Panel Screens 13 Seeking Key Post of U.S. Attorney : Courts: Three more candidates have joined those seeking Sen. Feinstein’s support for the job. The hopefuls include nine current or former federal prosecutors.

A blue-chip committee of judges, lawyers and Democratic Party activists in Los Angeles interviewed at least 13 candidates Tuesday for the powerful job of U.S. attorney in the central district of California.

The candidates include nine current or former federal prosecutors, including incumbent U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers, who is the top federal law enforcement official in seven Southern California counties, stretching from Riverside to San Luis Obispo.

Among the applicants are three women and 10 men, including one African-American, one Asian-American, one Latino and three Jews. Although Los Angeles has had three U.S. attorneys with Latino ancestry, no President has ever appointed a black, Asian-American or Jewish person as the top federal prosecutor here.

Traditionally, when a newly elected President comes from a different party, there is a change of U.S. attorneys and that is why the interviews are being conducted. New U.S. attorneys also are to be chosen in Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco.

Three new candidates have emerged in recent days--Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Enrique Romero, 45; Charles E. Dickerson, III, 40, the chief of staff to City Councilwoman Rita Walters, and Robert S. Thaller, 54, a Century City entertainment lawyer.

Romero was appointed to the Municipal Court bench by then-Gov. George Deukmejian in April, 1989, and was elevated to the Superior Court by Gov. Pete Wilson in January, 1992. Previously, he served in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 1980 to 1984 and spent five years as an assistant U.S. attorney specializing in narcotics cases. He graduated from the University of San Francisco Law School.

Before joining Walters, Dickerson was a partner in a Los Angeles law firm headed by Stan Sanders, who recently ran for mayor. Dickerson also worked as a staff assistant at the National Labor Relations Board, as a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Charles H. Percy (R-Ill.) and in the 1988 presidential campaign of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He studied law at the Washington College of Law of American University in Washington.

Thaller spent 10 years with the Justice Department’s organized crime strike force in Washington and Los Angeles and worked on several major cases, including one involving skimming at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. He has been an entertainment lawyer since 1978, representing several motion picture companies and individual clients. Currently he is with the firm of Kenoff & Machtinger. Thaller studied law at Washington University in St. Louis.

The other candidates in the field are Superior Court Judge Nora M. Manella; former Superior Court Judge Dana S. Henry, now a judge with Judicial Arbitration & Mediation Services; Assistant City Atty. Maureen R. Siegel, and six Los Angeles lawyers in private practice, including former California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, former Los Angeles City Atty. Burt Pines and former Chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard E. Drooyan. The other private-practice attorneys are Thomas E. Holliday, Michael J. Lightfoot and Brian A. Sun.

The aspirants were interviewed Tuesday at the West Los Angeles home of Rosalind Wyman, a longtime Democratic Party activist who is on a screening committee of eight people chosen by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to aid her in the selection.

Under an arrangement forged between California’s two new senators, Feinstein, in essence, also gets to select the U.S. attorney in Sacramento; Sen. Barbara Boxer will make the selections in San Diego and San Francisco. President Clinton will make the formal nomination. The President traditionally appoints the nominees of a state’s U.S. senators.

Sources in the legal community also said it was possible that other candidates might emerge in the Los Angeles race in coming weeks.