A top aide to Attorney General Edwin Meese III says a recent congressional report accusing his boss of violating White House ethics rules should top a ``list of sleaze.'' Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds, who last year was given additional responsibilities as counselor to Meese, said the bipartisan Senate report is harmful to ongoing inquiries into the attorney general's actions. ``We've got a process that's in place, people who are investigating and it seems to me that we do not contribute to an integrity of that process when we have that kind of report that comes out that so disserves and so misstates what the facts are,'' Reynolds said on CBS-TV's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``If that is the best case that one comes up with against this attorney general for ethical conduct, I would have to say that this man is as clean as he can possibly be in every respect.'' Reynolds, the top enforcer of the Reagan administration's civil rights policies, added: ``If I were making a list of sleaze, I'd put that (the report) at the top.'' The report, issued Wednesday by the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on oversight of government management, concluded that Meese's violation of the rules resulted in ``improper favoritism'' for the scandal-plagued Wedtech Corp. The report said E. Robert Wallach sent Meese, then counselor to President Reagan, 16 memos in 1981 and 1982 detailing Wedtech's efforts to get a contract to build small engines for the Army and government officials' opposition to those efforts. Meese has acknowledged interceding on behalf of Wedtech, but says he only wanted to assure that its contract proposal got a fair hearing. Wallach, a longtime friend of Meese, is now under indictment in the Wedtech scandal. He was paid $1.3 million by the Bronx, N.Y.-company, which subsequently won the no-bid, $32 million contract. ``Former Counselor to the President Edwin Meese III and former Deputy Counselor Jim Jenkins failed to observe the White House policy on contracts with procurement officials, which failure resulted in improper favoritism toward a specific contractor,'' the report said. The White House procurement policy in effect since October 1981 says that ``obviously, no member of the White House staff should contact any procurement officer about a contract in which he has a personal financial interest or in which a relative, friend or business associate has a financial interest.'' Reynolds said the report ``made reference to a policy or rule in the White House that wasn't in existence at the time the Wedtech thing was referred over to the attorney general.'' Independent Counsel James McKay has been investigating Meese's ties to Wedtech, a $1 billion Iraqi pipeline project promoted by Wallach, and other matters. In addition, the Office of Government Ethics is conducting an inquiry into why Meese solicited 30,000 lawyers and businessman to pay more than $3,000 apiece to a profit-making organization to attend a conference. Reynolds maintained that despite the investigations, morale at the Justice Department remains good. ``Actually, it's very good,'' he said. ``We have a lot of professionals. Everybody in the department is very professional. ``Most of the people in the department take the attitude that is much the same as George Bush's attitude. These are investigations that are ongoing. They'll play themselves out, the process ought to be allowed to work,'' Reynolds said. ``So far,'' he added, ``nobody has suggested that the attorney general has done anything that comes close to unlawful activity or activity that is going to result in an indictment of any kind.''
