Stayed Out of Presser Case, Meese Says

WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, in his first statement on the Justice Department’s decision to drop its labor fraud investigation of Teamsters Union President Jackie Presser, said Tuesday that he did not participate in the decision to avoid the appearance of “political interference.”

On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Meese said that career attorneys at the department, rather than officials appointed by President Reagan, “found it was not appropriate to go ahead” with a 32-month-long federal grand jury inquiry into allegations of payroll padding at Presser’s hometown union, Cleveland Local 507.

Role as FBI Informant

Meese did not explain the decision further, and he made no reference to Presser’s role as an informant for the FBI, which sources close to the case have said raised a legal impediment to indicting him on payroll padding charges.

The Justice Department’s decision last month to drop the Presser case was reached six months after federal prosecutors had recommended in a still-confidential 100-page memorandum that the 59-year-old union chief be indicted on fraud and conspiracy charges for allegedly paying $250,000 from the local’s treasury to five associates who performed no work. Four of the five “ghost employees” had ties to organized crime, according to law enforcement officials in Cleveland.

Senate Taking Up Case

Serious questions have been raised about the handling of the Presser case, and the Senate is planning to conduct hearings this fall, partly because Presser has been Reagan’s only political ally among major labor leaders.

Meese, who inherited the long-running Presser investigation when he succeeded former Atty. Gen. William French Smith earlier this year, said that he took no part in dropping the case “because we wanted to avoid any possibility of anyone claiming that there was any political interference.”

“It’s very clear (that) at no time was there any political influence or any undue influence,” Meese said. He added that “normal career people” at the department “found it was not appropriate to go ahead with the Presser investigation or to have him be indicted, and I think that the case speaks for itself.”

Officials have told The Times that Deputy Atty. Gen. D. Lowell Jensen, a longtime associate of Meese, approved ending the Presser case with the concurrence of David Margolis, a career employee and head of the department’s organized crime section, who had supervised the long investigation.

Grand Jury Discharged

Meanwhile, it was learned that members of a federal grand jury in Cleveland who heard evidence in the Presser case have been officially discharged. The Justice Department’s decision to drop the investigation was made a week after the jury foreman, Robert A. Reading Jr., told The Times that he had complained to two federal judges that the department was dragging its feet in the case and that jurors were considering taking action to resolve the matter.

Reading, who subsequently was admonished by the department for his public statement, said Tuesday that he had no further comment.