The Prosecutor Never Rests (Patrick Fitzgerald Is Relentless)

[LibertyorDeath]

Whether Probing a Leak or Trying Terrorists, Patrick Fitzgerald Is Relentless

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 2, 2005; Page C01

CHICAGO

If Osama bin Laden ever stands trial, there's a prosecutor in Chicago waiting to face him down. As a driven young lawyer in the 1990s, Patrick J. Fitzgerald built the first criminal indictment against the man who would become the world's most hunted terrorist. Both men have moved on, you might say, but Fitzgerald still imagines that fantasy date before a judge.

"If you're a prosecutor, you'd be insane if you didn't want to go do that," Fitzgerald says in the well-appointed conference room of the U.S. attorney's office here. "If there was a courtroom and they said someone has to stand up and try him, would I hesitate to volunteer? No. I'm not saying I'd be the best person to try him at that point, but I'd be lying if I told you I wouldn't be interested."
If you're not zealous, you shouldn't have the job," says U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, whose subpoenas of reporters have prompted complaints.

A solidly built former rugby player who enjoyed getting muddy and bloody well into his twenties, Fitzgerald is nothing but confident in his own skin. Just as he does not fear bin Laden, he seems to fret little that he is now tangling simultaneously with the Bush White House and the New York Times, two of the nation's most powerful and privileged institutions.

He sees his task as getting to the bottom of things in ways as creative as the law allows. The law doesn't say you can't question a sitting president about his contacts or an investigative reporter about confidential sources. So Fitzgerald has done both, including quizzing Bush for more than an hour in the White House last June. His assiduous demands for answers from journalists alarms critics who believe he has created the greatest confrontation between the government and the press in a generation.

More
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55560-2005Feb1?language=printer

This is the part I love !!!!!

Fitzgerald's subpoenas to the four reporters in the CIA leak probe did not have to be approved by the Justice Department because, in that matter, he is acting in his capacity as a special counsel.


Deputy Attorney General James Comey appointed Fitzgerald to take over the investigation last December to avoid any appearance of or actual conflict of interest in having the administration investigate itself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9890-2004Sep9.html

[Straight Shooter]

1. Okay, no doubt Kevin Spacey will play Fitzgerald in the movie.

Damn, he looks like a good guy, doesn't he? If your face is your character, this man is sterling.

I love that line about taking on the NYT and the bush administration, "two of the nation's most powerful and privileged institutions."

[LibertyorDeath]

4. Funny that was my first thought too.

"Damn, he looks like a good guy, doesn't he"

Here's a pick of James Comey Deputy Attorney General of the United States the guy who gave Fitzgerald this case.



James Comey was nominated earlier this month to the position of Deputy Attorney General of the United States.

On January 7, 2002, James Comey was appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Prior to assuming that position, he served from 1996 through 2001 as Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the Richmond Division of the United States Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Mr. Comey was educated at College of William & Mary (B.S. with Honors 1982, Chemistry and Religion majors) and University of Chicago Law School (J.D. 1985). After law school, he served as a law clerk for then-United States District Judge John M. Walker, Jr. in Manhattan, and worked for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in their New York Office. He next joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, where he worked from 1987 to 1993, eventually serving as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division.

As a federal prosecutor, he has investigated and prosecuted a wide variety of cases, including firearms, narcotics, major frauds, violent crime, public corruption, terrorism, and organized crime. In the Southern District of New York, he served as lead prosecutor in United States v. John Gambino et al., a six-month mafia racketeering and murder trial. In the Eastern District of Virginia, he handled the Khobar Towers terrorist bombing case, arising out of the June 1996 attack on a U.S. military facility in Saudi Arabia in which 19 Airmen were killed.

http://www.law.pace.edu/News/lectures/blank_speaker2003Nov12.html

Wonder if they went to Law School in Chicago together?

[RagAss]

6. They look like two tough Irish Lads to me

And they won't be taking anyone's crap.....

[LibertyorDeath]

8. I'm starting to get a good feeling about this.

[Darkhawk32]

2. Let's hope he keeps up the good work and doesn't get spooked ...

by White House/GOP threats.

[Merlot]

3. "created the greatest confrontation between the gov't and the press"

rotflol

Yes, all by himself, Fitzgerald created the confrontation. rove and the roll-over press, they had nothing to do with this mess. It was all Fitzgerald and his inscesant questioning and search for the truth.

Damn him!

[LibertyorDeath]

5. LOL yes the Washington Post hard at work

Gotta catapult that propaganda.

[RagAss]

7. kick it