Bush to Name Judge Bonner to Head DEA

President Bush said Friday that he intends to name U.S. District Judge Robert C. Bonner of Los Angeles to head the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The 48-year-old Bonner, U.S. attorney before his appointment to the bench less than a year ago, is considered a surprise choice to head the federal government’s chief drug-fighting agency.

Meanwhile, in a major shake-up at the Justice Department, Donald B. Ayer quit as the agency’s No. 2 official after only six months on the job in what was described as “a resignation of disgust” by one former official.

While Bonner will bring the perspective of an outsider to the DEA post, colleagues in Los Angeles noted that he had gained experience in complex drug cases as U.S. attorney. One Los Angeles attorney who knows Bonner well said: “I’m flabbergasted. You position yourself for a long time to get a (lifetime) position on the federal bench.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Bonner will succeed John C. Lawn, a career law enforcement official who retired to join the New York Yankees baseball team as an executive.

Russell Hayman, assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and deputy chief of the major narcotics section, said: “As a federal prosecutor who works closely with the DEA, I would welcome Judge Bonner’s nomination as chief of DEA.”

He said that during Bonner’s tenure as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles there was “a tremendous expansion of narcotics-related prosecutions and particularly of complex narcotics prosecutions.”

He said that many federal drug prosecutions now involved complex issues of money laundering, international banking, wire taps, including taps of cellular phones. Hayman said the sophistication that Bonner possesses on those issues would serve him well as DEA chief.

U.S. District Judge William D. Keller said that he thought Bonner’s departure “would be a real loss” to the federal bench. He described the nominee as “very committed to law enforcement” and said that he probably is taking the job “for patriotic reasons.”

Two Los Angeles lawyers who have known Bonner for many years said that they thought he had not been sufficiently stimulated during his brief service as a jurist. One said that Bonner “missed the action” of law enforcement.

Ayer, the departing Justice Department official, gave no reason for his resignation, effective May 25, other than to note that he is resuming his partnership in the Washington office of the law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue.

Ayer, 41, did not return a reporter’s calls, but the colleague and former Justice Department official who had described Ayer as disgusted, said that “he was absolutely frozen out by the inner sanctum”--the close circle of aides who came to Washington with Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh after serving under him when he was governor of Pennsylvania.

To succeed Ayer, Bush said he would nominate William P. Barr, the assistant attorney general who heads the office of legal counsel. Barr, 39, wrote a controversial legal opinion stating that U.S. agents would not violate U.S. law if they seized fugitives overseas without the foreign country’s permission.

Barr was a partner in a Washington law firm, served on the White House domestic policy staff during Ronald Reagan’s first term and worked at the Central Intelligence Agency before joining the Justice Department.

Last month, it was disclosed that Ayer was instructed by Thornburgh’s executive assistant, Robert S. Ross Jr., to withdraw a letter he had written to the U.S. Sentencing Commission expressing strong support for tough sentencing guidelines for corporate criminals.

Ross did so after speaking to C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel, who had been contacted about the letter by representatives of some major corporations.

Thornburgh, who has made “crime in the suites” a priority target of the Justice Department, later said that the retraction did not signal a decision by the department to oppose getting tough with business violators. He said that the policy had been decided and the letter was sent without his knowledge and that he wanted the matter reviewed.

David Runkel, Thornburgh’s chief spokesman, said it would be “wrong” to link Ayer’s resignation to the sentencing guidelines but he declined to discuss other reasons.

Another department source said that Ayer clashed with Thornburgh and his aides over sensitive matters that have not yet come to light publicly.

A Justice Department source who declined to be named but is familiar with the events leading to Ayer’s resignation described it as “mutually” decided by Ayer and Thornburgh. “It just wasn’t working out and everyone knew it,” the source said. “When that happens, it’s best to cut it off rather than let it fester.”

Another official, who also would not be identified, said that the differences between Thornburgh and Ayer stemmed from conflicting views over the role of the deputy attorney general. Ayer sought to run the department’s day-to-day operations, as some deputies had done under previous attorneys general. But that approach ran counter to Thornburgh’s “hands-on” management style, conducted through his aides, the official said.

But an Ayer supporter contended that “he never got to see or report to the attorney general. He reported through staff people.”

Ayer came to the post after serving as the principal deputy solicitor general during the last two years of the Reagan Administration and as U.S. attorney in Sacramento from 1981 to 1986. A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, he once clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

Staff writers Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles and Douglas Jehl in Washington contributed to this story.