of warriors in the jungle,” prosecutor Mary Shannon said. “If we beat the drum long enough about Ed Meese, maybe this jury is stupid enough to forget that we have put in thousands of pages of evidence about these defendants.”

Guariglia, 37, faces up to 10 years in prison for his activities at Wedtech. The accountant, who went to work for Wedtech in 1983 after conducting an outside audit of the company, has said that he knew he was joining “a den of thieves.”

He agreed to cooperate with the government last year, in part because he feared a federal racketeering charge that could deprive him of “every asset he had.” He estimated that he got about $3.1 million from Wedtech before it collapsed in December, 1986.

The government’s case rests heavily on the credibility of Guariglia and that of three other Wedtech executives who turned state’s evidence.

Wallach’s lawyer, George Walker, refused to comment on Guariglia’s testimony. Meese’s attorney, Nathan Lewin of Washington, said he did not know what Wallach might have said to Guariglia, but Lewin said it was “ridiculous” to think any such talk between Wallach and Meese had taken place.

MEESE, EDWIN III