In light of recent events, Chicago Magazine has
reposted a July 2002 profile of Patrick Fitzgerald, first published in response to Fitzgerald's stunning indictment of Governor Goerge Ryan's campaign committee. The profile reveals an individual unlikely to be intimidated by the thugs in the White House:
Fitzgerald takes his job seriously enough that his best friend and former colleague, James Comey, now the U.S. attorney in New York City, suggests that thousands of people on the planet would like to put a bullet in Fitzy's head. After all, Fitzgerald has prosecuted the most vengeful kinds of criminals: big-time mobsters and terrorists. With Comey, he put a couple of members of the notorious Gambino crime family behind bars. He was chasing associates of Osama bin Laden around the globe well before the Saudi terrorist mastermind became a household name in America. Within 48 hours of the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, Fitzgerald was in Nairobi personally taking the case's key confession.
For security reasons, he does not get mail at home. He won't say, even by neighborhood, where home in Chicago is.
With that kind of background, you'd think prosecuting the schemes of petty politicians might be a step down. Comey, though, says Fitzgerald was ready for a change. Some people in Illinois were not.
Perhaps even more importantly, the article shows Fitzgerald's ground breaking prosecutorial strategies, and how he uses the federal criminal law in aggressive and creative ways to bring down defendants. Describing the indictment of Governor Ryan's campaign committee:
The indictment made U.S. history. It marked the first time a political campaign had been charged under the federal racketeering statute that is ordinarily used against organized crime. It was also thought to be only the third time a campaign had been charged with federal criminal misconduct of any kind, the other two being Richard Nixon's 1972 Committee to Re-Elect the President, infamously known as CREEP, and three committees linked to Lyndon LaRouche's 1984 presidential bid.
Sounds like Fitzgerald is not the type to shy away from using the Espionage Act in ways not anticipated by clueless beltway pundits.
Finally, he is fearless in the use of the perjury statute -- using it against a defendant who simply declared his innocence under oath:
That wasn't all. In a deposition in the Benevolence lawsuit against the government, the head of the charity, Enaam Arnaout, proclaimed his organization's innocence. So the U.S. attorney's office charged him with perjury. The rare move enraged the charity's supporters and angered some local Muslim Arab American leaders. Earlier, Fitzgerald had won high marks for his sensitive handling of Arabs here on student or tourist visas in interviews ordered by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in the wake of September 11th.
Anyway, read the whole thing. Since we know so little about the Plame case (it's the proverbial floating iceberg -- we see the tip, but 95% of it is underwater), it's good to read about Fitzgerald's past cases, where we know what happened, to get a feeling for what the guy is up to.
My view is that Fitzgerald is an extraordinarily intense and aggressive prosecutor who is not afraid to use the criminal law in new and creative ways to nail his targets. While his methods will not win him any friends among civil libertarians, they have nevertheless shaken up the complacent Washington establishment, and may bring the Bush White House to its knees.
Update [2005-10-10 22:11:2 by pontificator]: Hmmm, Cheney conspicuously missing from high profile GOP dinner, despite having earlier agreed to speak. Raw Story has the scoop.