No Crimes

But a report criticizes Meese

Although Edwin Meese still attends many high-level White House meetings and quietly visited the Republican National Convention in Dallas, he has pretty much dropped from public prominence. But Ronald Reagan's Presidential Counsellor and nominee for Attorney General has re-emerged in the news. Jacob Stein, the special prosecutor appointed last April to probe questions raised at Meese's Senate confirmation hearings, will submit his report to a federal court this week, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

In a strict legal sense, Stein's 200-page report will clear Meese: the grand jury involved returned no indictments. But Stein will also report that Meese had received personal loans from friends and, despite his denials, had later helped some of them land federal jobs. The report will portray him as being insensitive to the ethics expected of the nation's highest law-enforcement officer.

Stein, one of Washington's top criminal-defense lawyers, began his investigation with six issues under study. They included Meese's role in the appointment of at least five people to Government jobs after they helped him get over financial difficulties created when he left California late in 1980 as the Reagan Administration was preparing to take office. The inquiry gradually expanded to five more questions, including payments to Meese from two private funds used to help finance transition planning. Stein called 45 witnesses before the grand jury, among them Presidential Aides James Baker and Michael Deaver, and quizzed Meese for two days.

Meese may say that the investigation has cleared a him of wrongdoing. "You'd really have to have it in -for him to translate this stuff into criminal behavior," Stein has told others close to the investigation. Stein's report, however, is expected to portray Meese as an incompetent administrator who has been unable to select high-caliber aides or to keep his personal finances straight. Stein is known to believe that his report will make it even more difficult for Meese to win Senate confirmation. Republican Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would not hold new hearings on the nomination this year. Still, if Reagan wins by a landslide, he may have the clout to push the nomination through the Senate. Or Meese may decide that the wiser course is to declare himself vindicated and return to private life. qed