Bush Aide Who Probed ‘Jewish Cabal’ Resigns : Nominee Condemns Bigotry, Says He Believes Official Who Investigated for Nixon Does Too

George Bush’s handpicked representative to the Republican National Committee resigned Sunday as the committee’s deputy director after the disclosure that as an aide in the Richard M. Nixon White House, he had gathered figures on the number of Jews in the upper levels of a government agency as part of an investigation of a “Jewish cabal.”

After a day of meetings, the Bush presidential campaign announced that the official, Frederic V. Malek, had quit in the face of what Malek described as “false and outrageous” allegations.

In a written statement, Vice President Bush said:

“Fred Malek made this decision to step aside because he did not want this campaign to be caught up in allegations about something that happened many years ago and that some might try to use against me.”

“I condemn any vestiges of anti-Semitism, prejudice or bigotry. And so, I believe, does Fred Malek,” said the vice president, who spent the day in Washington before beginning a cross-country five-day campaign trip today.

The Washington Post disclosed on Sunday that in 1971, then-President Nixon ordered Malek to check on a “Jewish cabal” in senior positions at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The incident was recorded by top White House aides in handwritten notes that were found this year in the Nixon archives.

In 1971, Malek was the White House personnel chief. He reported to H. R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, that 13 of 35 top BLS officials were Jewish, the Post said. Within two months, two senior agency officials, both Jewish, were shifted to less visible positions, the newspaper reported.

In addition to serving as the Republican National Committee’s deputy director, Malek was the man picked by Bush to run the party’s national convention last month in New Orleans.

In a statement issued by the Bush campaign, Malek said the Post story was “offensive and incorrect in suggesting that I would have engaged in an attempt to jeopardize someone’s job because of their religious affiliation.”

But he said he was immediately resigning out of concern that his remaining on the job would jeopardize Bush’s election prospects.

While Bush aides sought to play down the impact of the disclosure, it drew sharp criticism from Democrats and, particularly, from Jewish supporters of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee.

“This guy functionally runs the Republican National Committee from day to day,” said Mark A. Siegel, a Democratic activist. “To get rid of him would have to be an admission that at the very highest levels of the Bush campaign someone who had engaged in anti-Semitic activity was there.”

Previous Problems

The publicity surrounding Malek’s activities in the Nixon White House came at an already difficult time for the Bush campaign.

Last week, the vice president’s election organization dismissed a member of a campaign committee established to draw support for Bush among various ethnic groups after Jewish and Nazi-hunting organizations alleged that he and two others on the panel had been involved in anti-Semitic activities or were tied to fascist groups.

The dismissed committee member, Jerome A. Brentar, is a Cleveland travel agent who had been active in the defense of John Demjanjuk, once a Cleveland auto worker. Demjanjuk has been sentenced to death by an Israeli court after being found guilty of committing atrocities at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He is appealing the sentence.

The allegations about Brentar were raised by the Washington Jewish Week, a Jewish newspaper circulating in the Washington area.

Consultant’s Ties to Bahamas

Earlier in the week, it was disclosed that a political consulting firm that has contributed several key advisers to the Bush campaign had received $800,000 to help the Bahamas improve its image in the wake of reports that the island nation’s leadership had ties to drug dealers.

The disclosures come at a time when the Bush campaign has sought to reach out to Jewish voters, while stressing the competence of the vice president and questioning Dukakis’ judgment.

Hyman Bookbinder, a Dukakis campaign adviser who served 21 years as the Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, pointed out that the disclosure about Malek came on the eve of the Jewish high holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. “It was shocking, especially on the eve of the Jewish New Year,” he said.

The suggestion of a “Jewish cabal” reflected “the language of Hitlerism,” Bookbinder said, and he added: “Malek should have known what was proper and what was legal. To engage in a religious survey is not allowed under the law.”

Carelessness Charged

Whatever Bush’s feelings toward Malek, Brentar, and the others who have come under criticism in recent days, Bookbinder said: “How come these people with these unsavory reputations feel comfortable with him?”

He charged that their presence in the Bush organization, or their ties to the candidate, reflected “a lot of carelessness . . . in selecting people working for Mr. Bush.”

Within the Bush camp, word that the Post story was about to be published prompted some hurried conversations between the vice president and his senior advisers on Saturday and a series of lengthy meetings on Sunday.

Still, even as the meetings reflected an acute sensitivity to the potential embarrassment raised by the report on Malek, within the campaign some were trying to put the best face on the development.

“Malek got his orders. He got the information on the subject. But he didn’t carry out any purge,” said one campaign aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity.