Prosecutor goes where others fear to tread

* Don't indict White House officials who leak state secrets. Every administration does it but you can't prove it.

* You can't make patronage at Chicago's City Hall a federal crime. It is a civil violation -- and a way of life.

Patrick Fitzgerald never read the old playbook. He files charges where others fear to tread.

That's why the U.S. attorney in Chicago was chosen to head the White House leak investigation.

Fitzgerald fears no target -- the mayor, the governor, the vice president's chief of staff. His lack of ambition for higher office blinds him to trouble his prosecutions cause leaders of either party or the New York Times editorial page, which railed against him seven times over 85 days for jailing reporter Judith Miller.

Praised as a "straight shooter" by even some adversaries, Fitzgerald admits a single-minded focus on prosecuting cases that keeps him at the office until the wee hours and prevents him from having much of a social life.

"I don't think he took sufficient account of the downside to our society of forcing reporters to testify and jailing them if they didn't," said Miller's lawyer, Floyd Abrams.

However, Abrams said, "I think he's a very straight-shooting, focused and honorable attorney. He kept his word to me every time he gave it. There were situations in which lawyers with lesser standards could have tried to avoid complying with promises previously made, and he always kept his word and behaved himself in, really, the highest tradition of the bar."

An American success story, Fitzgerald grew up in Brooklyn watching his immigrant father work long hours first as a laborer, then a doorman. Fitzgerald and his brother played the accordion at his sisters' Irish dance contests.

Pushed to excel by his mother, Fitzgerald became the star of his class at Our Lady Help of Christians School and was invited to take the test for Regis, the Manhattan Jesuit high school that gives working-class children an Ivy League education for free. Regis sent a letter saying Fitzgerald bombed the test. His mother refused to believe it and made him call the school admissions director.

"I said, 'I'm not doing this. Don't embarrass me. They didn't invite me in. That's it,'" Fitzgerald said. "She made me get on the phone and call the admissions director, which completely mortified me. I was 13 or 14 years old. I found out there were two people with my name and they sent me the wrong letter. She always likes to remind me of that."

All four Fitzgerald children hold graduate degrees, he said. His parents were apolitical, he said, adding, "but I'm sure they voted for Reagan."

With his sharp mind and work ethic that would become legendary, Fitzgerald worked his way through Regis and spent his summers working at the ice cream parlor for "sub-minimum wage," or as a deck hand on New York's ferries.

When the family could afford it, there were summer vacations with family in Ireland.

Fitzgerald went to Amherst in Massachusetts, suited up for rugby, and went head-to-head with the sons and daughters of the people his father held the door for.

During the summers, when some of them headed to the Hamptons, he toiled as a janitor in Brooklyn's public schools, scraping gum off the bottom of desks and swabbing down floors for a union wage.

He preferred that to his dad's job as a doorman, which he had worked an earlier summer, humoring eccentric condo dwellers. Some would yell at Fitzgerald if he did not call them when an envelope arrived at 5 a.m. Others would yell if he did call.

"It's easier if someone just tells me, 'I want the building scrubbed.' You just start scrubbing. You don't have to worry about anyone's quirkiness," Fitzgerald said.

Armed with a Harvard law degree, he took the standard path to a prestigious New York law firm. He was well-paid but not as fulfilled as he had felt interning during college at the U.S. attorney's office in Boston. So after three years at the firm, he joined the U.S. attorney's office in New York.

"My parents were a little concerned as to why I went to the U.S. attorney's office earning half as much," he said.

But he loved it. He prosecuted organized crime figures John and Joe Gambino. His partner was James Comey, who would later rise to the post of deputy attorney general and proclaim Fitzgerald "Elliot Ness with a Harvard law degree and a sense of humor." That case ended in a mistrial, but they eventually got the Gambinos to plead to lesser charges.

Fitzgerald won convictions of blind Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 accomplices for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Fitzgerald traveled to Kenya and Tanzania to work up cases against al Qaida-linked terrorists for bombing the U.S. embassies there in 1998.

His co-workers teased him for the hours he spent working in the office, sometimes sleeping there, keeping socks, underwear and ties in the drawers. He went years without hooking up the gas in his Manhattan apartment because he so rarely came home.

The most unusual of circumstances brought Fitzgerald to Chicago as U.S. attorney in 2001. Maverick Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald was accusing Gov. George Ryan, a fellow Republican, of corruption. He wanted to bring in someone with no ties to the state's political establishment, who would have no sacred cows.

Sen. Fitzgerald asked former FBI director Louis Freeh who was the fiercest prosecutor in America, and Freeh pointed him to the rising star in New York. That still rankles partners at some Chicago silk-stocking law firms, who had come to see the appointment of one of their own as an entitlement.

Fitzgerald took office just before Sept. 11, 2001. With his expertise on Osama bin Laden's network, there was talk of bringing him to Washington to help fight the war on terror. But Justice Department brass decided instead to leave him here and consult with him often.

Chicago's corruption-weary residents welcomed Fitzgerald as a conquering hero. He indicted former Gov. George Ryan. He indicted Mayor Daley's patronage chief and 35 other City Hall officials and workers, and that investigation continues. And now some of his indictments are coming uncomfortably close to Gov. Blagojevich.

Fitzgerald is a hit with his staff, who love the support he gives them, although the e-mails he sends at 2 a.m. set a high standard for the work ethic he expects.

At his news conference Friday announcing the indictments, he made sure, as he always does, to thank every agency that helped put the case together.

"He is the first to give credit to everybody else who has done the work," said Dean Polales, former director of public corruption prosecutions in Chicago. As for his legendary work hours, Polales said, "I would find him in the office very late at night, 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m. He would go home, change and shower, and come back to work early in the morning. He has tremendous amounts of energy. He stays in good shape, runs when he can, but work takes precedence."

"I've gotten a couple of phone messages at odd hours," said Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine, who praises Fitzgerald's abilities, work ethic and cooperation in joint prosecutions.

The past two years, commuting from Chicago to D.C. has doubled his workload, leading him to quip on Friday, "I'd like to wake up in my bed in Chicago."

On those occasions he can be dragged out to a social event, "He's a regular guy," Polales said. "He's not full of himself at all. He's self-deprecating, funny. You don't find him being the life of the party. He doesn't put himself at the center of attention."

Asked at a news conference if a Band-Aid on his forehead was anything serious, he quipped, "It's not going to kill me -- don't get your hopes up."

Some defense attorneys argue that Fitzgerald has a blinders-on approach to prosecution and uses too much creativity in charges.

"I think it may be that there are some charges that are getting brought under his office that seem to be a little more of a stretch than would have gotten approved under [his predecessor]," said defense attorney Patrick Cotter, a Fitzgerald fan who also was a former federal prosecutor in New York.

Mayor Daley complains Fitzgerald is trying to transform patronage from a civil to criminal issue. When a city official created a false job interview record to promote an employee who was in Iraq at the time, and involved the U.S. mail, it became a federal crime, Fitzgerald concluded.

"It's important to note that for more than 30 years -- through six administrations -- such violations always have been treated as civil, not criminal matters. At least until now," Daley said.

Likewise in Ryan's trial, defense attorneys say prosecutors brought an indictment for a conspiracy to run a criminal enterprise out of the governor's office even though they have no witness that ever saw the former governor take a bribe.

"There's no law against doing favors for your friends," said DePaul University law Professor Leonard Cavise. "When it comes to indicting people for things no one has ever been indicted for before, like patronage hiring, he sees himself as a trailblazer, a knight in shining armor. He winds up doing things a more level-headed person would not do."

In 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft flew to Chicago to announce with great fanfare conspiracy charges against Enaam Arnaout for allegedly funneling money from a suburban Chicago Islamic charity to al-Qaida. But the judge threw out evidence and Fitzgerald had to settle for a plea on a lesser charge with no admission that money went to al-Qaida.

Once in 2002, Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed ran an item about Fitzgerald dating someone. But friends say that as married to his job as he is, his relationships tend not to last.

Former Chicago FBI Chief Thomas Kneir, who would leave events with Fitzgerald and head home as Fitzgerald went back to work, said, "I don't think he keeps too many girlfriends -- I don't think they put up with it."

Early last year, when he was still consenting to sit-down interviews, Fitzgerald talked about his working-class Catholic childhood in Flatbush and wrestled uncomfortably with questions about what motivates him to pour such hours into his $140,000-a-year crime-fighting post when he could earn so much more at a law firm.

Fitzgerald said his late father kept his personal life close to the vest, too. Just before he took the Chicago post four years ago, Fitzgerald went back to the family farm in Clare his father left at age 31. A cousin who had grown up with his father told him the stories his father never told him about his childhood, Fitzgerald said.

When Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak revealed that the wife of a Bush administration critic was a "CIA operative," Democrats called for an investigation of whether her name was leaked to punish her husband. Ashcroft declared a conflict of interest and Comey appointed Fitzgerald to spearhead the investigation.

Ashcroft and Comey have since moved on from the administration. But through all the obstacles, including Miller's refusal to be interviewed and her imprisonment, Fitzgerald plowed ahead. The standard term for a U.S. attorney is four years. And his four years are up. But the Bush administration would face a firestorm of criticism if it replaced him or promoted him upstairs in the middle of this.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales met briefly with Fitzgerald in August and said, "I have great confidence in Patrick Fitzgerald."

Fitzgerald coyly answers questions about how long he'll keep this job with quips such as, "I love my job. I'm just doing my job. And if the phone doesn't ring and someone tells me to leave, I just keep doing my job."

Though some critics say he must be angling for higher office, he allowed his first major live national news conference to coincide with the Chicago White Sox victory rally, so while people in other parts of the country saw Fitzgerald live, all three Chicago networks carried Ozzie Guillen.

The only question that seemed to bother Fitzgerald at the news conference Friday was whether he was partisan. He called it a "When did you stop beating your wife?" question. He is a member of no political party, he said.

Pleas from GOP leaders for him to run for senate or for governor have fallen on deaf ears. Higher profile and higher-salaried jobs are outside his field of vision, which remains focused on prosecuting.

Pleas from GOP leaders for him to run for senate or for governor have fallen on deaf ears.

But I thought he was a Democrative partisan. Why would the Ill GOP want to run himn for office, if he's a Dem partisan? I guess that even though he's their local US attorney, they don't know him as well as the Fitz-bashing Freepers who wouldn't have known what he looked like until last week.

Armed with a Harvard law degree,

There's the trouble right there. Another Harvard know it all, who thinks he knows it all.

<< But I thought he was a Democrative [sic] partisan. >>

You got that right.

He was.

He still is.

And a bumbling bloody idiot, to boot.

I guess that even though he's their local US attorney, they don't know him as well as the Fitz-bashing Freepers who wouldn't have known what he looked like until last week.

Hehheh. Fitzgerald has a reputation (and had it before this case) of being incorruptible, and was appointed to his position by the incorruptible (Republican!) Senator Peter Fitzgerald. This in spite of the fact that the corrupt Dennis Hastert tried to pressure the President to let him have the choice instead.

The IL Republicans have tried to recruit him as a candidate, but like the article said, nobody knows his political alliances.

Parick Fitzgerald is nothing but a hit man for the Bushbashers. The charges are trumped up and the trial has already been concluded by the press's Kangaroo court.

This and the Delay farce are designed to weaken the President's position so he can't appoint a good judge to the Supreme Court.

The guy he indicted - Libby - is a Democrat, isn't he? Libby worked in the Clinton administration, he was lawyer for Clinton criminal crony Marc Rich, and Libby's wife - according to another thread - is a top staffer for Biden.

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