Reno’s Top Deputy Resigns Over Differences in ‘Style’ : Shake-up: Philip Heymann says they couldn’t function as team. Separately, another assistant quits.

The Justice Department’s second-ranking official resigned Thursday, saying Atty. Gen. Janet Reno had decided that differences in their “operational and management styles” prevented them from functioning effectively as a team.

At an extraordinary press conference, with the two officials sitting side-by-side, Deputy Atty. Gen. Philip B. Heymann said he agreed with her in concluding that the “chemistry” between them has not been right.

Heymann’s unexpected departure--effective when a successor is chosen and available--jolted a department already suffering from a yearlong inability to fill key posts. It climaxed Reno’s growing irritation over Heymann’s failure to complete assignments as quickly as she thought he should, according to several department sources.

The appearance of disarray was heightened by the resignation of Reno’s personal assistant, Lula Rodriguez, who is under investigation in Florida for alleged misdeeds in connection with her brother-in-law’s successful campaign to become mayor of Hialeah.

Rodriguez assisted the campaign of Raul Martinez by witnessing absentee-ballot signatures while in Florida. One of the absentee voters contends that her name was forged. The case is further complicated by the fact that Martinez is a convicted extortionist who ran for mayor while appealing his conviction.

Rodriguez, who insists that she did nothing wrong, said she is leaving Feb. 5 “to pursue other career opportunities.”

In the case of Heymann, White House officials dismissed any suggestion that they had engineered his departure.

“She (Reno) has to make decisions about how to run the department, and I guess we’ll let their decisions speak for themselves,” a senior White House official said.

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Responding to a question, White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said President Clinton retains confidence in the attorney general and thinks she has “a real instinct for justice” and is doing a “terrific” job.

At their meeting with reporters, Reno and Heymann refused to discuss specifics of how their differences of chemistry and style have prevented them from working well as a team.

Heymann chafed at the question of whether important matters had been stuck in his office, and Reno brushed aside the suggestion by saying that she had been “impressed” by the thoughtful review Heymann gave to matters.

“There are no significant philosophical differences” between the two, Heymann said, “and there’s no precipitating episode (or) disagreement on some particular matter.”

Instead, a knowledgeable source said, the differences between the two officials reflect Reno’s penchant for keeping numerous policy and legal balls in the air at once, while Heymann favors working intensively on fewer projects and deferring those he regards as less important.

At weekly meetings with her top aides, Reno typically parcels out assignments and checks on how previously assigned matters are progressing.

“Phil repeatedly found himself . . . behind the eight ball,” one source said. “I think he had some sense of despair that he was letting her down.”

At staff meetings in recent weeks, the differences between the two became increasingly apparent, another source said.

Speculation over a successor to Heymann centered on Ronald K. Noble, assistant Treasury secretary for enforcement; Irvin B. Nathan, Heymann’s deputy; and Charles F.C. Ruff, a former Justice Department official and Watergate prosecutor.

Noble, the highest-ranking African American in federal law enforcement, has won frequent praise from Reno for joint Treasury Department-Justice Department efforts.

She is also known to have high professional regard for Nathan, who served under Heymann when he headed the department’s criminal division during the Jimmy Carter Administration.

Ruff was in line for the deputy’s job, but he was passed over because he had failed to pay Social Security taxes for a housekeeper. He then suggested Heymann to Reno.

The Administration subsequently nominated more than 20 officials with similar tax problems, as long as they had paid the amounts they owed.

In Ruff’s case, the housekeeper was over age 65 and he was said to mistakenly believe that the deliquent Social Security taxes were no longer due.

The Justice Department resignations overshadowed a sweeping FBI reorganization announced by Director Louis J. Freeh.

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Saying that “crime is at such dreadful levels and budgets so tight that we have no other choice,” Freeh said he would move at least 600 FBI agents now in supervisory and administrative jobs to investigate priority criminal and national-security cases.

He told reporters at a press conference that the FBI’s headquarters “has been top-heavy with supervisors and unnecessary levels of review and decision-making.”

Some 300 agents will be moved out of the headquarters and back to investigating crime in the field, reducing the staff by 37%.

Another 300 agents doing administrative and non-investigative tasks in the FBI’s 56 field offices will be moved to street-level criminal investigations.

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.