President to Appoint Lee to Civil Rights Post

President Clinton plans to install Los Angeles attorney Bill Lann Lee as the nation’s top civil rights enforcer, perhaps as soon as Monday, sources close to Lee said Friday night.

By using his powers to make the appointment while Congress is in recess, Clinton can assure Lee of about one year of service in the post despite the determined opposition of some Senate Republicans, who so far have blocked Lee’s nomination.

Democrats were forced to call off a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Lee’s nomination last month when it became obvious that he could not get a majority of the 18 committee members. Republicans have contended that Lee’s views in support of “racial preference” programs make him unacceptable.

Clinton’s unsuccessful efforts in recent days to pressure some Republicans to change their minds left the administration with the choice of abandoning Lee or making a recess appointment.

Lee, 48, could not be reached for comment Friday night. But he has left no doubt that he would accept the job if Clinton decides to install him.

“If the president asked me to take that job and make sure that the law enforcement job gets done, . . . I would really look forward to doing what I could,” Lee said on NBC-TV’s “Today” show.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the Judiciary Committee chairman and Lee’s leading foe in the Senate, strenuously opposes recess appointments and has warned Clinton that installing Lee would have adverse consequences in the long term. A number of Clinton’s judicial nominees have been stalled in the committee for some time, and their prospects could erode further.

During the past several months, the nomination has highlighted the battle over affirmative action, and Lee’s appointment could become an issue in the 1998 congressional elections.

On Friday, sources said Lee had been told by White House officials that Clinton would announce the appointment Monday. But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry was more circumspect earlier in the day, saying that “the president hasn’t made any final decision on that because the president would prefer to see him confirmed” in the normal fashion. But McCurry also said that “it wouldn’t be out of the realm of the possible that we might do something on Monday.”

Lee stayed in the East for the weekend rather than coming home to Los Angeles as he normally has during the lengthy confirmation process.

He spent Friday in New York visiting his mother and meeting with colleagues at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Lee is the organization’s Western regional counsel.

He returned to Washington Friday night and will be joined there by his wife, Carolyn Yee, a Los Angeles employment lawyer. She is planning to leave for the capital over the weekend so she can be there in case the announcement comes Monday.

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Another source said that Lee had been told by Clinton aide John Podesta that though the White House was planning the announcement for Monday, it could slide a few days. This source added, however, that Clinton aides were giving clear signals that it was a matter of “when, not whether” the president would make the appointment.

The Washington Post on Friday quoted an unnamed administration officials as saying that “it’s clearly ready to go. Clinton is prepared to go ahead and put him in the job.”

The White House also has the option of hiring Lee as the deputy chief of the civil rights division. Then the current chief, Isabelle K. Pinzler, could step down and be replaced by Lee. If that occurs, Lee would be able to serve the remainder of the Clinton presidency as the top officer in the civil rights division, but he would not have the full authority of someone who had been confirmed by the Senate.

The position of assistant attorney general for civil rights has been vacant for about a year since Deval Patrick left the job to return to private law practice in Boston. If appointed or confirmed, Lee would become the first Asian American to hold the civil rights post in the division’s 40-year history.

Virtually every major civil rights organization in the country has given Lee strong public support--including groups that don’t always agree, such as the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee and B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League. A series of rallies were held on Lee’s behalf in cities around the country, including Los Angeles, earlier this week.

At the same time, Republicans counter that Lee’s views are out of the mainstream, citing his work as an NAACP lawyer pressuring companies to adopt racial-hiring goals and his opposition to Proposition 209, the voter-approved initiative that abolished affirmative action programs in California.

On the “Today” program Friday, Lee reiterated that he is “unequivocally opposed to quotas; they are wrong, illegal.” On the other hand, Lee defended affirmative action programs. “You know, I’m the son of Chinese immigrants. Had we had these [affirmative action] laws on the books, my father, in particular, would have had a different life. He was denigrated because we were poor, denigrated because of the way he looked.” Lee’s father ran a laundry in Harlem.

Lee graduated with honors from Yale University and Columbia Law School. His career as a lawyer has been spent on public-interest work.