Publisher Cancels Contract With Slow-Penned Ed Meese

Publisher Henry Holt & Co., impatient to see evidence of former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese’s overdue Washington memoir, has pulled the plug on the contract.

“The problem is,” said Jack Macrae, the Holt editor who signed the Meese book 19 months ago, “we simply haven’t gotten the material. Maybe eventually he will get to it, but it seemed unwise to leave it open indefinitely.”

Meese had promised Holt a manuscript by last May, and that deadline was postponed at least once. “Witness to History: Power and Politics in the Reagan White House” was advertised in Holt’s fall, 1989, catalogue as “a full-disclosure, behind-the-scenes account of what’s really been going on in the executive branch for the past eight years.”

At the American Booksellers Assn. trade show in Washington last June, a still-optimistic Holt feted Meese with a cocktail party at the Willard Hotel. He told the Washington Post on that occasion that he had a thousand pages of material in hand and was enjoying the writing process.

As counselor to President Reagan and later at the Justice Department, Meese reportedly frustrated colleagues and subordinates with his inefficient work habits.

Holt has never divulged the terms of its contract with Meese. Macrae said Monday that the $150,000 figure published in this week’s Time, where news of the canceled contract surfaced in the magazine’s new “Grapevine” column, was below the actual price the publisher agreed to pay.

Meese could not be reached for comment. His agent, Helen Rees, said she did not know if her client will look for another publisher.