Defending His Honor : Ursula Meese, Controversial Wife of the Attorney General, Is Staunchly Protective of the Embattled Family

For months, allegations of impropriety had been boiling around the trading of favors between Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and his close friend of 25 years, embattled attorney E. Robert Wallach.

At one point, Ursula Meese, the attorney general’s wife of 30 years and a former probation officer, found herself in front of a grand jury.

As she recalled it, part of the grand jury session went like this.

Questioner: “Well, now, Mr. Wallach is your husband’s best friend?”

Ursula Meese: “Absolutely not. I’m his best friend.”

It was vintage Ursula Meese. When they think they’ve cornered you, come out with all guns blazing. No whimpering wife she. Her response provoked laughter from the grand jury, she recalled. But her no-holds-barred defense of the ruinous Meese family reputation is anything but a joke. The woman who has donned a bunny suit for the White House Easter egg roll fits just as easily in a figurative suit of armor.

Being Investigated

At the time of his wife’s grand-jury appearance, Edwin Meese was being investigated for income tax problems, and for actions he may have taken to help Wallach in deals involving Wedtech Corp., a now-defunct defense contractor, and a proposed $1-billion Iraqi pipeline project. Wallach, who used to meet weekly with Meese and advise him on issues big and small, professional and personal, was indicted in December on charges that he and others conspired to extract illegal payments from Wedtech for the purpose of lobbying Meese and other government officials. Also indicted was W. Franklyn Chinn, Meese’s former financial consultant. The 14-month investigation of Meese by independent counsel James C. McKay ended without any indictments, even though McKay later said he thought Meese “probably violated criminal law” on four occasions.

Ursula Meese, who has been involved in several controversies herself, was defiant in defending her husband and herself during a recent interview.

Like her husband, she pointed to the lack of indictments as complete vindication.

“He’s been cleared. He’s not going to prison. He’s not going to be fined. He’s not even going to court,” she said, her voice husky, her manner completely self-assured. “I could challenge anybody else to go through what we have gone through and come out as clean and as pure and as honest and as balanced as we have. I mean it’s just phenomenal.”

McKay’s later statement that Meese had probably violated criminal law struck her as “ludicrous. I mean, how can you do that? You’re never half-pregnant.

The Meeses did “nothing illegal, immoral or ethically wrong. People say, ‘How in the world could you stand it?’ You know, we don’t go home and wring our hands and rant and rave. Screaming doesn’t help,” she said.

The Meeses, she added, are “angry, yeah, but embarrassed? No.”

There has been “confusion, yes. Shame? No!”

Perhaps hardest hit by the public ordeal was their daughter, Dana, who in 1983, transferred from a private high school to a public school after her teacher led a lively class discussion about a column by political satirist Art Buchwald ridiculing Meese’s statement that there should be no hungry people in America.

“It was very insensitive to do to a teen-ager,” said Ursula Meese, 56.

Showing anger at times, and laughing heartily at other moments, she talked about their ordeal while sitting in her small office at the Multiple Sclerosis Society, where she performs a job that generated enough controversy to draw the attention of the special prosecutor.

After working at the organization as a volunteer for five years, she began drawing a $40,000-a-year salary on Jan. 1, 1986, as head of a program aimed at helping the disabled find jobs. Her salary comes from a grant donated to the MS Society by the Bender Foundation, a tax-exempt philanthropic organization headed by the family of real estate developer Howard S. Bender. Reports surfaced that the job came about as a result of an inquiry to the Bender Foundation by Wallach.

This she does not deny.

“He (Wallach) may well have approached them,” she said. “Yeah, I think he did.”

Less than 1 1/2 years after she went on the payroll, the Justice Department renewed a 10-year, $50-million lease of a run-down office building that had been acquired by a Bender real estate partnership in 1985. Thirteen days later, the partnership sold the building, including its lease as an asset, for a $22.7-million profit over two years of ownership.

“They sold it?” she asked in the interview. “Well, I didn’t know anything about that.”

Neither she nor her husband knew anything about the lease at the time it was renewed, she said.

“That would never come across Ed’s desk. None of those buildings come across Ed’s desk. General Services handles that. I’m sure he doesn’t know what Justice owns or doesn’t own,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Bender owns other parts of Justice.

“I mean it’s just ludicrous. The Bender Foundation has been contributing to MS since 1979, two years before I ever got here and four years before I was ever on the board. . . . I mean it shows the fishing they (the special prosecutor’s team) went on and how desperate they must have been to go after an organization like the MS Society and my affiliation, as if I were totally a nitwit that couldn’t work . . . out there begging on the streets.”

Ursula Meese said her husband was aware of the source of her salary, but that it made no difference, since he didn’t handle the lease.

“He knew it was a grant,” she said. “Half of this foundation is run on grants. We get $2 million a year. Forty thousand dollars is a small drop in the bucket.

“There’s nothing wrong with that! Absolutely nothing! It’s probably one of the lowest salaries I’ve ever gotten. What I’ve been able to do in two years for the disabled . . .It’s probably been a saving grace in my sanity.”

Angry Over News Reports

She is particularly angry that news reports about her job grant prompted the Labor Department to pull the plug on its support of the program, which will cause the program to shut down this fall, a year earlier than planned, she said.

“As a result of this publicity, we have terminated the program, which is really a shame,” Meese said. “We had to terminate it because the Labor Department says, ‘We can’t stand the pressure.’ ”

Labor Department spokesman Paul Williams disputed her assertion that bad publicity was the reason the department ceased its involvement in the job program.

“That was a pilot project, funded for one year and renewed for one year,” Williams said. “It’s normal to fund a pilot project only for a year or two.”

Ursula Meese found her name in the news when she wrote a letter in June, 1987, to Tennessee Judge R. Allan Edgar, urging “very favorable consideration” for Joe Duncan, the son of the late Rep. John J. Duncan (R-Tenn.), who was awaiting sentencing on a tax-fraud conviction. Joe Duncan had spent time around the Meese household socializing with their niece, who has been living with them in an upscale Virginia suburb. Ed Meese said he didn’t know she had written the letter, which stated in part, “My husband, Ed, and I consider Mr. Duncan to be an outstanding, conscientious and sensitive young man.”

When the letter was reported in newspapers, many critics and legal ethics experts said the attorney general’s name should not have been used in an effort to affect the outcome of a case his department had prosecuted. Duncan was later sentenced to three years in prison with all but six months suspended, before the verdict was overturned on appeal.

Constitutional Rights

“I mentioned Ed (in the letter),” she admitted. But, she added, “it’s the same thinking of why I can’t hold a job. Why am I incompetent to hold down a job? Why can I not write a letter to a judge? It’s a matter of my constitutional rights.”

Although she feels it was not wrong to have written the letter, she admitted she regretted it.

“That’s probably one thing I would not do again,” she said, “not because I feel any different about Joe Duncan, but it just brought more heartache to the family . . . . That part hurt me more than anything.”

Even after Meese announced his resignation last month and pronounced himself “vindicated” by the lack of indictments, the drumbeat of criticism continued.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) soon asked for another investigation of Meese’s acceptance of favors from Wallach--this one to be done by the office of government ethics. In addition, the State Bar of California is conducting its own probes of Meese and Wallach, who are licensed to practice law in California.

Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis used Meese as one of his rallying points, drawing roars of approval at the nominating convention. During courtroom proceedings in the Wedtech case, prosecutor Edward Little, an assistant U.S. attorney, called Meese, his boss, “a sleaze.”

“I can’t believe anybody lowering himself to that degree to call somebody a sleaze or to use a name for a rallying point,” she said.

Like her husband, Ursula Meese sees no appearance of impropriety in their associations with Wallach.

“Why can’t you have a good relationship with someone? He’s done nothing wrong. Bob Wallach never asked him to do anything wrong,” she said.

When it was suggested that Wallach was “deeply embroiled in a scandal,” she shot back, “Is he deeply embroiled?”

He is in court, facing several indictments, it was pointed out.

“That’s right,” she said. “But I mean I don’t know what his connection is to it. I mean, in all honesty, I don’t know. And out of fairness to Mr. Wallach, we have not seen him for a long period of time. It’s been over a year. He was at our grandson’s funeral. That was the last time I saw him.”

During the 14 months of the investigation, the Meeses, she said, could always tell when something new had broken in the investigation because the press would arrive outside their house at 5:30 a.m.

On the day of this year’s Super Bowl, the press was staking out the house, so she invited them to help her make “Beat Denver” posters to rankle the next door neighbors, who had moved in from Denver. Sometimes the press was “fair” in its treatment of her husband, she said. And at other times she marvelled at the press’ “viciousness.” Both she and her husband have put forth the theory that the press subjected him to such negative scrutiny because Meese refused to cultivate favor with reporters by engaging in the widespread practice of leaking information.

“I mean, when you’re married to one of the most honest, well-balanced, neat people in the world, you don’t expect him to be attacked,” she said. “He’s being caught up in a snowball effect, continual press coverage of the same thing regurgitated 10 different times.”

Family Tragedies

Since the family left California eight years ago to accompany the Reagan Administration to Washington, the Meeses have endured crushing personal tragedies. Their 19-year-old son Scott was killed in a 1982 car accident, and their grandson Scott (named after his uncle) died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1987.

The Meeses plan to remain in Washington after he leaves the Justice Department this month, partly to stay near their children. Dana, 21, will be a senior at the University of Richmond, and Michael, 27, an American serviceman, will begin attending a 2-year program at Princeton.

Ed Meese will divide his time between giving speeches and working at two conservative think tanks, the Heritage Foundation in Washington and the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto. Ursula Meese would like to take a break from working after the fall.

“Financially it would be nice to have Ed do some positive recouping of funds so it’s not his salary we have to depend on,” said Ursula Meese, who supported her husband for a period early in their marriage.

They have discussed offers to write books and haven’t ruled that out, although she said it “would never be a kiss-and-tell.”

Despite what would appear to be widespread skepticism of Meese, his wife is not worried about his reputation.

“Actually, I think it’s OK,” she said. “I think he’s probably a colorful individual. It’s not a neutral he draws. I mean you hear his name, and you say one thing or the other.”

The Meeses had arrived in Washington as starry-eyed as any of the others. They stayed longer and endured more than any other of the Reagans’ California intimates. Now, Ursula Meese admitted there “probably” have been moments when she thought they would have been happier if they’d never been public figures.

But, has it been worth it?

“Absolutely,” said Ursula Meese. “You can never reverse the life accidents that happen, the death of our son, the death of our grandson. But, with the other (things), I think we’ve stood strong and we’ve had a purpose and I think we’ve set an example that you can’t allow this kind of thing to happen.

“We’ve done a lot of positive things. No, I don’t regret it at all.”