Conservatives Force Thornburgh Choice to Withdraw

In a substantial victory for conservatives, Robert B. Fiske Jr., Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh’s choice for the Justice Department’s No. 2 post, withdrew his name from consideration Thursday to avoid a prolonged fight with Senate Republicans.

Despite heavy lobbying, Thornburgh failed to win over Senate conservatives who were unhappy with Fiske’s role as chairman of the American Bar Assn.’s committee on judicial nominations. The committee opposed some of the Ronald Reagan Administration’s most controversial judgeship selections.

Fiske’s withdrawal as deputy attorney general marked a rare victory for conservatives on a key Bush Administration personnel matter. It signaled more disruption for the Justice Department, which has been criticized for being slow in launching the Administration’s programs.

President Bush, in a June 28 interview with The Times, indicated that he might not follow Thornburgh’s recommendation to nominate Fiske, who held the high-profile post of U.S. attorney in Manhattan during the Gerald R. Ford Administration and early in the Jimmy Carter Administration.

Bush said that he wanted the nomination process started early enough “so that you’re not going to have a needless battle in which an individual goes through a great deal of grief.” While Thornburgh and Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady “are very, very high” on Fiske, Bush said, “you have to make a political judgment before you go forward.”

In a letter to Thornburgh, Fiske, who will continue his private legal practice in New York, said he had no doubt that his nomination in the end would have won overwhelming Senate support but only after “a long delay in final action.”

Fourteen Republican senators, including Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged Bush last month not to nominate Fiske. Thurmond warned that the nomination could face a filibuster.

The conservatives contended that Fiske, as chairman of the bar’s standing committee on the federal judiciary from 1984 to 1987, supplied names of some controversial nominees to a liberal umbrella organization, the Alliance for Justice, giving the group the opportunity to build opposition.

Fiske, backed by the ABA, maintained that the information was supplied to help determine whether judicial candidates had been biased against women and minorities. He denied his Senate foes’ claim that he had used ideological criteria to rate qualifications of some Reagan nominees.

Thornburgh said in a letter to Fiske that he was unhappy with his withdrawal but understood the reasons. He said that Fiske’s ABA role had been misstated and misunderstood but that the record had been set straight.

Thurmond hailed Fiske’s withdrawal, saying that it “is in the best interests of the President and the nation because it avoids what could have been a divisive battle in the Senate.”

Justice Department sources said that Michael M. Uhlmann, a former Justice Department and White House official who served on the Bush transition team with responsibilities for the department, was a candidate for the deputy’s post now that Fiske had withdrawn.

Thurmond had been pushing a former administrative assistant, Tony Campbell, for a department post, but he is not “pressing” his selection as the deputy, a spokesman for the senator said.