U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has named John Durham, the first assistant U.S. attorney from Connecticut, to lead an investigation into the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations."...
.... "An investigation of this kind, relating to the CIA, would ordinarily be conducted under the supervision of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the District in which the CIA headquarters are located," Mukasey said in a press release. "However, in an abundance of caution and on the request of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in accordance with Department of Justice policy, his office has been recused from the investigation of this matter, in order to avoid any possible appearance of a conflict with other matters handled by that office."
"Mr. Durham is a widely respected and experienced career prosecutor who has supervised a wide range of complex investigations in the past, and I am grateful to him for his willingness to serve in this capacity. As the Acting United States Attorney for purposes of this investigation, Mr. Durham will report to the Deputy Attorney General, as do all United States Attorneys in the ordinary course. I have also directed the FBI to conduct the investigation under Mr. Durham's supervision."....
Edward Mahoney's story in the Courant (Jan 28, 2001) (Avenging Angel Takes On FBI)provides insight into who Durham is, in the eyes of his colleagues and opposition attorneys:
... One year in Connecticut, as an assistant U.S. attorney, he put a third of New England's mafia in jail. He has never lost a case....
...Two and one-half years ago, then-U.S. Attorney General Janet C. Reno appointed Durham to explore allegations that, for three decades, FBI agents and police officers in Boston have been in bed with the mob. In particular, he is looking for crimes committed by agents working with James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, two murderous gangsters who served as FBI informants for a combined 50 years.
What Durham has found to date is nothing less than sensational, judging from what has become part of the public record.
Among other things, he has accused a decorated FBI agent of setting up at least three murders and he is examining evidence suggesting that a second agent might have participated in another - the execution of a former owner of World Jai Alai Inc., once one of the country's leading parimutuel businesses. What's more, he has charged state and local police officers in Massachusetts with secretly helping Bulger and Flemmi. A half dozen bodies have been unearthed from secret graves scattered around the city.
Last month, Durham gave defense lawyers secret government memos suggesting that unscrupulous FBI officials – probably with the knowledge of ex-Director J. Edgar Hoover – framed four men for a 1965 murder. State prosecutors, after 30 years of intransigence, immediately began steps to drop charges against the four - two of whom died of old age in prison.
To say Durham has been turning heads in Boston's clubby legal community is an understatement. That's nothing new in Connecticut, where Durham has compiled one of the most successful prosecutorial records in the country.
"You underestimate Durham at your own peril," said Hugh Keefe, a New Haven defense lawyer.
Successful prosecutors often leave embittered defense lawyers and alienated witnesses in their wakes, victims of a win-at all-costs mentality. Durham, by all accounts, is a refreshing departure. A colleague, struggling for the right description, recently caught himself short and confessed: "I don't want to get maudlin here. But he really is a good person." Even defense lawyers known to attack prosecutors reflexively have little criticism.
"There is nothing negative that I can say," Boston lawyer Anthony Cardinale said. "So if you're looking for that, I'm not in that mode."
Cardinale would seem like a shoo-in for the negative, having been one of a half-dozen lawyers who squared off against Durham in Hartford in the early 1990s in what then was the biggest mob trial in the country. His client, Louis "Louie Pugs" Pugliano, got life without parole. So frustrated was Cardinale, who has defended clients in some of the country's more notable organized crime trials, that he nearly got himself jailed for contempt."
He's obviously a very fierce competitor," Cardinale said. "But he's not a zealot. And he does it by the rules. He is very professional. He is courteous. I've been up against them all over the country and I'd put him in the top echelon of federal prosecutors. He's such a decent guy you can't hate him. That can make it hard to get motivated."
The view from within law enforcement is even less complicated.
"There is no more principled, there is no more better living, there is no finer person that I know of or have encountered in my life," said Richard Farley, a former assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's New Haven division.
Or, Farley might have added, anyone who pays such close attention to detail....
...He likes to hunt ducks, work trout with a fly rod and still looks fit. He has thinning hair, steel-framed glasses and probably a closet full of gray suits. He has a tart sense of humor and, despite a daunting professional schedule, is a fixture at wakes and retirements. He takes Lent seriously and rarely misses Mass on Sunday....
...Through the 1980s and '90s, Durham prosecuted or supervised every organized crime case in Connecticut. His team contributed critical evidence to the conviction in New York of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. He conceived the strategy that put Connecticut's big cities a decade ahead of those in neighboring states in eradicating violent urban crack gangs - a strategy that was later adopted elsewhere in the country. He demoted himself to assistant U.S. attorney about two years ago - guilt, friends said, over spending too much time in Boston."
John was given that thing in Boston, I am quite convinced, because he has a reputation for being above the fray, of being absolutely incorruptible and of absolutely calling things the way he sees them," said Ira Grudberg, a defense lawyer in New Haven. "Despite the fact that he can be a hard ass about certain things, I believe he is a real straight shooter."
Durham has built a career on the presumptive integrity of the criminal justice system. Criminals are supposed to know that their punishments are just because the system operates without bias. Durham was sent to Boston as a special prosecutor to investigate signs that the system had failed....
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