Highly Public Prosecutors

By MARGARET CARLSON

There was a time when federal prosecutors were hardly seen or heard outside a courtroom. But now theatrical press conferences, talk shows and press secretaries are challenging the old-fashioned notion that a prosecutor should stand loftily above politics and never discuss a pending case.

When U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jay Stephens finally bagged Mayor Marion Barry, he did not sink back into a gray-flannel cocoon of "no comment." Once an anonymous deputy counsel in the Reagan White House whose only attempt at flash was his vanity license plate WH LAW, Stephens is now a rising Republican star. After numerous press interviews about Barry's arrest, he took to the Sunday TV circuit to explain why his sting operation was a triumph.

Stephens would be a brief story line on L.A. Law compared with the season of material provided by Dexter Lehtinen, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Lehtinen had scarcely moved into the limelight as the prosecutor of deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega before he was burned by it. Some lawyers questioned whether his lack of trial experience would hamper his conduct of the case. Finally Lehtinen announced that he would turn it over to two experienced prosecutors, Michael P. (Pat) Sullivan and Myles Malman. They come to the case late, but it will probably be at least a year before the trial begins.

Although Lehtinen assumed the U.S. Attorney's office in June 1988, the Bush Administration has yet to submit his name for Senate confirmation. Lehtinen blames a Judiciary Committee logjam. The Miami Herald made matters worse by revealing details of Lehtinen's personal life. The paper reported on a deposition from his former wife, who swore that before their 1982 separation he hurled a television set across a room, bashed through doors and shoved her around. The Herald also said Lehtinen sprained the arm of his girlfriend, former legislative aide Dolores Zell, by pushing her to the floor. Lehtinen denies both stories.

A Miami television station went further, reporting that Zell and Lehtinen owned a house together but kept it in her name to shelter it from the divorce settlement. Zell signed the house over to him after the divorce was final. Lehtinen later married a fellow state legislator (now a Republican Congresswoman), Ileana Ros. However, the Justice Department has declared that there are "no problems" in the way of Lehtinen's confirmation.

Lehtinen has been under fire before. As a commander in Viet Nam in 1971, he was disfigured by shrapnel on the left side of his face and blinded in one eye. After 18 months and four operations to reconstruct his cheek and jaw, he went to Stanford Law, where he graduated first in his class. A Democrat until he changed parties in 1985, he served in the Florida legislature for nearly eight years. His conservative views impressed former Attorney General Edwin Meese, who appointed him to his present post.

Lehtinen affects a paramilitary style that has won him few friends around the office. He posts his motto -- NO GUTS. NO GLORY --on bulletin boards, barks orders like a drill sergeant, and once waved a toy AK-47 at his staff. He often shouts and curses, and has been known to throw objects. A number of experienced prosecutors have left, including Richard Gregorie, the 17-year veteran who got the Noriega indictment.

But Lehtinen is admired for restoring boldness to an office that is now the busiest in the nation. He is not afraid to target law-enforcement officers: last week he announced the indictment of four Metro-Dade policemen, including a division chief, in a drug scam. In his first months on the job, Lehtinen sued the state of Florida for polluting the Everglades, managing in one stroke to annoy the Republican Governor, the Justice Department and some of Florida's biggest political contributors, the agriculture industry. That may have been grandstanding, but he certainly wasn't playing politics.

With reporting by James Carney/Miami and Jerome Cramer/Washington