The man whom Dick Cheney has suggested is an Obama hatchet man to discredit Bush policies in the War on Terror is a registered Republican who was first deputized by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to probe the CIA’s destruction of detainee videotapes.
But John H. Durham, appointed last week to investigate allegations of CIA abuse of detainees, is no one’s shill. Perhaps the distinguishing feature of his 30-year career as a Connecticut federal prosecutor is his willingness to follow the evidence, wherever it leads.
Durham helped prosecute John G. Rowland, the former Republican governor of Connecticut, on corruption. He put away dirty FBI agents in Boston in the sensational case that inspired Martin Scorcese’s The Departed. And he has successfully prosecuted a rogue’s gallery of mob leaders, including members of the Gambino, Genovese and Patriarca crime families.
“All I know is, if I were being investigated by John H. Durham, I’d probably save him the trouble and commit suicide,” wrote the author of Lawyerworldland, a blog.
A practicing Roman Catholic and devoted Red Sox fan, Durham has been compared to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago who served as special prosecutor probing the leaked identity of a CIA officer who won a conviction against Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
“He’s Fitzgerald with a sense of humor,” Hugh O’Keefe, a Connecticut criminal defense lawyer who has known Durham for 20 years, told The Washington Post.
Like Fitzgerald, Durham has tackled knotty cases for both Democrats and Republicans. In the late 1990s, the Clinton Justice Department made him special prosecutor to investigate allegations that the FBI in Boston was colluding with James “Whitey” Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang. Former FBI agent John J. “Zip” Connolly Jr. was indicted in 1999 on charges that he had alerted Bulger to investigations, falsified FBI reports to cover his crimes and accepted bribes.
Since being tapped by the Bush administration 19 months ago, Durham has headed the inquiry into the 2005 destruction of CIA videotapes that depicted brutal waterboarding of high-value terrorism suspects. The investigation is unfolding before a grand jury in Alexandria, although it is unclear whether anyone will be charged, according to the Post.
Now, on behalf of another Democratic administration, he will examine allegations that CIA employees broke laws in connection with a number of cases involving interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other possible secret sites. Durham will make a recommendation to the attorney general about whether to launch a full-scale criminal investigation.
Even for a man routinely described as fearless, that is a daunting assignment.
But Durham’s reply to a reporter’s question at a long-ago press conference in Boston about a probe into FBI corruption may be instructive.
“Does the Department of Justice have the stomach to pursue this investigation to its conclusion?” the reporter asked, according to a 2001 profile of Durham in The Hartford Courant.
“The government absolutely has the stomach,” Durham answered.
It was the only question he took that day.
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1 Comments
#1. mackie mccleod 09.02.2009
to view a partial list of crimes committed by FBI agents over 1500 pages long see
http://www.forums.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=59139
to view a partial list of FBI agents arrested for pedophilia see
http://www.dallasnews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3574
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