Persecution of The Body SnatcherTomorrow, Dick Thornburgh, the attorney general for the final year of George H. W. Bush’s presidency, will testify to Congress about his experience of the politicization of the Justice Department.
Thornburgh’s run-in with Alberto Gonzales’ DoJ came via the case of Dr. Cyril Wecht, a celebrity forensic pathologist, prominent Pennsylvania Democrat, and up until his indictment on a raft of fraud charges, coroner of Allegheny County. Thornburgh is one of Wecht’s defense lawyers, and his complaints stem from what he’s called the “sheer intensity” of the investigation, which involves relatively minor accusations that Thornburgh says should have been handled by the state ethics commission.
As a means of showing the relative triviality of the charges (the 84-count indictment doesn’t put a price tag on Wecht’s fraud), Wecht’s lawyers have calculated that the cumulative cost for the 37 charges in the indictment that involve improperly charging the county for gasoline and mileage costs add up to $1,778.55. The most colorful of the charges, of course, involve the elaborate body snatching scheme: prosecutors allege that Wecht gave a local Catholic university unclaimed bodies in exchange for laboratory space.
The source of the investigation’s “intensity” is U.S. Attorney for Pittsburgh Mary Beth Buchanan, a member of the DoJ’s inner circle who played a role in the U.S. attorney firings. It’s not the first time that Buchanan has drawn fire. During the heat of the scandal, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the district (from 1995-2000, before Buchanan took over) publicly called on Buchanan to resign because of “the extent to which she has looked to Washington for direction and political advancement.” Or to put it in plainer terms: Buchanan has prosecuted a number of Democrats but no Republicans.
According to Wecht’s lawyers, Thornburgh among them, Buchanan’s office was single-minded in their pursuit of their high-profile quarry. Although Wecht holds the modest position of county coroner, he’s a prominent Democrat in the state, even once running for the Senate in 1982. And it’s only a minor exaggeration to say that he’s made an appearance in just about every well-known murder case in the past 30 years, including O.J. Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey, Vincent W. Foster Jr., Martha von Bülow, not to mention Elvis Presley and both Kennedy brothers.
Here’s Thornburgh’s story, which he laid out in an affidavit this summer and will tell to the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow. Not long after Thornburgh began representing Wecht in the summer of 2005, Buchanan began pressing to indict him on a number of fraud charges. Finally, in December, she sent him a target letter, usually a sign of imminent indictment.
So Thornburgh, as part of a defense strategy to avoid indictment, sent a letter to then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty pointing out some of the apparent shortcomings in the government’s case and arguing that the charges were better dealt with by the state ethics commission. He also sat down with Buchanan and her assistants to attempt to dissuade them from indicting their client. To Thornburgh’s surprise, Buchanan called Wecht’s case “one of the worst cases of public corruption… that we have seen in four years.” And when Thornburgh sought an assurance that Wecht wouldn’t be subjected to a “perp walk,” but would be allowed to surrender himself (routine for someone of Wecht’s stature), Buchanan said no, that Wecht, a Jew, was a “flight risk to Israel.”
When Thornburgh mentioned during the meeting that he would take this up with McNulty, the number two at the Department, Buchanan’s assistant prosecutor didn’t react well. As Thornburgh described in the affidavit, the prosecutor, Stephen Stallings, “pointed his finger at me and asked me directly what I intended to say to the Deputy Attorney General. I ignored his inquiry.” And when Thornburgh concluded the meeting by saying that it was his opinion that “she was going to regret pursuing this indictment,” Stallings “inappropriately responded as if I had threatened them.” Thornburgh adds: “I did not respond to this outburst.”
As it happened, Thornburgh did speak with McNulty. And McNulty agreed that Wecht should be allowed to surrender himself. “I am glad that an agreement was reached,” he wrote in a letter to Thornburgh. On January 20, 2006, Wecht was indicted. He was allowed to surrender, but Buchanan herself held a press conference to mark the occasion.
But that’s not all. In June of this year, Wecht’s lawyers went to the press to announce that prosecutors had recently approached them to try to strike a plea deal. The approach, they observed, was happening just as Buchanan was testifying to Congressional investigators about her role in the U.S. attorneys scandal. “She wants to make sure we keep our mouths shut while she’s down there before Congress,” one of Wecht’s lawyers told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The lawyers also detailed Thornburgh’s difficulties with Buchanan, as illustration of what they say is the political nature of the prosecution.
Buchanan’s office quickly responded with a motion for sanctions against Wecht’s lawyers (Thornburgh curiously excepted) — which would result in either jail time or suspension. The lawyers, Mark Rush and Jerry McDevitt, Stallings alleged, had “repeatedly lied to the court, lied to the media, breached their ethical obligations as lawyers,” and violated “some of the most basic and fundamental principles of professionalism.” Wecht’s lawyers responded by calling the motion “a hatchet job” and noted that Buchanan’s office had not been shy so far about publicizing the details of the case. The motion was ultimately denied.
Wecht’s case is due to go to trial at the end of January, but Thornburgh gets to tell his story tomorrow.
