Ex-Marine Likely to Head Veterans Office : Appointees: Jesse Brown, a Vietnam Purple Heart winner, is the front-runner. He would be the second black named to the Clinton Cabinet.

President-elect Bill Clinton is expected to name Jesse Brown, a black former Marine who was wounded in Vietnam and now runs the Washington office of Disabled American Veterans, to be secretary of veterans affairs, congressional sources said Monday.

If appointed, Brown would be the second black chosen for the Clinton Cabinet. Ronald H. Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was the first. He was named Saturday to be secretary of commerce.

Prospects for more black appointees appeared to improve Monday. The heads of six major environmental organizations sent a letter to Clinton endorsing the bid by Rep. Mike Espy (D-Miss.) to become secretary of agriculture.

Espy, one of Clinton’s leading black supporters during the campaign, has actively campaigned for the job. Some environmentalists have opposed him because of his congressional voting record.

Clinton has also asked Joycelyn Elders, Arkansas state health commissioner and one of the most prominent black members of his state government, to become U.S. surgeon general, sources close to the transition said.

Asked for comment on the report, Elders, 59, said, “The President-elect has certainly talked to me and I am interested, but no final offer has been made.”

The letter endorsing Espy, signed by the chiefs of the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the League of Conservation Voters said that “we wish to disassociate ourselves and our organizations from any” reports of opposition by environmentalists to Espy.

“Congressman Espy is a distinguished American who has served his country well in the U.S. Congress,” the letter said. “We would look forward to working with him in any capacity.”

The letter would appear to downgrade the chances of Ruth Harkin, a Washington attorney and wife of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who has been interested in the job.

Clinton aides also were reviewing the names of new candidates for attorney general, including several prominent black lawyers and judges, sources close to the transition process said. Despite earlier speculation that Clinton would name a woman to the post, the sources said several of the new candidates whose names had surfaced are men, including federal appeals court Judges A. Leon Higginbotham and Harry T. Edwards and Yale Law School professor Drew S. Days III, who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division during the Jimmy Carter Administration.

Separately, transition sources said Clinton was near a decision to name David Wilhelm, his campaign manager, to chair the Democratic National Committee. The sources said the appointment would be part of a move to join the White House and the party in an effort to build political support for the President-elect’s program.

Brown, who has been active in Disabled American Veterans affairs for 25 years, spent more than an hour with Clinton last Wednesday to discuss issues facing veterans, including the vast health care system that serves them.

Two others have been suggested to head the Department of Veterans Affairs. They are Lewis Puller Jr., a Defense Department lawyer, Vietnam combat veteran and son of a Marine general who won fame in World War II, and Herschel Goober, director of veterans affairs in Arkansas, who advised Clinton during the campaign.

Brown, 48, was awarded the Purple Heart after he suffered a wound in Vietnam that partly paralyzed his right arm. He was in the Marine Corps from 1963 to 1966.