Edwin Meese III



	One of the most prominent board members of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund is former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III. Mr. Meese has had an interest in law enforcement throughout his career. In 1967, he served as Deputy District Attorney of Alameda County, California. In order to have a better appreciation of the duties of the police, Mr. Meese would often accompany officers in their squad cars to observe and experience their everyday problems and challenges. When Ronald Reagan was Governor of California, Mr. Meese served as his Executive Assistant, Chief of Staff, and Legal Affairs Secretary from 1967 to 1974. Later he was a business executive in the aerospace industry, and then a professor of law at the University of San Diego, where he was Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management from 1977 to 1981.		During President Reagan's terms in the White House, Mr. Meese was a member of the Cabinet and National Security Council, in addition to being Counsellor to the President from 1981 to 1985 and the 75th Attorney General of the U.S. from 1985 to 1988. He currently holds the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California. A graduate of Yale University (1953), Mr. Meese received his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of With Reagan: The Inside Story (Regnery-Gateway, 1992).