THE FORGOTTEN SIDE OF THE 1960S COMES TO THE WHITE HOUSE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100130012-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: October 7, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP90-0
Ai--TICLE APPEARED _2_ I
ON PAGE
THE NEW REPUBLIC
7 October 1981
0552R000100130012-5
STAT The forgotten side of the 1960s comes to the White House.
1H D MEESE
By JIEn STEIN
Y THE 1960s, confounding Gertrude Stein, there
was a "there "in Oakland, California. It was a vast,
steaming ghetto; Black Panthers and violent rebellion;
Bobby Seale and Huey Newton; the outlaw Hell's
Angels; the hippies and the radicals on Telegraph
Avenue. Edwin Meese III, a young deputy district
attorney, lived in Oakland then too. But his was a
different city and a different decade. Meese 's neigh-
borhood was tl}e Oakland of the East Bay Hills, the
placid part of t wn where the postman watched the
family grow and the house add a wing, where the kids
left their bikes outside all night. It was an Oakland that
seemed carved out of Wisconsin and plunked down on
the hills above the San Francisco Bay. In the popular
chronicles of the 1960s, that Oakland plays only a
cameo role. The books and articles and movies recall
the Panthers, the free speech movement, People's
Park, acid, sex, and Country Joe and the Fish-a time of
protest and experimentation, draft resisters and apoca-
lyptic fantasy. But it is Ed Meese-along with the
other cops, prosecutors, and California law enforce-
ment planners who worked the forgotten side of the
1960s-who is in the White House today.
Like the Reagan presidency, the Reagan governor-
ship cut social welfare budgets, attacked legal services,
and adopted strong law-and-order rhetoric and pro-
grams. And because the political landscape has been
relatively serene for the past half-decade, it is some-
times assumed-especially in Washington-that cam-
pus protest, labor unrest, and race riots have perma-
nently gone, never to return. Yet the potential for
unrest exists. The_ introduction of only a handful of
American advisers into El Salvador brought 100,000
demonstrators into the streets last May. A quarter of a
million turned out forthe Solidarity Day march on Sep-
tember 19. There is widespread sentiment for a new
draft as the Reagan military commitment deepens.
There is muted support for internal security investiga-
tions and covert action from within the Republican
party. The first round of budget cuts, along with rises
in fuel prices, inflation, interest rates, and unemploy-
ment in the industrial north, could result in social
upheavals and a higher crime rate. How would the Rea-
Jeff Stein, a former US Army intelligence case officer
in Vietnam, is Washington correspondent for the
gan administration handle it? The outlines of a presi-
dential program for combating crime are only just be-
ginning to emerge, but the record of the governorship
provides a wealth of clues for the future.
It was Meese's record for prosecuting pot smokers
and student protesters around Berkeley that brought
him to the attention of Governor Reagan. It was Meese
who dealt most directly with the riots and protest that
shook California in the 1960s and 1970s and who
helped the state develop an enormous law-enforcement
establishment. And it is Meese who will be charged
with developing a similar national program for the
1980s. "You always have to view Ed in-the context of
his father, who fits the classic image of the public
servant," said Robert Wallach, a close Meese friend and
San Francisco attorney. "I think Ed's attitude toward
criminal justice is rooted in a sense of orderliness about
society. He really believes in what we cynically call the
basic American values. The. Meeses are a very simple
family in the sense of their material wants. They say
grace before every meal. They're the prototype of the
Norman Rockwell America"
The Meese name was well known in Oakland long
before young Ed became a prosecutor. His paternal
grandfather was an Oakland city councilman and
treasurer. His father was Alameda County's treasurer
and tax collector for a quarter-century. And before he
married her, Ursula Herrick Meese had been a proba-
tion officer. Her father was an Oakland postmaster.
"Finding someone around here who doesn't like Ed
Meese," a senior California police officer told me with
a laugh, "must be like trying to find a four-year-old
who doesn't like Santa Claus." Even Terry F: ? r.'s
aides were astonished at the reputation Meese left
behind in Sacramento, where he was a senior Reagan
aide beginning in 1969. "It's funny," said one, a former
antiwar activist. "After seven years, I'm sure the head
of this department doesn't know the name of a single
secretary. But Meese made sure he knew them all. And
they remember it. They still love him."
Most people described Meese as a cool, professional
conciliator. "If he had a temper, I.never really saw it,"
said California deputy attorney general Roger Ven-
tura. Other law enforcement officials gushed about
Meese. "A renaissance man," Bill Medigovitch, a Cali-
fornia intelligence specialist, called him."It was-like he
Progressive. was earmarked for destiny." Under Meese's direction,
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