From The Boston Globe, 7/19/05:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/07/19/pursuing_the_cia_leak_profile_of_a_tough_smart_lawyer/
Pursuing the CIA leak: profile of a tough, smart lawyer
Prosecutor offers a long paper trail of determination
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON --
The White House aides and journalists at the center of Patrick J.
Fitzgerald's probe into how a spy's cover was blown have little in
common with the accused terrorists and mobsters he has pursued for
most of his career.
But for Fitzgerald, a prosecutor who is known for being as tough and
relentless as he is brilliant, that's a distinction without a
difference.
The 44-year-old Brooklyn native, seems to be as determined to find out
whether one of President Bush's top advisers is responsible for the
leak as he was to build a case against Osama bin Laden, whom he
indicted in 1998, or as he was to imprison John Gambino, the purported
New York crime family captain, which he did in 1994.
It's a matter of law, and anyone who knows Fitzgerald knows he doesn't
hang back when he believes a crime might have been committed -- no
matter what the crime might be.
''At a certain point, we have to yield to law because if we don't,
we're lost," Fitzgerald told a judge on July 6, the day that New York
Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail at his request for refusing
to testify about her sources.
The mentality is classic Fitzgerald, colleagues and friends say.
But at times his aggressive tactics have drawn controversy.
Fitzgerald's decision to force journalists to disclose their sources
has been criticized by reporters and legal analysts, who say it could
irreparably damage the news media's ability to do their work.
Others, including some critics, call it a clever and necessary move
that could help Fitzgerald solve a puzzling case.
Months into the investigation, nobody has been charged, but
reverberations of the prosecutor's tactics are being felt at the
highest echelons of government.
Bush and Vice President ***** Cheney have sat for questioning by
Fitzgerald, the US attorney from Chicago who was tapped by the Justice
Department in December 2003 to handle the leak case.
Karl Rove, a top Bush aide, is under fire for his involvement in the
matter, after Fitzgerald subpoenaed e-mail messages from Time magazine
correspondent Matt Cooper detailing a conversation in which Rove
mentioned the agent, Valerie Plame, although not by name.
Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary, has been fielding questions
daily from journalists at the White House, demanding to know why he
denied two years ago that Rove was involved.
Fitzgerald declined to be interviewed.
Friends, colleagues, and adversaries say the aggressive methods he has
employed in the CIA leak case are typical of the workaholic Chicago
prosecutor, an Amherst College Phi Beta Kappa in math and economics
with a Harvard law degree who has excelled at taking unorthodox
approaches to problems.
''Pat always sees beyond the obvious in a case," said David N. Kelley,
a friend who worked organized crime and terrorism cases alongside
Fitzgerald in the US attorney's office in Manhattan.
One night, shortly after both had started there, Kelley gazed down at
stacks of files in a case he was handling, certain he was about to
lose.
Colleagues who came by to read his notes agreed that Kelley was
doomed.
Fitzgerald wasn't among them.
''Pat looked at it and said to me, 'Have you thought about it this
way?' And I hadn't," said Kelley, who is now Manhattan's top federal
prosecutor.
Kelley worked all night drafting a brief based on Fitzgerald's idea
and salvaged his case.
Fitzgerald was born Dec. 22, 1960, the son of Irish immigrants; his
father was a doorman on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
They raised him in Flatbush.
He won a scholarship to attend Regis High School, a Jesuit institution
known as one of the city's best, working as a janitor and a doorman to
save money for college.
At Amherst, he stood out.
Strikingly intelligent, he had a gift for distilling huge amounts of
complex information into a simple, understandable narrative that his
classmates could understand.
Friends turned to him after economics class for a translation of the
day's lesson, Tony Bouza said.
''He was born with an amazing brain," Bouza said.
Fitzgerald always took pains to be ''unassuming and nonintimidating,"
aware that his intellect might put people off, he added.
Still, there were early signs of his grit.
Fitzgerald took up rugby -- a bruising sport he would continue through
college, law school, and into his early days as a lawyer in Manhattan
-- and allowed friends glimpses of what Bouza called a ''clever,
sarcastic wit."
All were traits that would serve him well as a prosecutor in New York.
A three-day summation of his case against Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman for
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was typical of Fitzgerald.
He delivered the summation -- for a case whose record spanned 22,000
pages, with an additional 20,000 pages of exhibits -- just from notes.
''It was masterful," said Andrew C. McCarthy, one of Fitzgerald's
trial partners in the ''Day of Terror" case, in which 11 defendants
stood trial.
The jury agreed.
The ''Blind Sheik" was sentenced to life, and Fitzgerald, fearing that
Abdel-Rahman would try to incite violence among his followers from
prison, used a never-before-applied law to have Abdel-Rahman
incarcerated in isolation.
Some critics fault Fitzgerald for such moves, accusing him of abusing
his power and going beyond what is necessary or appropriate.
He took heat for his handling of a 2002 terrorism case in which he set
out to prove that Enaam Arnaout, director of the Islamic charity
Benevolence International, was funneling money to Al Qaeda.
The staff of the independent Sept. 11 Commission criticized
Fitzgerald's methods.
''Although effective in shutting down its targets, this aggressive
approach raises potential civil liberties concerns," they wrote.
Allies defend Fitzgerald against allegations that he is overzealous.
''He is aggressive, but I think appropriately so," said Mary Jo White,
a former top prosecutor in Manhattan, who called Fitzgerald ''a
brilliant legal mind and a brilliant investigative mind."
Above all, friends and coworkers say, Fitzgerald seems untroubled by
controversy.
''I don't think it weighs on him at all, not to say he's oblivious to
what's going on around him," White said.
''But at the end of the day," White said, ''he's totally independent
and objective, and is not going to back down."
_________________________________________________________
Watch yer back, Patrick.
Harry
.
|
