Thurmond Denies Saying Meese Must Go
WASHINGTON — Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) on Friday denied that he ever said Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, the subject of several investigations by special prosecutors, has “got to go.”
Earlier, Thurmond, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, did say publicly that he had conveyed to Meese the fact that “a number of people on Capitol Hill have expressed deep concern about the problems at the Justice Department.”
But the senator said he never told White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. “that boy’s got to go,” a quote attributed to Thurmond by one of Baker’s advisers and carried in a story in Thursday’s Times.
The senator said it would be unfair to make such a statement because he does not know all of the facts about the investigations involving Meese.
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