Fending Off Tough Questions

Meese runs the gauntlet toward confirmation

The witness had five weeks to prepare for the hearings. He had made courtesy calls on his most hostile senatorial inquisitors. Thus, through two days of questioning on his fitness to be Attorney General, Edwin Meese last week remained cool, articulate and unsurprised by the questions of critical Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barring some bombshell disclosure in the continued hearings this week, Ronald Reagan's longtime aide will almost surely win Senate confirmation to replace the resigning William French Smith.

Still, there were some things that Meese could not credibly explain away. He admitted he had not paid a penny of interest over 20 months on $60,000 in unsecured loans from a trust headed by John McKean, a California accountant he barely knew. While insisting there was no connection, Meese began repayment only after the Washington Post ran a story on the curious transaction. Under grilling by his chief antagonist, Ohio Democrat Howard Metzenbaum, Meese conceded that he had never even asked McKean about the source of the trust funds loaned to him. Meese was satisfied with McKean's integrity, he said, since McKean was the personal accountant for another top White House aide, Michael Deaver. Deaver had borrowed some $58,000 from the same trust.

Metzenbaum remained skeptical of Meese's insistence that the loans had nothing to do with McKean's selection on July 31, 1981, to become a member of the Postal Service board of governors. McKean had not been on a formal list of candidates for the part-time position when Meese, Deaver, Chief of Staff James Baker and Personnel Director E. Pendleton James met to recommend board members. Deaver suggested McKean, Meese concurred, and McKean got the job, which pays $10,000 a year. Metzenbaum asked why Meese had not told Baker and James, as well as the President, that he was indebted to McKean. Replied Meese: "The idea there was any connection between the loan and the recommendation by Mr. Deaver of Mr. McKean was so far from my thoughts that it never occurred to me."

Senator Edward Kennedy called the Administration's record on issues affecting civil rights, women and the poor "a disgrace" and charged that Meese was "a key architect" of these policies. Kennedy tried to pinpoint Meese's role in the controversial 1982 Justice Department decision to reverse more than a decade of federal antidiscrimination policy and permit Bob Jones University of Greenville, S.C., to gain tax-exempt status, although the private school had a policy of racial segregation. In the outcry after the turnabout, Reagan claimed unpersuasively that he had merely wanted to make certain that the Internal Revenue Service had the right to withdraw the tax exemption--a power that few legal scholars had ever doubted. Last week Meese blandly denied urging the Justice Department to change its antidiscrimination position and contended that he too had been concerned only with clarifying the authority of the IRS. Asked Democratic Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware: "Do you believe that schools that discriminate on the basis of race should be tax exempt?" Replied Meese: "Absolutely not."

Inevitably, Kennedy asked about Meese's well-publicized comment that some people who went to soup kitchens were not poor but did so because the food was free. Leaning forward, Kennedy asked, "What does your gut tell you, Mr.

Meese? Are there hungry Americans out there, and are you concerned about them?" As in so many answers to questions he knew would be asked, Meese said the obvious. "There are hungry Americans," he replied, "and I am concerned about them." There will be more queries from Senators this week and, presumably, more well-prepared answers from Edwin Meese.