A cop's prosecutor

Also called a prosecutor's prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald takes crime fighting personally

by Aaron Chambers

The circumstances surrounding a meeting between U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Chicago police detectives in late 2001, shortly after Fitzgerald assumed his post, were extraordinary in two respects. The crime that inspired the meeting was, as murders sometimes are, downright bizarre. But it’s not the nature of the crime that sticks in the mind of Terry Hillard, who retired last month as the Chicago Police Department’s super-intendent. It’s that the meeting took place at all.

The detectives, together with agents of the U.S. Secret Service, had investigated the supposed death of Joseph Kalady, a reputed scam artist who was facing federal charges for counterfeiting identification cards. When the investigators viewed the corpse, which was soon to be cremated, they discovered the body was nearly 300 pounds shy of Kalady’s weight. The dead man weighed a mere 175 pounds; Kalady was morbidly obese at 450.

It turned out the body belonged to a vagrant from Kalady’s neighborhood named William White. A few days later, the feds arrested Kalady in Massachusetts and charged him with murdering White and trying to pass White’s body off as his own to avoid prosecution. In May, Kalady died in federal prison.

The police detectives had helped crack the murder case and prevent Kalady from fleeing. So, from Fitzgerald’s perspective, a personal gesture in the form of a visit was a natural move.

“It was an unusual case and an unusual investigation,” he says. “We just wanted to thank the people who were involved and participated in the investigation, and a number of them were out at the detective area.”

But Hillard was moved by this unprecedented level of interest. “I had been on the job as superintendent for three years, on the command staff for about 14 years and on the Chicago Police Department for about 33 years, and I’ve never seen a U.S. attorney go out to a detective area and personally thank detectives for a job well done. It’s unheard of.”

Such praise for the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois is rare within Chicago’s law enforcement community. Though tension is often the rule between those who investigate crime and those who prosecute it, Fitzgerald enjoys an uncommon relationship with investigative agencies and their foot soldiers. Special agents in charge of Chicago’s field offices call him “a cop’s prosecutor” and “a prosecutor’s prosecutor.” They credit him with injecting energy into the crime-fighting community, thereby increasing morale, even productivity, among their rank and file. Felony case filings, which were increasing before he arrived, have continued to do so, according to the federal court clerk’s office. Drug cases rose to 226 in 2002 from 124 in 1999, for instance, while fraud cases rose to 198 in 2002 from 153 in 1999. In one such case, which Fitzgerald billed as one of the largest white-collar fraud prosecutions in the Chicago area, his office last month charged five executives with looting more than $80 million from a trust company and a real estate title company.

Investigators also applaud Fitzgerald’s intellectual acumen, a characteristic that is evident in his answers to a reporter’s questions. He speaks quickly and intensely, occasionally colliding sentences in his efforts to articulate the full range of a thought.

This month, Fitzgerald marks two years as the top federal law enforcement official in northern Illinois, and in that time he has firmly established a reputation as a no-holds-barred crime fighter. This is due to more than a close relationship with investigators.

He has continued to prosecute, with vigor, one of the largest public corruption investigations in the history of the state. The five-year federal Operation Safe Road investigation, which began as an examination of bribes paid in return for driver’s licenses and ballooned into a full-scale corruption probe, has produced 57 convictions. Those prosecuted under Fitzgerald’s watch include Scott Fawell, a top aide to former Gov. George Ryan, and Ryan’s campaign committee.

And Fitzgerald has presided over a massive joint federal, state and local program designed to deter gun crime by subjecting gun-bearing felons to tough federal penalties. The U.S. attorney’s office charged 170 gun cases against 375 defendants from May 1, 2002, through April 30, 2003, up from 83 gun cases against 129 defendants during the previous one-year period. Hillard credits Fitzgerald with spearheading this effort.

For that matter, Fitzgerald’s fingerprints are said to be on all major criminal cases in the Northern District of Illinois. This region — one of three federal jurisdictions in Illinois — covers the state’s 18 northern counties. As its chief federal law enforcement official, Fitzgerald directs the activities of more than 140 prosecutors in the Chicago and Rockford offices who handle federal offenses from white-collar fraud to narcotics trafficking to money laundering to cybercrime. He also helps coordinate the activities of local offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and other federal investigative agencies.

“He doesn’t shuck the issues no matter what they are: police corruption, political corruption, terrorism, drug dealing, guns,” Hillard says. “He is a hands-on individual, and I think he’s reinvigorated not only his staff but a lot of other agencies in law enforcement in this city and across the Northern District of Illinois.”

Fitzgerald is fully engaged in his work. As he puts it, he takes crime personally, and he sees himself as responsible for eradicating it. No matter that Fitzgerald is a New York native and the crime at issue is in Illinois.

“Once you find out there’s a crime going on, and you recognize it’s in your jurisdiction, and you have a sense that either you do something about it or nothing gets done about it, then you have to take it personally,” he says.

“When there’s crime going on involving corruption or violence, or certainly terrorism, and it’s affecting people’s lives, you feel like it’s your job, together with others in the law enforcement agencies, to stop it.”

Fitzgerald’s parents met in New York after emigrating from Ireland’s County Clare, just south of Galway on the country’s west coast. Fitzgerald, along with his brother and two sisters, was raised Catholic in Brooklyn. He attended parochial schools, including Regis High School, where he was awarded a full scholarship. He then paid his way through Amherst College, a liberal arts school in Massachusetts, with money earned from on-campus jobs during the school year. Summers, he worked as a janitor and a doorman — a job his dad also held. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in math and economics in 1982. He earned his law degree three years later at Harvard, where he taught economics.

Fitzgerald then spent three years in private practice doing civil litigation at a New York law firm. In 1988, he achieved his dream of becoming a federal prosecutor — a goal he formulated in law school during an internship at the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts. He joined the famed U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The Manhattan-based office is thought by some in federal law enforcement to churn out the best federal prosecutors in the country.

During 13 years in that office, Fitzgerald met, and perhaps raised, that standard. He solidified a reputation as brilliant in his ability to organize and process reams of detail in complex criminal cases and as exceptionally hard working — he routinely worked through the night to prepare for trial and showered just before walking into court.

Fitzgerald cut his teeth prosecuting some of the world’s toughest, most sophisticated criminals. He began by handling drug trafficking cases and prosecuting major heroin smuggling rings, and went on to serve a stint as chief of the narcotics unit. He also headed the organized crime/anti-terrorism unit.

In 1993, he and then-Assistant U.S. Attorney James Comey prosecuted John Gambino, a capo of the Gambino crime family — the organization controlled by John Gotti in the late 1980s — and three other members of the family. The defendants were charged with murder, racketeering, gambling, narcotics trafficking, loan-sharking and bid-rigging. But, in a career upset for Fitzgerald, the jury deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. Later, the defendants pleaded guilty in exchange for 15-year sentences.

Fitzgerald then segued to the fight against terrorism, a cause that continues to define his career.

In 1995, he helped prosecute a blind Egyptian cleric named Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine others accused in a broad conspiracy involving the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people, and a plot to detonate New York bridges, tunnels and other landmarks. The feds convicted the sheik, who is serving a life sentence, and his co-defendants.

In 1996, Fitzgerald supervised the prosecution and conviction of three people charged with plotting to bomb 12 American airliners flying out of Asia.

In 1998, three years before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Fitzgerald’s unit indicted Osama bin Laden and 22 others in connection with the bombings of two American embassies in Africa that killed more than 200 people. Fitzgerald was chief counsel in the prosecution. Four men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Fitzgerald still keeps a keen eye on suspected terrorist activity, and is regarded as a top national authority on the subject. In the wake of September 11, the Justice Department tapped his insight — though Fitzgerald, in typical modest fashion, plays down his role. He says people in this country failed to appreciate the terrorist threat in the years leading up to the attacks, and they risk doing so again. “The world changed forever for us when that happened. However, I think there’s a lot of people, for better or for worse, who would like to put that behind them. And if they go a few years without [any attacks], they may write it off as a one-time thing that’s over with. That may be good psychologically for people to deal with it, but a little bit risky. I think we’ve always been sort of in denial as to the risks.” He says the sophistication and long-range planning of terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda should not be underestimated.

Law enforcement officials in Illinois consider Fitzgerald’s experience an asset should they need to respond to terrorist activity here. And Fitzgerald pledges to be personally involved in any terrorism-related investigation in the Northern District. He says it’s imperative to move quickly with cases against suspected terrorists, given the potentially devastating nature of their crimes, and that it’s prudent for him to apply his knowledge and understanding.

He demonstrated this commitment in a case that transpired over the past year, personally prosecuting Enaam Arnaout, director of a Palos Hills-based Muslim charity, for conspiring to support terrorists. But while Fitzgerald won a conviction against Arnaout, he failed to tie Arnaout to al Qaeda.

Fitzgerald’s office accused Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen, with steering charitable donations to al Qaeda and Muslim militia in Chechnya and Bosnia. The feds made a media event of the indictment announcement last October; U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared with Fitzgerald at the press conference.

Arnaout pleaded guilty to racketeering and admitted to defrauding donors, who thought the money went to human-itarian causes, by sending some to the Bosnian and Chechnyan military units. But the feds dropped charges related to support for terrorist groups in exchange for the guilty plea and Arnaout’s promise to cooperate with their investigation.

Prosecutors subsequently blasted his assistance as inadequate, and sought to lengthen his sentence under guidelines requiring tougher prison terms for those convicted of specific terrorism offenses. Arnaout’s crime — conspiracy to commit racketeering — was not on the list. But the feds argued the guidelines applied because they refer to felonies that involve, or are intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism.

U.S. District Judge Suzanne Conlon disagreed; she ruled the law applies only to enumerated offenses. She also noted that in the plea agreement, the government agreed to dismiss what she labeled “sensational and highly publicized” charges of supporting terrorists and terrorist organizations. “Arnaout does not stand convicted of a terrorism offense,” she wrote in her opinion. “Nor does the record reflect that he attempted, participated in, or conspired to commit any act of terrorism.”

Fitzgerald’s office issued a short statement that the government disagreed with the court’s ruling. Arnaout was scheduled to be sentenced late last month.

It’s not unusual for aggressive prosecutors to be called, typically by criminal defense attorneys, “overzealous.” Fitzgerald is no exception. Defense attorneys in Illinois, as well as New York, have said just that.

His handling of one case in particular reinforces his image as a prosecutor who refuses to handle Chicago’s elite with kid gloves. Federal agents detained Michael Segal, an insurance mogul with vast connections to Illinois’ political establishment, at a prominent hotel over a weekend in January 2002. One of Fitzgerald’s lieutenants interrogated Segal, and FBI agents arrested him.

In what appears to be part of a wide-ranging examination of political activities in Cook County, Fitzgerald’s office charged Segal with racketeering in connection with a key account at his firm, Near North Insurance Brokerage. Segal allegedly looted more than $20 million in funds. He is fighting the charges.

Fitzgerald says that while the law requires prosecutors to be fair, it does not prevent them from being zealous. “Within the rules of fairness — disclosing what we have, being honest and only going after those we believe are guilty — we should be zealous,” he says. “We should stand up and fight just as hard for our client, which is the citizens of the United States, as someone who represents a particular defendant. We can be zealous and we can be fair, and I think we should do both.”

Fitzgerald often is labeled an outsider, too. He hails from New York and had no apparent connections to Illinois’ legal or political establishments. But the nature of that independence is the most controversial aspect of his tenure; it provokes a continuing debate on whether previous U.S. attorneys were subject to influence from the Illinois power brokers.

U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, who is not related to the U.S. attorney, says that when he searched for somebody to fill the post, he simply wanted the best federal prosecutor in the country. He says he called then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and asked for the name of the best assistant U.S. attorney in the country. Freeh, he says, identified Patrick Fitzgerald of the Southern District of New York. The senator says he then called Mary Jo White, who was U.S. attorney in that district, and asked her for the name of her best assistant. She also identified Patrick Fitzgerald.

Tradition dictates that the state’s senior U.S. senator of the president’s party is responsible for recommending to the president someone to serve as U.S. attorney. The president then forwards his nomination to the Senate for confirmation. This task fell to Sen. Fitzgerald, an Inverness Republican, when George W. Bush won the White House. (It’s not clear how the recommendation process would work if Bush wins re-election, and Fitzgerald, who is leaving the Senate, is replaced by a Democrat. Illinois’ other U.S. senator, Dick Durbin, is a Democrat.) But tradition also dictates that the job of U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois be filled by somebody with Illinois roots. In fact, Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be the first “outsider” to serve in more than a century. Francis Even, a Chicago attorney and president of the Northern District of Illinois Court Historical Association, knows of only one other attorney “not firmly connected to Illinois” to hold the post: Henry Fitch, the son of an Indiana senator, served from 1858 to 1861.

Sen. Fitzgerald, who has defined his own career by conflict with Illinois political regulars, abandoned this tradition. “There were plenty of fine applicants from Illinois,” he says, “but none of them were even close to Patrick Fitzgerald in credentials and capabilities.”

While the senator insists his first priority was finding a top-notch prosecutor, he emphasizes his satisfaction with Patrick Fitzgerald’s independence from Illinois. “It would be very difficult for any lawyer who is from the city to have absolutely no political connections of any kind to either party.”

The view that Illinois is better served by an outsider as U.S. attorney has long been promoted by the editorial page of the Chicago Tribune, and by the newspaper’s lead columnist, John Kass. An editorial, during the 2001 selection process urged Sen. Fitzgerald “not to choose a current Republican officeholder or a politically connected lawyer from a big-name Chicago firm for the job.” Kass accused Scott Lassar, Fitzgerald’s immediate predecessor, of being cozy with, and going easy on, public officials.

As for his choice, the senator says, “I sleep well at night knowing that no one from either party is going to be able to influence Patrick Fitzgerald, that he is approaching his job objectively and without partisanship.”

Fitzgerald’s friend James Comey, now U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, attributes that to Fitzgerald’s “apolitical” disposition. “Pat Fitzgerald is not a guy who thinks in terms of Republicans or Democrats, who’s in power or out of power,” he says. “He thinks in terms good guys and bad guys.”

Fitzgerald also does not appear to be interested in elective office, though there is precedent for using the U.S. attorney’s office as a springboard.

Jim Thompson won the Executive Mansion as a Republican after serving there in the early 1970s. Jim Burns, who served in the 1990s, ran for governor as a Democrat but lost in the primary.

“I know for a fact he has no interest in elective office and doesn’t care what people think about him in that sense,” Comey says of Fitzgerald. “He cares that people think that he’s fair and honest and hard working. But there’s no nest he’s trying to feather for the next stage in his life.”

In any case, Fitzgerald and some of his predecessors dispute the notion that the U.S. attorney’s office was less then independent in pre-Fitzgerald days. Lassar, now a partner at the Chicago law firm of Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood, calls the idea “silly.” He notes the Northern District of Illinois leads the nation in successful political corruption prosecutions and says, “We’re not the leader because we’ve been under political influence.” According to Justice Department data, the district produced 570 such convictions from 1992 to 2001. The runners up were the Los Angeles-based Central District of California with 551, the Miami-based Southern District of Florida with 478, the District of Columbia with 390 and the Southern District of New York with 356.

Burns, now inspector general at the Illinois secretary of state’s office, accuses the senator and the media of creating the idea that the Northern District was not independent under previous U.S. attorneys. “[Peter Fitzgerald] made a big deal about going outside and picking somebody from New York. The implication was there and the media ran with it.”

And Thompson, chair of the Chicago law firm Winston & Strawn, says, “No political bosses tell [Fitzgerald] what to do, but no political bosses ever told us what to do. You don’t have to denigrate prior U.S. attorneys in order to compliment Pat.”

The current U.S. attorney also defends the office’s historical independence. “No one here has a political ax to grind, or could have one, because no one’s going to play that game. People come here to work hard and make good cases.” Yet, Fitzgerald says, the view that independence has arrived can work to the government’s advantage. “If the perception is that bringing an outsider in validates the office, then it’s a positive effect, I guess, that people come here saying, ‘Now we can trust the place because there’s an outsider.’”

Fitzgerald was astounded at the extent of public corruption in Illinois when he arrived in Chicago. Over the past three decades, federal prosecutors in the Northern District have unwound a string of scams through such investigations as the judicial corruption probe Operation Greylord.

“When you look at the amount of corruption that’s been uncovered, it does indicate there’s a serious problem in Illinois,” he says. As he and other law enforcement officials note, though, public corruption rates are driven by effective investigation and prosecution.

More to the point, Fitzgerald is disturbed by the posture taken by Scott Fawell, George Ryan’s former aide, and Ryan’s political committee that corruption is just business as usual. “What struck me about Illinois is [that] people who get charged with corruption seem to blame some sort of culture, whether it’s there or not or whether it’s a false excuse,” he says. “People try to perpetuate the notion that everyone’s doing it, [and] that’s the way to do it here.

“I think this whole culture of ‘that’s the way it is here’ is something we shouldn’t accept. The notion that people can walk into court with a straight face and say, ‘It’s okay. That’s the way it’s done,’ is something that we just can’t accept. I think the jury in the Fawell case didn’t, and we’ve just got to keep being aggressive in attacking it.”

Ed Genson and Thomas Breen, who represented Fawell and the campaign fund, respectively, did not return phone calls for comment about their defense strategies.

Fitzgerald says the perception of change was buttressed by the guilty verdicts against Fawell, the highest ranking official charged as part of Operation Safe Road, and the Citizens for Ryan campaign committee. And, as Fitzgerald sees it, that change has effected a change in attitude within the state’s political culture.

Fawell and the campaign committee were indicted a few months after Fitzgerald arrived and were found guilty in March on all counts of a racketeering conspiracy stemming from the eight years Ryan spent as secretary of state. Fawell, who served as Ryan’s chief of staff in the secretary of state’s office and managed Ryan’s 1998 gubernatorial campaign, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Ryan has not been charged with wrongdoing.

Though Fitzgerald won’t elaborate, he says his office has seen “people coming forward to report things that they wouldn’t have reported before because now there’s the sense that people have woken up to that verdict and said, ‘Okay, maybe someone will do something about it now.’”

In addition, Fitzgerald points to the General Assembly’s passage this spring of ethics legislation as evidence of the public’s will for change. (Gov. Rod Blagojevich pledged to return the bill to lawmakers, saying he wants to establish an inspector general who will police the entire executive branch and to tighten rules governing gifts to elected officials from lobbyists.)

Fitzgerald’s tenure has produced indictments of other members of Ryan’s inner circle, as well. Roger Stanley, a GOP political consultant and former state lawmaker, pleaded guilty in May to a mail fraud scheme. He admitted making payoffs to former Metra board member Donald Udstuen in return for contracts with the commuter rail service. Udstuen, a top Republican strategist and former chief lobbyist for the Illinois State Medical Society, was not charged with taking the money. But he has admitted doing so and pleaded guilty to other charges related to his role in a scheme to steer secretary of state contracts to associates. Udstuen was indicted along with Alan Drazek, a former Chicago Transit Authority board member, and Lawrence Warner on charges that Warner, a longtime Ryan friend, used his influence to fix millions of dollars worth of secretary of state contracts and leases, and shared some of the proceeds with Drazek and Udstuen.

Drazek pleaded guilty to tax conspiracy. Stanley, Udstuen and Drazek agreed to cooperate with the government. Warner pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for trial next month.

Fitzgerald is often regarded as the champion of Safe Road. It should be noted, though, that the investigation originated under Lassar and was well under way before Fitzgerald arrived at his post. “A lot of those matters had become a fairly mature situation,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins, Safe Road’s lead prosecutor, of indictments that came down under Fitzgerald. “So it wasn’t like Pat walked in the door and we started investigating because we hadn’t been investigating.”

Collins credits both Fitzgerald and Lassar with supporting the investigation, and counters accusations that Lassar dragged his feet. “I always cringe a little bit when I read these editorials that say Scott’s a bum and Pat’s a great guy. Pat is a great guy, but so is Scott.”

A 42-year-old bachelor, Fitzgerald is uncomfortable discussing his personal life. While he answers questions about work in rapid-fire succession, often telling colorful stories to illustrate his points, he won’t reveal much about his personal life beyond his allegiance to the New York Mets — sticking with his National League loyalty, he prefers the Cubs over the White Sox — and his youthful pastime of playing rugby. Specifically, he won’t discuss whether there’s a significant other in his life. “I keep my personal life personal and I’ve always been that way, even when I was a line prosecutor. I do have a personal life, but I keep that from work.”

His friend Comey says that while Fitzgerald loves his work, and for years has had “no life,” he would one day like to strike a different balance between work and personal affairs. “I happen to know he’s somebody that loves kids, and would like to get married and have a family.” Comey also says Fitzgerald spent “enormous time” caring for his elderly parents before they died. He says if Fitzgerald’s parents had been alive when he was summoned for the job of U.S. attorney, “I don’t think Pat would have considered going to Chicago.”

While Fitzgerald clearly is uncomfortable with self-promotion, there’s a practical concern that limits his comment on personal matters: He has put mobsters, terrorists and, most recently, corrupt public officials behind bars. Comey has said the planet is full of people who would like to see him dead. Fitzgerald won’t even say where he resides.

When Phil Ponce of the public affairs television show Chicago Tonight pressed Fitzgerald last year about precautions he takes to ensure his personal safety, Fitzgerald responded, “The main precaution I take is I don’t discuss my precautions. But I can tell you this much: Whatever concern people have, I’m not concerned, and it will never affect the way I do my job. You just do your job the way you have to do it. Police officers and other people put their lives at risk.

“I’m frightened [for] the people who wash windows. I look up and say, ‘I can’t believe those people do their job.’ So, I’m comfortable with mine.”

It’s hard to imagine Fitzgerald has much time for a personal life, what with his habit of working into the night and on weekends.

Tom Kneir, special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI, tells a story that’s typical of those shared by special agents in charge of federal investigative agencies in the city. He says that once, when he and Fitzgerald went for dinner at a downtown restaurant near their offices in the Dirksen Federal Building, they stood mingling after taking in the buffet. “I finally said, ‘Look, it’s 8 o’clock, I’ve got a little bit of a commute and I need to get out of here. And tomorrow’s going to be another busy day.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I need to get out of here, too.

I need to get back to the office.’”

Calling Fitzgerald hands-on, Kneir says, is an understatement. “If I need him on a Saturday morning, my first call would probably be to his office.”

As for Fitzgerald’s next career move, the most popular assumption is that he’s bound for a top job in the U.S. Justice Department — which has given him its most prestigious awards — perhaps even as attorney general.

Fitzgerald says he’s not contemplating his next move. He’s too busy living the life of a federal prosecutor.

“It’s the greatest job that I’ve ever had, obviously. And it’s the greatest job I’d ever hoped to have,” he says. “When the show ends, I’ll be very disappointed. But I’ll figure out what to do then, then.”

Illinois Issues, September 2003

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