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The investigations and convictions deeply affected the nation's political map and policy-making since most targets lose their jobs and careers. So, the patterns are important not simply to the often financially devastated defendants and their families, but also to a wider group of those concerned about government policy across the range of potential decision-making in such varied matters as health, jobs, education or public safety.
My bipartisan group, the Justice Integrity Project, was founded to investigate such cases under both Bush and Obama administrations. In this, we have followed the March 2007 warning of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who said the real story isn't the firing of nine prosecutors. Instead, he warned, the public needs to know what the remaining 84 presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys were doing to keep their jobs.
Our in-depth investigative reporting has exposed serious irregularities in the prosecutions of Democrats Don Siegelman, New Jersey mayoral candidate Louis Manzo and forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht and Republicans Ted Stevens, "Die Hard" filmmaker John McTiernan and former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, plus several non-partisan targets in the military or other national defense work. Details of these "leading cases" are on our website.
But Dannehy never contacted such witnesses who were victimized by wrongdoing and who almost uniformly want to testify under oath before an impartial investigator, or third party experts best known for their research in this field. Is there good reason for that, or is it part of a pattern in which prosecutors tend to find scant wrongdoing against their colleagues, in part by not looking?
A question reporters and the public need to pursue is whether a culture of error and cover-up prevailed in the Department of Justice under Bush and continues under President Obama.
It is one thing to want to look forward, as Obama stated as he took office. But it is wrong and immoral for our criminal system not to examine what appear to be obvious abuses that discredit the justice system, local and regional politics, and, indeed, our nation's standing in the world as a beacon of democracy and civil rights.
Ironically, the appeals court finding of misconduct by the team led by Durham and Dannehy leaves only a disputed obstruction of justice count against Spadoni that focuses on his deletion of files from his computer as he feared that his company would receive a subpoena.
In certain ways, the vast resources that DOJ has expended in pursuing him and Grimes parallels Durham's investigation of CIA personnel, who under the Bush administration allegedly destroyed dozens of videotapes showing the torture of terror suspects. Whether DOJ will seek to hold government personnel accountable in the same way is a question that remains open and divisive.
Nieman Watchdog, which provides in-depth news leads for journalists, first published my story the night of July 25-26
Visit the Justice Integrity Project for more information
