Wallach Denies Using Meese Ties to Solicit Wedtech Fee

E. Robert Wallach denied charges Wednesday that he had solicited a $300,000 payment from Wedtech Corp. by promising to assist the Bronx-based defense contractor after taking a future job at the Justice Department under his longtime friend, former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

“Absolutely not,” Wallach declared in U.S. District Court at his trial on racketeering and fraud charges. When they testified in May, two convicted Wedtech executives--Mario Moreno and Anthony Guariglia--supported the charge, which is central to Wallach’s indictment.

Gary P. Naftalis, Wallach’s lawyer, has characterized Moreno and Guariglia as professional liars, claiming that they are trying to implicate Wallach and other Wedtech figures after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges two years ago as part of an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors.

Wallach, in response to questions from Naftalis, acknowledged receiving a $300,000 check from Wedtech in 1984. But he said it represented legal fees earned in helping the company acquire a small shipbuilding firm in Michigan.

Prosecutors have charged that the $300,000 payment to Wallach was part of $1.4 million in fees and stocks that he illegally obtained from Wedtech with a promise to use his influence with Meese to obtain lucrative defense contracts. Moreno and Guariglia testified that Wallach, a San Francisco lawyer and Wedtech consultant, told them in 1984 that he expected Meese to name him to a high Justice Department post the following year and that he would be able to help them even more after that.

But Wallach said that the company should pay him immediately for his future services, because he could not receive any money once he became a federal official, these witnesses testified.

Contradicting this account, Wallach testified that he and Meese, friends from law school days at UC Berkeley, occasionally discussed “how much fun it would be to do things together in government” when Wallach was representing Meese during stormy Senate hearings in 1984 on Meese’s nomination as attorney general. Meese at the time was White House counselor.

“But it never went beyond discussion,” Wallach insisted. “No job offers were made.”

Wallach will be cross-examined today by chief prosecutor Baruch Weiss.

Also on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Owen handed down a compromise ruling that would permit Avital Sharansky, wife of Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, to give character testimony on Wallach’s behalf. Sharansky, however, who had flown to New York Tuesday from Israel to testify, already had returned to her home because her mother is ill.

Controversy erupted Tuesday when Owen barred her immediate testimony. Defense lawyers said that it was urgent for her to testify promptly because her mother was lying near death in a coma and she wished to return to her bedside.

But prosecutors objected that her intended testimony giving Wallach partial credit for her husband’s release from the Soviet Union in 1985 was “too speculative.” Owen ruled Wednesday that she could discuss her contacts with Wallach and vouch for his integrity but could not “conjecture” on the results of his lobbying of Ronald Reagan Administration officials to put pressure on Soviet officials.