
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 15, 1990                   TAG: 9005150521
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

JUSTICE OFFICIALS REASSIGNED

Attorney General Dick Thornburgh is reassigning two top aides in an apparent attempt to erase the impression that he runs the Justice Department through a tight circle of political loyalists.

Robert Ross, the attorney general's chief of staff, was assigned Monday to organize a new office of international affairs within the department before returning to private law practice in two or three months, said senior department officials.

David Runkel, Thornburgh's press secretary who has been repeatedly accused by reporters of providing misleading and inaccurate information, will no longer serve as the department's chief spokesman, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Runkel has been appointed chief of communications and Thornburgh will soon select a new spokesman, officials said.

The realignment is intended to transfer much of the decision-making power within the Justice Department from Thornburgh's personal staff to the deputy attorney general, officials said.

The moves were announced three days after Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, who has held the No. 2 post in the department for only six months, announced plans to resign effective May 25.

Ayer quit because he was frustrated with the lack of operating authority he was given by Thornburgh, said an administration source who described Ross as the "real deputy attorney general."

The officials said Thornburgh plans to give his new choice to be deputy attorney general, William Barr, the operating authority traditionally conferred on the holder of that office.

Barr's appointment by President Bush will give Thornburgh the opportunity to make the long-contemplated changes, the officials said. Barr, an assistant attorney general, will serve as the acting deputy while his nomination is pending in the Senate.

`It was never his [Thornburgh's] intention to have a small personal staff attempting to run the department," said one official.

But since he took office in August 1988, late in the Reagan administration, Thornburgh had relied on a small cadre of aides who served him when he was governor of Pennsylvania.

by CNB