American Notes JUSTICE

The facts were not new, but the judgment stung all the same. Six months after Edwin Meese declared himself "completely vindicated" by a special prosecutor's decision not to indict him on charges of misconduct, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility last week issued a scathing report on the former Attorney General's ethics. Its key conclusion: if Meese were still in office, "disciplinary action" should be taken against him for "conduct which should not be tolerated of any government employee, especially not the Attorney General." Among Meese's misdeeds cited in the report: doing favors for chum E. Robert Wallach, who is awaiting trial for his part in the Wedtech scandal, and participating in decisions on companies in which he owned stock. To no one's surprise, Meese's lawyer called the report a "travesty of justice," and former boss Ronald Reagan deemed it "unwarranted."