Congress Probes Departures of U.S. Attorneys
The departure of nearly a dozen U.S. attorneys–including some overseeing high-profile politically charged criminal investigations–has sparked congressional inquiries as to whether the Justice Department is politicizing the hiring and firing of federal prosecutors. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty was in the hot seat today answering just that very question before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
One of the U.S. attorney departures that is raising the most eyebrows is that of Carol Lam, who has been overseeing the massive federal corruption probe of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham. The eight-term Republican congressman is currently serving a long prison term for accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for inserting lucrative "earmarks" into defense appropriations and intelligence appropriations budgets on behalf of two defense contractors, including a San Diego-based contractor named Brent Wilkes and two unindicted co-conspirators.
But federal investigators are continuing to investigate Wilkes's ties to Cunningham and to a senior Central Intelligence Agency official named Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who has since resigned from his post after being named in the corruption probe. The government alleges that Wilkes gave Cunningham more than $630,000 in bribes, gifts, and favors. They also are probing whether Wilkes obtained lucrative CIA contracts from Foggo, a former high school buddy who became the No. 3 official at the CIA. That investigation is still ongoing and could result in further indictments.
Both Wilkes and Foggo have said they are innocent.
To some veteran former Justice Department officials, the departure of Lam before the Cunningham probe is completed harks back to a similar case involving a CIA asset more than 25 years ago, in which the U.S. attorney was fired because of pressure from the agency. In 1982, the feds arrested the former chief of the Federal Security Directorate (Mexico's secret police), Miguel Nazar Haro, after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego for his involvement in an $8 million car-theft ring that had smuggled about 600 stolen American luxury cars and vans from Southern California to Mexico.
The U.S. attorney in San Diego, William Kennedy, had uncovered the car-theft ring and pushed the Justice Department to indict Haro. Kennedy charged that the CIA was blocking the indictment because Haro was a CIA asset in Mexico City and that the Justice Department was dragging its feet. Kennedy was reprimanded in no uncertain terms–President Ronald Reagan fired the prosecutor, a former Justice official says, after the CIA brought pressure to bear. But Haro–who was forced to resign as the secret police chief because of the car-smuggling allegations– was subsequently indicted and arrested. He posted $200,000 bail and fled, becoming a fugitive. And so he remained, until he was again arrested in February 2004, this time on charges that he had kidnapped a leftist leader nearly three decades earlier during Mexico's "dirty war," against the left.
After Kennedy was fired, Justice sources say, CIA officials used it as a "warning" to other Justice officials not to challenge the agency. Kennedy later became a superior court judge in San Diego.
Fast forward to the Cunningham probe. Former Justice officials say it's ironic that the U.S. attorney's office that the CIA challenged so aggressively in the 1980s is the same office that is now targeting an allegedly corrupt CIA official. The CIA, Justice sources say, has blocked efforts to obtain documents in connection with the Wilkes-Foggo case.
Lam has declined to comment on her imminent departure. McNulty told the Judiciary Committee today that the turnover of U.S. attorneys is not unusual and won't cause any problems.
"The indisputable fact is that [U.S. attorneys] serve at the pleasure of the president," said McNulty. "They come and they go for lots of reasons."
But one former senior justice official says he's skeptical of official explanations.
"If you say there's an innocent reason for the change in San Diego," he says, "I have a bridge to sell in Brooklyn."