Aide Says Thornburgh Meddled in Leak Probe : Justice Dept.: The departing official alleges the attorney general sought to shield his personal assistant.

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, attempting to shield his closest personal aide, helped conceal the fact that the aide flunked a lie detector test during a highly sensitive Justice Department investigation, the agency’s departing No. 2 official charged Saturday.

Thornburgh also sought to keep the probe out of the hands of the department’s internal watchdog unit, and, failing that, refused to follow the unit’s recommendations for further investigation, Deputy Atty. Gen. Donald B. Ayer said in his first interview since announcing his resignation, which is effective next Friday.

“The attorney general was participating in an effort to prevent appropriate disclosure and evaluation through established procedures of the activities that earlier this week resulted in Robin Ross’ abrupt removal from office,” Ayer said.

Ayer was referring to Robert S. (Robin) Ross Jr., a longtime Thornburgh aide who, Ayer contends, was serving as the department’s “chief operating officer,” a role traditionally assigned to the deputy attorney general.

At a tense meeting last Jan. 30, Ayer said, Thornburgh angrily rejected his suggestion that the attorney general remove himself from an effort to determine who leaked the existence of an investigation of alleged financial irregularities involving the office of House Democratic Whip William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania.

Public disclosure of the Gray investigation created a political furor on Capitol Hill, with Democrats charging that the information was deliberately leaked to CBS News in an effort to undermine Gray’s campaign for the House leadership post. Thornburgh said that Gray himself was not a target of the investigation, and ordered a full-scale inquiry into the leak.

Ross, the top member of the “Pennsylvania Mafia”--a term used inside the department to describe aides who had worked for Thornburgh when he was governor of Pennsylvania--stepped down as Thornburgh’s executive assistant last Monday. He was assigned to head a new international office within the department, but plans to leave in two to three months.

At the same time, David Runkel, another veteran Thornburgh aide who sources said also showed deception during a polygraph test, stepped down as the attorney general’s chief spokesman to take the new post of director of communications.

Ayer had resigned three days earlier, touching off one of the most tumultuous periods at the Justice Department since the Watergate investigation’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” which led to the resignations of the attorney general and deputy attorney general in the Richard M. Nixon Administration.

Ayer said he had intended to remain silent on his reasons for resigning, and that he had done so “scrupulously” during the week following his announcement. He said he decided to speak publicly because “there have been numerous unattributed remarks critical of me,” culminating in a statement by Thornburgh on Thursday describing the selection of Ayer as “a mistake” from the beginning.

“It’s no longer possible for me to refrain from comment,” he said.

Thornburgh, who would respond to the issues raised by Ayer only through a spokesman, has dismissed his split with Ayer as nothing more than a “bad fit” between the two men. And Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr, who conducted a recent review of the Gray leak case, recommended no disciplinary action against any department official and said Thornburgh “was acting appropriately” within his discretion in deciding not to discipline anyone.

However, the charges by Ayer, who had been deputy solicitor general of the United States and then U.S. attorney in Sacramento before returning to Washington as the Justice Department’s second-highest official, raise serious questions about Thornburgh’s stewardship of the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Ayer’s allegations suggest that the attorney general allowed his personal relationships within the department to interfere with the conduct of a high-profile investigation and depict him as seeking to undermine the independence of the office of professional responsibility--the department’s internal watchdog unit. It was the latter attempt that Ayer said finally convinced him to resign. In the interview, Ayer also disclosed that:

--He “was kept in the dark from the very beginning” on most significant and sensitive matters of department business, even on matters that are assigned by regulation to the deputy and despite his responsibility to serve as acting attorney general in Thornburgh’s absence.

--Thornburgh gave Ayer written instructions to revoke an action that Ayer said he had taken “to eliminate an unfair and coercive threat” to the internal watchdog unit. Ayer said he refused to follow the order, and the incident ultimately convinced him to resign.

--Ross’s failure of the polygraph test raised a question about his possible involvement in confirmation of the Gray leak. Sources said that Ross changed a sworn statement to the FBI after being informed that he had failed the test.

Another department official, however, played down the significance of the change. “I would not draw the inference that he changed his story in a material way,” said the official, who was familiar with the investigation and would speak only on condition of anonymity.

The tense meeting with Thornburgh came on Jan. 30, the day that Ayer learned of Thornburgh’s decision a month earlier to end the investigation of the leak and tell the Senate that the office of professional responsibility agreed with the decision made by other agency officials not to prosecute.

In reality, Ayer said, the internal watchdog unit had not even seen the investigative report.

Ayer, joined by his principal deputy, Peter Nowinski, and “one other high department official,” met with Thornburgh “to tell him that we believed that his decision subjected himself and the department to criticism, that the matter should be referred to OPR (the office of professional responsibility) and he should consider recusing himself,” Ayer said.

The other official was Assistant Atty. Gen. Edward S.G. Dennis Jr., who heads the Justice Department criminal division that conducted the Gray leak probe, a department source said.

“He rejected our advice out of hand,” said Ayer, who declined to provide other details of the session.

Another source, however, said that the meeting came to a close when Thornburgh dismissed the trio, saying he regarded the suggestion he remove himself as an attack on his integrity.

During the meeting, the source said, Dennis pointed out that the office of professional responsibility had handled such leak investigations in the past. Thornburgh responded that if that were true, Dennis had let him down by not advising him that was the ordinary practice, according to the source. Dennis, who was in Philadelphia on Saturday, could not be reached.

Thornburgh, through a department official, acknowledged Saturday that he had been “upset” by the meeting. He said it was the first time he had been called back to the department. The meeting took place at 7:30 p.m., and Thornburgh had been headed home when he was called in the department limousine and asked to return.

“Whoever called him gave the impression there was some kind of urgency about this,” the official said. “He was presented with no new information.” Thornburgh’s irritation also reflected the fact that his letter to the Senate had been sent a month earlier, the official said.

“I can’t go into the contents of the discussion,” the official continued. “(But) there was no reason for recusal. The criminal investigation was over.”

According to Ayer, the meeting with Thornburgh proved pivotal.

“The next morning, Robin Ross called me to say that my meeting the previous evening with the attorney general had ‘seriously wounded’ my relationship with him,” Ayer said. “That must have been true, because my personal dealings with him steadily declined thereafter.”

Five days later, Ayer was notified that his responsibility for overseeing the watchdog unit and the inspector general’s office was being transferred to the attorney general’s office. And on March 1, he said, Ross told him that responsibility for the department’s ethics program was being shifted from Ayer to Ross.

As an example of how he was denied crucial information, Ayer cited an exchange he had with Ross late last December.

“I approached Mr. Ross to suggest that I should have at least some general awareness of the department’s role in connection with the Panama invasion. “He responded that I had ‘no operational responsibilities in that area,’ and thus had ‘no reason to know what was going on.’ ”

Contacted Saturday, Ross said he could not recall the specific Panama conversation but acknowledged that the issue that it raised “gets to the heart of the problem” and to what he characterized as Ayer’s “fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works.”

“We’re all there to do what the No. 1 guy tells us to,” Ross said. In the case of Panama, Thornburgh sought assistance and advice from Assistant Atty. Gen. William P. Barr, special assistant Robert Mueller and Ross, he said.

“Not once throughout the mission did the attorney general seek advice of the deputy,” Ross said. “If he called me about getting involved, I can imagine saying that.” Ayer said the incident that led to his resignation involved Thornburgh’s questioning of the conduct of the office of professional responsibility in what Ayer described as “a separate matter.” He declined to divulge details.

“After an exhaustive investigation, for which the attorney general had assigned me responsibility, however, OPR had been found to be wholly without fault and its conduct was found to be entirely responsible,” Ayer said.

Thornburgh and Ross “failed for three months to disclose that OPR had been found to be blameless,” he said.

Michael E. Shaheen Jr., head of the office since its creation in 1975, “expressed to my office his concern that the attorney general was withholding this information to coerce Shaheen to relent from Shaheen’s determination that OPR have the opportunity to review the Gray leak matter,” Ayer said.

Ayer said he then “took an action which I believe was necessary and appropriate to eliminate an unfair and coercive threat to the reputation of Shaheen and OPR.” He declined to specify the nature of the action.

Thornburgh ordered him in writing to “revoke that action,” Ayer said.

“I recognized I could no longer serve the attorney general, and I decided to resign,” Ayer said. Thornburgh subsequently reversed himself on the need to revoke the action, but by then it was too late.

While Ayer would not identify the matter, several other department sources said it involved Roger Pilon, who headed the agency’s Office of Asylum Policy and Review under former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

Pilon was investigated by the FBI and the office of professional responsibility in 1988 for possibly disclosing classified information to the government of South Africa. But after a subsequent review ordered by Meese, he was reinstated to his job.

However, last November, Shaheen’s office issued an annual report in which it cited examples of investigations it had handled the previous year. The report, without identifying Pilon by name, mentioned a case involving possible disclosure of information to a foreign government.

“The investigation did not develop sufficient evidence to support a prosecution but did discover that sufficient cause existed to terminate his political appointment,” the annual report said.

Pilon was linked to the report by the press, however, and he demanded an investigation of the inaccurate disclosure. Ayer determined that Shaheen and his office had not been told that Pilon had been cleared by the separate review ordered by Meese.

But in a March 16 letter to Pilon’s lawyer drafted by Thornburgh’s staff, Ayer’s finding that Shaheen and his office were blameless was omitted.

On April 30, Ayer wrote Pilon’s attorney and stated that “Michael Shaheen and OPR cannot be faulted in any way for the publication of incorrect information,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Times.

Thornburgh ordered Ayer to withdraw the letter, ultimately leading to his resignation.

Ross said Saturday that “it’s bizarre” for Ayer to allege that top department officials were withholding the information exonerating Shaheen’s office in the Pilon matter in an effort to prevent the office from pursuing the Gray leak. “That has nothing to do with it,” he said.