Meese’s Final Orders Posing Problems

In his last days in office, former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III took several actions that are causing problems for department officials and that his successor, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, now may have to confront.

Although the most notable of these was Meese’s 11th-hour order to subject Congress to investigations by independent counsels, several other actions have gone unnoticed but are also controversial. Among them:

--An unsuccessful attempt to downgrade the status of the FBI’s controversial field office in Butte, Mont.

--A decision involving jurisdiction over fugitives that has renewed the turf struggle between the FBI and Marshals Service.

--An attempt to appoint a high-level official in the Justice Department’s criminal division that some criticized as a reward for an attorney who led Meese’s anti-pornography drive.

Critics take issue with what they see as the haste with which Meese acted. But his defenders contend that Meese wanted only to decide matters that had been pending in his office and to avoid leaving Thornburgh with any “land mines” to defuse.

His opponents cite Meese’s handling of the Butte office as a prime example of a ticklish matter that was botched. On Aug. 8, Meese decided to make the office a so-called resident agency that would report to the Salt Lake City field division--considerably lowering the status of the Montana facility and forcing up to 30 FBI support employees to move.

Meese was well aware of the controversy surrounding the office, which the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover used as a punishment post. Hoover once attempted to close the office, but then-Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana squelched the move as an affront to his home state.

FBI Director William S. Sessions, William H. Webster’s successor, tried to handle the issue delicately, visiting the Butte office personally late last year and talking with employees there before recommending to Meese that it be downgraded in the name of efficiency and economy.

Sessions made his recommendation last April and then pressed Meese for the decision. But Meese did not decide the issue until months later and it was done so quickly that the department failed to seek necessary “reprogramming” of funds from the Senate. Now, the plan is back on hold. “In the back of our minds is that we can try again after the (November) election, but who knows?” one official said.

On the power struggle between the FBI and the Marshals Service, Meese introduced a new element in the dispute, assigning fugitive investigations outside the United States to FBI legal attaches based in U.S. embassies around the world.

The decision, which renewed a turf battle that many thought had been settled, was made in Meese’s “final policy on fugitive apprehension” issued Aug. 11--the day before he left office.

The decision involved a long-delayed “memorandum of understanding” that had been drafted earlier in the year to settle a dispute about which agency was to pursue fugitives--a dispute that had embarrassed the department because of sharp charges and countercharges between Sessions and Stanley E. Morris, director of the Marshals Service.

Associate Atty. Gen. Francis A. Keating II said he resolved the matter at least temporarily by ordering that the controversial paragraph be removed but the issue is far from resolved. On Aug. 30, Sessions wrote Thornburgh, urging that jurisdiction over foreign fugitives be given to the FBI legal attaches.

In another action that Meese took during his final days in office, he moved to elevate H. Robert Showers, regarded as a Meese favorite for the vigor he brought to his post as special counsel and director of the department’s national obscenity enforcement unit, to the post of deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division.

Several veteran attorneys in the division questioned Showers’ qualifications for the post.

A Justice Department source said that the appointment still has not been approved.