Associate of Reagan Quits Post : Library board: John Herrington’s departure follows that of three other longtime advisers to the former President.

The last of Ronald Reagan’s closest political associates has quit the board that built Reagan’s presidential library, expressing disappointment that other longtime advisers who were squeezed out in April would not be reappointed.

In a letter to the former President, former Energy Secretary John S. Herrington resigned from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation that raised $60 million for the library near Simi Valley.

Herrington was the only longtime Reagan associate spared last April when former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, former Interior Secretary William P. Clark and former domestic policy adviser Martin Anderson were quietly dropped from the board.

Disgruntled loyalists, who requested anonymity, contend that the ouster was orchestrated by Nancy Reagan without the knowledge of the former President. Reagan has denied it, remarking at one point that “this is part of the picking on Nancy that goes on.”

In the Dec. 19 resignation letter, Herrington told Reagan that he hoped that these three loyalists would be reappointed. But, he wrote, if “they are gone from the Reagan Foundation Board for good, and I now realized that is your intent, I must go also.”

“Bill, Ed, and Marty are my friends, and no President ever had stronger supporters than these three,” Herrington wrote. “I’m sure you can understand my feelings of loyalty to them, Mr. President.”

Neither the Reagans nor their spokeswoman could be reached for comment Tuesday. Reagan Foundation Board Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook was vacationing out of the country and unavailable for comment, said Scott Loll, a spokesman for Cook, who is also chairman and chief executive officer of Atlantic Richfield Co.

In an interview in October, Cook said the three board members were released in April because their six-year terms had expired. He said the former President asked him to limit all members to one term to bring new faces to the board and broaden support for the library.

Herrington’s term also expired, but Cook said he asked him to stay on as treasurer to maintain continuity of the books until the foundation reached its goal of raising $75 million to pay off debts and launch a conservative think tank.

On Nov. 4, nearly all the Reagan library--with its 55 million pages of White House documents and public museum--was turned over to the National Archives during a dedication ceremony that featured a historic meeting of President Bush and four former Presidents.

The foundation has retained control of a suite of offices for the Reagans, foundation staff, and the proposed think tank, which would be called the Ronald Reagan Center for Public Affairs.

Herrington’s departure leaves the foundation board without any member of the Reagan Administration except Frederick Ryan, who was Reagan’s White House scheduler and is now Reagan’s chief of staff.

In a flurry of letters and phone calls that followed the shake-up, many Reagan loyalists lamented that the board and public affairs center would lack the vision of conservatives who helped wage “the Reagan Revolution” in Sacramento and Washington.

Herrington, who could not be reached for comment, told Reagan in his letter that Meese, Clark and Anderson “were key implementers of your vision for America.”

“We, along with many others, fought the fights together and took the heat when popularity was not high; we strategized and worked days and nights to bring about what you believed in and what we still believe,” Herrington wrote.

“I had hoped to change your mind regarding their appointment, and barring that, I had hoped we might structure a public affairs board with their talents, ideals and loyalty that could carry on your legacy. I finally understood Tuesday at the Foundation meeting that that is not to be.”

Herrington wrote his letter a quarter of a century after he began working for Reagan “as a volunteer in Ventura County in 1966” during Reagan’s first gubernatorial campaign.

Herrington, who was an assistant Ventura County district attorney at the time, served as Reagan’s assistant secretary of the Navy and energy secretary. He now practices law in Walnut Creek and until recently was chairman of the publishing company Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.