10 Lawyers Vie for Powerful U.S. Atty. Job : Law enforcement: Interviews of attorneys begin this week. Sen. Feinstein will make recommendation to Clinton for L.A. post.

The backstage quest of 10 Los Angeles lawyers to become the next U.S. attorney in Los Angeles--the top federal law enforcement official in seven Southern California counties--is expected to intensify this week.

A secret screening committee picked by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has scheduled interviews with the candidates Tuesday and is expected to make a recommendation to her within the next month.

Seven candidates have served in the U.S. attorney’s office here, including the incumbent U.S. attorney, a Superior Court judge, a former California attorney general and a former Los Angeles city attorney.

Under an arrangement worked out by Feinstein and the state’s other new Democratic senator, Barbara Boxer, Feinstein will in essence pick the U.S. attorneys in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Boxer gets to choose the U.S. attorneys in San Francisco and San Diego. Even though the President formally makes the nomination of U.S. attorneys, he usually follows the choice of a state’s senator.

The post of chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles is a prestigious, powerful position. It has long been considered one of the two premier U.S. attorney’s offices in the nation, the other being the New York City office.

The U.S. attorney responsible for Los Angeles and the rest of the “central district” of California directs about 190 lawyers and is involved in critical decisions, such as whether to indict the police officers who beat Rodney G. King or to bring charges against wealthy executives such as Charles H. Keating Jr.

Selection of the next U.S. attorney also is important because law enforcement agencies and their relationship to the community at large are under more scrutiny than in the past, “particularly in Los Angeles, where people are suspicious and want more control over public officials,” said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson.

Although the nation’s 95 U.S. attorneys are formally agents of the Justice Department, they are far more than mere subordinates of the attorney general.

“U.S. attorneys make choices,” said author David Burnham, who has been studying the Justice Department for the past three years.

Whoever gets the Los Angeles job will have his or her hands full.

The territory covered by the central district is the most populous in the United States--nearly 16 million people. Although the size of the U.S. attorney’s office has risen dramatically in the past decade, from 88 to 190 attorneys, it still has one of the smallest staffs per capita in the nation--one attorney per 91,000 residents, compared to one per 25,000 residents in the New York office.

In addition to the power and prestige, an attraction of the job is that it is often a steppingstone to becoming a federal judge. Five of the current federal district judges in Los Angeles previously served as the U.S. attorney here, including the chief judge, Manuel L. Real, and the court’s newest judge, Lourdes G. Baird.

Numerous sources say that gender and ethnicity definitely will be key elements in the selection process.

“I would expect diversity questions will be significant, both from the point of view of the Administration and the senators,” said Andrea S. Ordin, who was the first woman U.S. attorney here from 1977 to 1981 and is now in private practice.

Seven men and three women are scheduled to be interviewed this week, sources say. There is only one minority group member among them, a Chinese-American.

Concern about the lack of minority applicants was so strong that extra efforts were made to woo more minorities to apply. At least four prominent African-American attorneys and some Latino lawyers were approached about applying, but they declined for a variety of reasons. The factors included concerns about leaving lucrative law practices to preferring the possibility of garnering a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

Los Angeles has never had an African-American or an Asian-American U.S. attorney.

Three of the prior U.S. attorneys have some Latino lineage--Real, Ordin and Baird. The latter two are the only women who have held the position in Los Angeles.

Boxer has recommended to President Clinton that he nominate Michael Yamaguchi, a Japanese-American lawyer, to be the U.S. attorney in San Francisco. Sources said that among the four finalists for the job in San Diego are two Latino lawyers, one of whom is a woman, and that all four finalists in Sacramento are white, one of them a woman.

Kam Kuwata, Feinstein’s chief aide on judicial appointments, emphatically refused to provide any information about the candidates or the screeners. But sources in the Los Angeles legal and political communities said those scheduled to be interviewed this week in Los Angeles are:

* Terree A. Bowers, 38, the incumbent U.S. attorney, who has been a federal prosecutor since 1982. A graduate of University of Texas Law School, Bowers, a Republican, was appointed interim U.S. attorney by a federal court last fall to succeed Baird when Baird became a federal judge.

* Richard E. Drooyan, 42, a federal prosecutor from 1978 to 1988 and was chief assistant U.S. attorney for three years, now a partner in Los Angeles office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, a large New York-based law firm. He graduated from Harvard Law School.

* Dana S. Henry, 46, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge from 1983 to 1992, who served as chief counsel to the California Department of Transportation and as a deputy city attorney in San Diego. A University of San Diego Law School graduate, she is a judge with Judicial Arbitration & Mediation Services.

* Thomas E. Holliday, 44, white-collar criminal defense specialist with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, one of Los Angeles’ largest law firms. His entire career has been spent in private practice. He served as pro bono deputy general counsel to the Christopher Commission investigation of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is a graduate of USC law school.

* Michael J. Lightfoot, 54, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles from 1968 to 1971, who also served as a federal public defender and in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. He is a partner in Talcott, Lightfoot, Vandevelde, Woehrle & Sadowsky, a Los Angeles firm specializing in criminal defense work. He is a graduate of University of Virginia Law School.

* Nora M. Manella, 42, a federal prosecutor from 1982 to 1990, who was chief of the U.S. attorney’s office criminal appeals unit from 1988 to 1990, and previously served as legal counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution. She is a Los Angeles Superior Court judge and a graduate of USC law school.

* Burt Pines, 53, a federal prosecutor from 1964 to 1966, Los Angeles city attorney from 1973 to 1981, and now a partner in Alschuler, Grossman & Pines, a Century City law firm. He is a graduate of New York University Law School.

* Brian A. Sun, 38, a federal prosecutor from 1982 to 1986, now a partner in O’Neill & Lysaght, a Santa Monica law firm specializing in white-collar criminal defense work. He served as pro bono deputy general counsel to the Christopher Commission. He is former president of Southern California Chinese Lawyers’ Assn. and a USC law school graduate.

* Maureen R. Siegel, 41, chief of the criminal division of the Los Angeles city attorney’s office. She has spent her career in the city attorney’s office and is a UCLA Law School graduate.

* John K. Van de Kamp, 57, a federal prosecutor from 1960 to 1967. He was the first federal public defender in Los Angeles from 1971 to 1975, Los Angeles County district attorney from 1975 to 1983, California attorney general from 1983 to 1991, and is now a partner in the Los Angeles office of Dewey, Ballantine, a large New York law firm.

Legal observers said each candidate would bring strengths to the job, but said they consider Manella, Van de Kamp, Sun and Drooyan the front-runners. The observers, speaking anonymously, doped out the race this way:

Manella, the only woman in the field with federal prosecution experience, has “taken all the right steps” along the way for this job, is considered quite articulate and likely to be “dazzling” in an interview, according to one source.

Van de Kamp is the best known and the oldest of the candidates. It is rare for a person of his age and breadth of experience to be vying for a U.S. attorney’s job, which normally goes to an attorney about 40 years old, “someone whose career is about to take off,” in the words of one Los Angeles lawyer.

Drooyan had a ranking position in the U.S. attorney’s office recently and achieved considerable success prosecuting political corruption cases, including one against fireworks magnate W. Patrick Moriarty. Sun is considered a skilled lawyer and is the only minority candidate. If chosen, he would become the first Asian-American U.S. attorney in California.

Lightfoot and Pines have strong qualifications, but as white males in their 50s they are overshadowed by Van de Kamp.

Bowers and Holliday are decided underdogs because they are registered Republicans; awarding a U.S. attorney’s job is among the most plum prizes a newly elected senator can dispense.

Henry and Siegel are disadvantaged by their lack of federal prosecution experience, which is traditionally though not always a prerequisite for the job.

Feinstein aide Kuwata said neither race nor sex will be the determining factor in who gets the $113,500-a-year job. “The bottom line is we’re looking for the best qualified,” he said.

He stressed that the candidates have to go through an extensive background check, including questions such as: “Have you ever hired an undocumented worker?” The veteran political operative called that inquiry “the question du jour.”

Sources said the screening committee’s membership includes state appeals court Judge Joan Dempsey Klein, Superior Court Judge Vaino Spencer, Los Angeles lawyers Holly Fujie, William J. Middleton and Lester Ziffren, Santa Ana lawyer Wylie A. Aitken, Warner Bros. Vice President Dan Garcia, who is an attorney, and Rosalind Wyman, a longtime Democratic Party activist and former Los Angeles councilwoman.