Posted on 05/28/2002 12:21:12 PM PDT by OKCSubmariner
Justice Department veteran front-runner for FBI post, sources say
The BCCI Affair A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate
by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown December 1992 102d Congress 2d Session Senate Print 102-140>{? A snip:
Over the past two years, the Justice Department's handling of BCCI has been criticized in numerous editorials in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, reflecting similar criticism on the part of several Congressmen, including the chairman of the Subcommittee, Senator Kerry; the chief Customs undercover officer who handled the BCCI drug-money laundering sting, Robert Mazur; his superior at Customs, Commissioner William von Raab; New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau; former Senate investigator Jack Blum, and, within the Justice Department itself, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Dexter Lehtinen.
Typical editorials criticized Justice's prosecution of BCCI as "sluggish," "conspicuously slow," "inattentive," and "lethargic." Several editorials noted that there had been "poor cooperation" by Justice with other agencies. One stated that "the Justice Department seems to have been holding up information that should have been passed on" to regulators and others. Another that "the Justice Department's secretive conduct in dealing with BCCI requires a better explanation than any so far offered."
In response to all these critics, the Justice Department has suggested that their comments are ill-informed, their motives suspect, and that in time, the wisdom and probity of the Justice Department's approach would emerge. As Assistant Attorney General Robert S. Mueller III stated to the Subcommittee in prepared testimony on November 21, 1991:
We are responsible, ethical prosecutors. We will not indict simply to get favorable press coverage or to quiet our critics. We require evidence sufficient to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, and we will not indict if that evidence does not exist . . . It is premature to assess our performance. We cannot even respond fully to criticism, because we cannot reveal grand jury proceedings or the details of our investigations. Our record when the investigations and prosecutions have concluded will speak for itself. . . a fair review of the available facts will show that the Department of Justice has done an excellent job on the BCCI investigations, and that the criticisms of the Department are fundamentally unfair.
Unfortunately, as time has passed it has become increasingly clear that the Justice Department did indeed make critical errors in its handling of BCCI prior to the appointment of Attorney General Barr in October, 1991, and moreover masked inactivity in prosecuting and investigating the bank by advising critics tat matters pertaining to BCCI were "under investigation," when in fact they were not.
These critical strategic errors, which arose in the earliest stages of the Justice Department's handling of the Customs sting, Operation C-Chase, in 1988, were compounded by the Justice Department's attempts to hinder other legitimate investigative efforts, and by the Justice Department's inability to admit that it had made any of these mistakes.
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War on Crime Expands U.S. Prosecutors' Powers; Aggressive Tactics Put Fairness at Issue
By Jim McGeeWashington Post Staff Writer
Public pressure to combat rising crime, together with 12 years of conservative administrations and a "law and order" Supreme Court majority, has transformed the U.S. criminal justice system and vastly expanded the powers of federal prosecutors over the past decade.
The changes can be measured in numbers: The Justice Department's budget grew from $2.3 billion in 1981 to $9.3 billion today, while the number of attorneys, including those who prosecute on behalf of the government, has nearly doubled, to 7,881.
At the same time, Justice Department policies and Supreme Court rulings have given prosecutors more flexibility than ever before in pursuing convictions, and made it increasingly difficult for courts or aggrieved individuals to hold federal prosecutors accountable for tactics that once were considered grounds for case dismissal or disciplinary action.
These tactics include manipulation of grand juries; failure to disclose evidence favorable to a suspect or defendant; government intrusion into the relationship between defense attorneys and clients; intimidation of witnesses; and blitzkrieg indictments or threats of indictment designed to force capitulation without the need for a trial.
Polls show that many Americans believe their federal court system still coddles criminal defendants. But a growing minority of federal judges and other legal experts say that the system has tilted too far in the other direction, and they have complained, in court opinions and journal articles, of a rising official tolerance for prosecution maneuvers they see as unfair, abusive and manifestly improper.
Often sounding "procedural" or like "legal technicalities" to the layman, such tactics can result in a "radical skewing of the balance of advantage in the criminal justice system in favor of the state," as law professor Bennett L. Gershman put it in a recent law review article that he called "The New Prosecutors." "First, prosecutors wield vastly more power than ever before," Gershman wrote. "Second, prosecutors are more insulated from judicial control over their conduct. Third, prosecutors are increasingly immune from ethical restraints." /snip
In the District of Columbia in 1988, a prosecutor obtained a bribery-conspiracy indictment against a prominent businessman with grand jury tactics that were later criticized by an internal Justice Department review. The review acknowledged that the prosecutor had exercised "poor judgment" in his handling of a grand jury witness. The businessman was quickly acquitted by a judge who said there was no direct evidence against him. But his reputation and business suffered severely from the indictment, and he continues to seek redress in thecourts.
In Los Angeles two years ago, a U.S. district judge threw out a major payola-racketeering case because, he said, the federal prosecutor did not disclose evidence that tended to exonerate a defendant. In May, an appeals court agreed that the government's conduct was "intolerable," but reinstated the case, saying that recent Supreme Court rulings left it powerless to do otherwise. The prosecution is still pending.
In 1991, a federal judge in California dismissed a government drug case because "overzealous government agents and prosecutors" had allowed a defendant to retain an attorney who was actively working with the government against him. While pretending to be honestly representing the accused, the attorney was setting him up for the government. In December 1991, a racketeering case against one of Miami's most notorious criminal suspects was thrown out because a judge determined that prosecutors had plotted to provoke the target into breaking a plea bargain agreement they had made with him.
/snip
"By reason of focusing on a number of individual cases, whether they are right or wrong," said Assistant Attorney General Robert S. Mueller III in an interview, "you are going to tar any number of prosecutors out there who have dedicated their lives to what they feel is participating in the criminal justice system in a way that is fair and just.
"You are going to paint us . . . as being some form of Hessians that will trample over rules without any restraints in order to put somebody away," said Mueller, who heads the department's Criminal Division. "That bothers me. That disappoints me."
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WHO IS ROBERT MUELLER III?
MUELLER WAS A LOYAL HANDLER OF SEVERAL OF THE DOJ'S BIGGEST PANDORA'S BOXES DURING THE BUSH PRESIDENCY.
Mueller was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the BCCI investigation during the Bush Administration. In 1992 he was the Assistant U.S. attorney responsible for the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 investigation. Read Mueller's views about Lockerbie at:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1992/8925150-8926640.htm
Between 1995 and 1998, Mr. Mueller was senior litigation counsel and then chief of the homicide section in the United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia. Previously, he was a senior partner in a private Washington, DC, law firm, where he practiced both criminal and civil law. (Which private law firm employed Mueller from 1993 to 1995? Where exactly did he work? This may be a gap in his official resume.)
From 1990 until 1993, Mr. Mueller held the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice, supervising 800 attorneys and overseeing broad and significant federal criminal investigations. Prior to that appointment, he served as Assistant to the United States Attorney General for law enforcement issues and criminal matters. From 1988 to 1990, 1988 Mr. Mueller served as a partner with the law firm of Hill and Barlow in Boston, MA. Prior to this, he served in the Office of the U.S. Attorney, District of Massachusetts, in several capacities: Deputy U.S. Attorney, 1987 - 1988; U.S. Attorney, 1986 - 1987; First Assistant U.S. Attorney, 1985 - 1986; and Chief of the Criminal Division, 1982 - 1985.
In addition, Mr. Mueller served in the Office of the United States Attorney, Northern District of California, in several capacities: Interim Chief of the Criminal Division, 1981 - 1982; Chief of Special Prosecutions Unit, 1980 - 1981; Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division, 1978 - 1980; and Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Civil Division, 1976 - 1977. (It appears that Mueller may have served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, in the Northern District of California, for approximately one year when Joseph Russoniello was the U.S. Attorney (Russoniello's term ran from 1982-1990.)
"At no time, to my knowledge, has anyone from the CIA, or any agency, attempted to obstruct or interfere with the Department of Justice's investigation and prosecution of BCCI." Robert Mueller, III, now U.S. Attorney, Northern District San Francisco, then Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Bush Administration. who led the investigation of BCCI looting in 1991 and 1992. From Mueller's testimony before Senate Subcommittee, Hrg. 102-350 Pt. 3, p. 789.
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The same phrases and actions keep happing and Mueller is involved in many where this happens, it does not take a rocket scientist to see what the truth.
I saw that. BCCI was definately a whitewash--I'd forgotten about that.
Now we all know where your information originates. You might just feel more at home Here They seem to honor the same sources.
I see you don't read the WSJ on a regular basis. They asked plenty of questions about the wisdom of Mueller's appointment. The WSJ has also published many ariticles about unanswered questions about the first Bush administration's handling of the BCCI affair.
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