FBI Director Robert Mueller III’s 10-year term is up in September, and it’s about time for President Barack Obama to be announcing a nominee. Here is Main Justice’s look at the possible contenders:
John Pistole
After 26 years at the FBI, Pistole was sworn in last July as head of the Transportation Security Administration. He oversees 50,000 employees responsible for protecting airports, seaports, and other transportation infrastructure.
John Pistole
Pistole would seem to be a safe choice for FBI director. He has extensive national security credentials, political experience and the ability to garner bipartisan support in an often divided and partisan Senate.
After Obama’s first two nominees to head TSA foundered over political controversies, Pistole sailed through the confirmation process last June, winning the unanimous backing of the Senate.
Then he nicely weathered an emotional public furor last year over the use of full-body scanners and intrusive body pat-downs at airports. A chiseled and blue-eyed Midwesterner, Pistole was briefly a fixture on national television, calmly defending the TSA’s passenger screening policies as crucial to national security. He also passed through the fire of a high-profile congressional hearing on the subject.
Pistole joined the FBI in 1983 after practicing law for two years. He rose through the ranks to become deputy director of the bureau from 2004 to 2010.
He has led or been involved in high-profile national security investigations, including last year’s attempted bombing of Times Square, a 2006 plot in the United Kingdom to use liquid explosives to blow up planes that resulted in the banning of large-size toiletries from carry-on baggage, and a May 2003 suicide bombing of housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Pistole was also involved in the investigation of so-called “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, whose alleged attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day in 2009 became a huge political controversy for Attorney General Eric Holder. Republicans criticized a decision to read the Nigerian citizen his Miranda rights against self-incrimination and charge him criminally rather than place him in military custody for further questioning.
Pistole is a graduate of Anderson University in Indiana and the Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis.
Michael Mason
A former assistant director of the FBI, Mason has the backing of the FBI Agents Association, representing the rank and file of the bureau. If nominated, he would be the first African-American put forth for the job.
Michael Mason
But in the current political environment, Mason’s potential to break a racial barrier might work against him. Conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill have already questioned whether Holder, the first black attorney general, serving under the first black president, supports “race-neutral” enforcement of civil rights laws.
The charge against Holder, which he has strongly denied, is a legacy of the racially charged New Black Panther Party voter intimidation lawsuit controversy. Even though a report by the DOJ Off ice of Professional Responsibility found no evidence that Holder had anything to do with a decision to dismiss most of the Panther case in 2009, it’s stirred high emotions. The ever-cautious Obama may think twice about putting another African-American in a prominent DOJ position.
Moreover, Mason is said to be a blunt speaker, which could make the administration nervous. And he hasn’t been tested politically.
Mason joined the FBI in 1985, serving initially in Connecticut. He was the Special Agent in Charge of the Sacramento Division from 2002 until his appointment as the Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office in September 2003.
A Chicago native, Mason has a degree in accounting from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington and was a captain in the U. S. Marine Corps. He has served as director of security at Verizon Communications since January 2008.
Raymond Kelly
The New York City police commissioner, Kelly has an important political backer: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who has openly promoted him for FBI director.
Raymond Kelly
But Kelly likely lost a few friends in the administration when he came out against holding a civilian trial in New York for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other accused 9/11 conspirators. His police department estimated that security surrounding the trials would cost up to $200 million – a figure thought to have been inflated for political purposes – but it helped to turn the tide of public opinion against the trials, leading to a major public relations disaster for Holder.
Kelly otherwise has good credentials. He established New York City’s own counter-terrorism force in 2002 and has sent his own agents abroad for investigative work. But New York’s counterterrorism force has often clashed with the FBI, though relations were reported to be better in recent years.
Kelly has never work ed at the FBI or the Justice Department but has other important Washington experience. During the Clinton administration, he was Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. From 1998 to 2001 he was commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service, where he oversaw the Secret Service and what was then known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is now part of the Justice Department.
But hard-charging New Yorkers can sometimes meet resistance in Washington’s multi-layered political culture. And while it’s not a fair comparison, the last time someone with a background as New York police commissioner was nominated for a top national security job in Washington – Bernard Kerik for Homeland Security secretary – it was a fiasco, and the whiff of that scandal may still linger in Congress.
Kelly served on the executive committee for international police organization Interpol from 1996 to 2002. He has a law degree from St. John’s University School of Law, a master of law degree from New York University Graduate School of Law and a master’s degree in public affairs from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Frances Townsend
The homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush from 2004 to 2007, Townsend started out in Washington under Democrats at the Justice Department, where she became a confidante of then-Attorney General Janet Reno. Her respect among top players on both sides of the political aisle would be an asset in any Senate confirmation process.
Frances Townsend
At the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, Townsend ran the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, where she reviewed which terrorism-related cases merit secret intelligence wiretaps.
When then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice hired her to work on the Bush National Security Council in 2003, the move was controversial. Many Bush people looked with suspicion upon her Democratic background, but Townsend became a trusted adviser to Bush and was known for having the president’s ear.
Townsend is articulate, used to the television cameras and politically experienced. But she has never run a large organization. If nominated, she would be the first woman put forward for FBI director.
Earlier in her career, Townsend was a prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office and at the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s office under Rudy Giuliani.
She has an undergraduate degree from American University and a law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law.
Patrick Fitzgerald
Probably the most famous prosecutor in America, Fitzgerald is one of the most knowledgeable people at the Department of Justice about the Islamist networks in the United States and their historical ties to groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. As a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, he worked on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case involving the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, who ran a pre-cursor organization to Al Qaeda. Fitzgerald also supervised the investigation of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Patrick Fitzgerald
Appointed by George W. Bush and held over by the Obama administration to continue as U.S. Attorney in Chicago, he would seem on paper to have the credentials to win confirmation in a politically divided Senate.
But some Republicans will never forgive Fitzgerald for his prosecution of then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, in connection with the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity during the debate over invading Iraq.
Fitzgerald’s stature has suffered by his pursuit of the buffoonish former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), now undergoing his second trial on public corruption charges including attempted extortion and bribery. After ordering Blagojevich’s arrest in 2008, Fitzgerald held a high-profile press conference accusing the governor of a being on “political corruption crime spree” that would make “Lincoln roll over in his grave.” But a jury deadlocked on most of the charges last August.
A Brooklyn native and son of Irish immigrants, Fitzgerald graduated from Amherst College and Harvard Law School. He’s worked for the Justice Department since 1988.
James Comey
The former Deputy Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration has – as does his close friend Patrick Fitzgerald – the Republican credentials that on paper at least would seem to help him through a Senate confirmation process.
James Comey
But Comey is viewed with distrust by many Republicans for his May 2007 congressional testimony about the now-famous account of the showdown over the then-secret warrantless wiretapping program at the hospital bed of a gravely ill Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Comey testified that he and FBI Director Mueller raced to Ashcroft’s bedside in 2004 to prevent then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andy Card from getting the attorney general to sign off on aspects of the program the Justice Department had determined were illegal.
The story had leaked out before Comey’s congressional testimony, and its surfacing at that point in 2007 – as then-Attorney General Gonzales was teetering from controversy over the 2006 firings of U.S. Attorneys – was seen giving a push to Democratic efforts to oust Gonzales. Gonzales resigned as head of the Justice Department in August 2007.
Comey resigned from the Justice Department in August 2005 to become general counsel and a senior vice president of defense contractor Lockheed Martin. In 2010 he joined Connecticut-based hedge fund Bridgewater Associates.
Comey has an undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary and earned his law degree at the University of Chicago Law School.
Michael Leiter
Leiter is director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), established after the intelligence failures of the 9/11 attacks to coordinate all national security agencies of the U.S. government and make policy recommendations to the president.
Michael Leiter
His resume is amazing: Editor of the Harvard Law Review, a Navy fighter pilot who flew NATO-led raids over the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and service as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia from 2002 until 2005.
After leaving the DOJ, he served as deputy general counsel and assistant director of the President’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, known as the Robb-Silberman Commission.
He then served a stint as deputy chief of staff for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence before taking a job in February 2007 as principal deputy director at the NCTC. He served as NCTC’s acting director before being confirmed by the Senate as its permanent director in June 2008.
Although he rose to prominence during the George W. Bush administration, the Barack Obama administration kept him on as NCTC director, giving him bipartisan credentials.
Still, Leiter has never run a large, complex organization like the FBI, and may not be steeped enough in its culture. He’s never been in an operational front-line position in a national security crisis, and he hasn’t been politically tested.
While he is reportedly well liked in the Obama administration and by rank-and-file members of the intelligence community, he may not have the political constituency he would need to get through an unpredictable Senate confirmation process. Moreover, the NCTC has been criticized as ineffective, though a congressional study laid the blame for its shortcomings on a lack quality staff and authority, not on Leiter himself.
Leiter earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.
A number of other possible nominees have been mentioned in news reports. They include:
Michael J. Garcia
Garcia led the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office in the George W. Bush administration. But is he prominent enough for the job?
Jamie Gorelick
The problem with nominating the former Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General can be summed up in two words: Fannie Mae.
Merrick Garland
A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Garland might be sitting on the Supreme Court right now if the Obama administration wasn’t determined to correct the court’s gender imbalance. But outside of judicial and law enforcement circles, he’s not especially prominent, nor does he have an extensive background in national security.
Mary Jo White
The Bill Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1993 to 2002, White may have been away from government for too long to get the nomination. She is currently chair of the litigation department at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
Kenneth Wainstein
Over 19 years at the Justice Department, Wainstein served as general counsel and chief of staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller, as the first head of the National Security Division, U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, and homeland security adviser to George W. Bush. Now a partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, Wainstein has the right credentials but doesn’t seem to be on the short list.
Neil MacBride
MacBride was unanimously confirmed as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2009, and previously served as an AUSA in the District of Columbia and as chief counsel and staff director for then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) when Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and drugs. He was also an executive at the Business Software Alliance, a technology trade group.
Paul Clement, the attorney representing the Republican-controlled House in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, received praise from a surprising source Tuesday–Attorney General Eric Holder.
Clement, a George W. Bush Solicitor General, resigned from King & Spalding Monday in protest of the law firm’s decision to withdraw from the representation of the House in the defense of a 1996 statute that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Clement said he would continue his work for the House at law firm of Bancroft PLLC.
The House hired Clement to defend the act, after the Justice Department said it no longer would
“Paul Clement is a great lawyer,” Holder told reporters during a pen-and-pad briefing with reporters in his conference room at DOJ headquarters. “He has done a lot of really great things for this nation. In taking on representing Congress in connection with DOMA, I think he was doing that which lawyers do when we are at our best.”
Holder said criticism of Clement reminds him of the attacks leveled against DOJ lawyers who represented Guantanamo Bay detainees when they were in the private sector.
“The people who criticized our people here at the Justice Department were wrong then, as are people who criticized Paul Clement for taking the representation that he’s going to continue,” Holder said.
Frustrated by what they perceive of as a lack of cooperation, congressional investigators have traveled to Arizona as part of a probe into a controversial Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun smuggling probe, CBS news reported Tuesday.
The Senate and House investigators are interviewing gun shop owners, ATF officials and others about “Project Gunrunner” and its “Operation Fast and Furious” component, which allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in an effort to track them.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have sent several letters to the Justice Department and the ATF, a DOJ agency, requesting information about the program. Issa has threatened to try to hold ATF officials in contempt of Congress because they have not responded to his inquiries.
Under fire from Republicans for his anti-terrorism record, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday it was the George W. Bush administration that initially declined to prosecute a case connected to a controversial Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Speaking to reporters during a briefing, Holder said the Obama administration conducted an examination of the Bush decision. “A review was done of that decision in this administration and the conclusion was reached that that earlier decision was an appropriate one,” Holder said in response to a question from Main Justice.
Republicans have accused the Obama administration of giving favorable treatment to CAIR in a bid to maintain good ties with Muslims.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has questioned why CAIR and its co-founder, Omar Ahmad – along with the Islamic Society of North America, the Saudi-backed North American Islamic Trust and other unindicted co-conspirators — were not prosecuted in an earlier terrorism financing case against a Texas-based Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
“I was contacted by people who worked in the U.S. attorneys’ office who had actually prepared an indictment of CAIR and was ready to go in 2009, and yet either Eric Holder, or someone very close to him in the Justice Department, killed that indictment, wouldn’t allow it to go forward,” King said on Fox News Sunday.
Members of the Holy Land Foundation were found guilty in a 2008 trial of supporting Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. Evidence in the case showed CAIR had its roots in a U.S.-based fundraising and political support network for Hamas, which itself is rooted in the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR founders were part of a larger U.S.-based Islamist movement organized around the Muslim Brotherhood that operated unchallenged before the 9/11 attacks.
In his remarks to reporters, Holder clarified that the proposed indictment concerned an individual, not CAIR as an organization. ”I mean the decision wasn’t necessarily about CAIR as it was about a guy, a person, an individual,” Holder told reporters. Other news reports have identified Ahmad, the co-founder of CAIR, as the target of the proposed indictment.
King has sought to gain political traction on the issue. He sent a widely circulated letter to Holder contending that a decision to prosecute “was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case.”
The King letter said the law enforcement agents’ “opposition to this decision raises serious doubt that the decision not to prosecute was a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”
Holder’s statement that the Bush administration made the decision would appear to take some of the steam out of King’s argument against the Barack Obama administration.
Holder added that he did not make the final decision to decline to prosecute. “As Attorney General, I guess some folks on the Hill think that my hands were in every decision that’s made, especially those that they disagree with,” Holder said. “But that is not the case.”
In a statement Tuesday to Main Justice, King said: “I think the attorney general’s hands should be involved in any case involving CAIR and a possible terrorism indictment. He should not be hiding behind the decision of the Bush administration, because that decision was made before the Holy Land Foundation was convicted. Once the Holy Land Foundation was convicted, that would make it easier to get an indictment and conviction of CAIR.”
Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.
The article has been updated to clarify that the proposed indictment did not target the Council on American-Islamic Relations as an organization, but rather an individual associated with CAIR.
The Department of Justice has quietly dropped its long investigation of a former department lawyer who acknowledged leaking information to The New York Times about the once-top secret warrantless wiretapping program conducted by the administration of President George W. Bush.
The decision not to prosecute Thomas Tamm, reported by Josh Gerstein on Politico, apparently brings a low-key end to an episode that was headline news in the latter days of the Bush administration, with some people questioning the patriotism of the leaker or leakers and Times reporters and editors and others asserting that the eavesdropping went beyond legal limits.
Former Public Integrity section chief William Welch handled the leak investigation.
Bush personally exerted pressure on The Times not to publish its report, asserting that to do so might endanger American lines. The newspaper did publish its report in late 2005 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Gerstein said the DOJ would not discuss the state of the inquiry, but that Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, were informed “seven or eight months ago” that the case was being dropped.
The long-running feud between the head of the New Black Panther Party and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has taken another turn, with the party head demanding that the commission reimburse him for his legal expenses in connection with the “baseless” and “stupendously frivolous” commission actions against him.
Malik Zulu Shabazz, chairman of the New Black Panther Party, has filed papers in U.S. District Court in Washington accusing the commission of a “political witch hunt” against him and refusing to acknowledge “the error of its ways,” ways that the papers assert include stupidity as well as vindictiveness.
The dispute stems from a controversial voter-intimidation case in Philadelphia in November 2008 in which members of the an anti-white fringe group stood outside a polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood in military clothes.
That incident in turn cast a spotlight on a clash between the commission, which has been dominated by conservatives, and the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder, which dropped most of the charges in the case in 2009.
The commission probed the DOJ’s handling of the case for most of the past two years (see earlier Main Justice report). The body said in a report on its investigation that the DOJ failed to adequately address “serious accusations” made by former DOJ Civil Rights Division J. Christian Adams and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Civil Rights Division Voting Section, about Coates’s opposition in the DOJ to taking up voting rights cases against minorities.
In his court filing, Shabazz notes that he is 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 230 pounds — pertinent facts indeed, he and his lawyer assert, since the commission supposedly served a subpoena on a Mr. Shabazz who stood 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 170 pounds.
“The fact of the matter is that Mr. Shabazz did not become 6′5″ and 230 pounds just recently,” his lawyer, Gregory L. Lattimer, said. “He’s been at least that tall all of his adult life. Nor is it possible for any credible individual to mistake 6′5″ for 5′10 or 230 pounds for 170 pounds.”
Perhaps the rights commission did have a subpoena served on someone, Lattimer conceded. But, he went on, “it is an unequivocal fact that this mystery person was not Malik Zulu Shabazz.”
The papers do not seek a specific amount but declare that $425 an hour would be appropriate for a lawyer with 20 years or more experience. Lattimer was admitted to the bar in 1983.
A former trader for the Galleon Group LLC hedge fund was scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday to charges related to insider trading, even as the fate of the central figure in the far-reaching episode was being weighed by a federal jury.
Craig Drimal was expected to enter his plea before U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan, Bloomberg reported, citing information from a court clerk in the Southern District of New York. Drimal would become the 21st defendant in the inquiry to plead guilty.
Meanwhile, jurors continued to deliberate in the case of Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire founder of Galleon, who could go to prison for two decades or more if found guilty of all the conspiracy and securities fraud charges against him. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Holwell presided over his trial, which began in early March.
Drimal had been expected to go on trial next month. His lawyer, Janeanne Murray, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Bloomberg said. Last week, a co-defendant in the trading scheme that Drimal has implicated in, lawyer Jason Goldfarb, pleaded guilty (see Main Justice’s report).
Despite the anticipated guilty plea of Drimal, the government did not cover itself with glory in pursuing him. FBI agents monitoring wiretaps of Drimal’s phone conversations did not confine themselves to case-related exchanges, as they were supposed to. Instead, it was revealed, the agents sometimes listened in on deeply personal exchanges between Drimal and his wife — a transgression that Sullivan termed “voyeuristic” and “disgraceful.”
Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday rallied his troops at Justice Department headquarters following a barrage of Republican attacks on DOJ decisions and a period of low morale brought on by the potential for furloughs induced by a possible government shutdown.
More than 200 DOJ employees packed the Great Hall to hear Holder, greeting him with a standing ovation before he laid out his plans for the future of the Department in a speech broadcast to staffers across the country.
As top DOJ officials looked on, Holder said the DOJ will renew its efforts to fight violent crime and stop financial fraud and recommit itself to the defense of civil rights and protection of national security — two issues that have fueled some of the strongest Republican criticism of the Department.
The Attorney General said he is proud of the effort Department employees have put into addressing the priorities of the DOJ, noting that their work has had its challenges. Holder also applauded staffers for admitting mistakes when they are made and acting at once to fix them.
“Department of Justice employees face some of the most challenging circumstances and complex issues in government,” Holder said. “And your work has never been more difficult.”
As the DOJ has worked to address priorities, Holder has drawn the ire of Republicans over his support for using civilian courts to try some terrorism suspects and the decision to drop most of the charges in a civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party in 2009.
Republicans have grilled Holder about their worries in hearings, sent him letters about their concerns with the DOJ under his leadership and fired off statements expressing their discontent with Department decisions.
Holder announced this month that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged accomplices would be tried in a military commission, scrapping his initial plan to try them in a civilian court. He blasted Congress in his announcement, saying the legislative branch left him no alternative but to proceed with prosecutions in military commission.
Republicans and some Democrats welcomed the decision. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a leading critic of Obama administration positions on terrorism matters, said after the announcement that Holder has a “moral obligation” to resign if he has strong opposition to using military commission.
But King wasn’t the first Republican to suggest his resignation.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Holder should step down after a federal jury in November acquitted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani on all but one count in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Former Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri and 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin also have called for the Attorney General’s resignation over his handling of terrorism cases, including the decision to criminally charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for allegedly trying to bomb an airplane on Christmas Day 2009.
The Attorney General on Monday said the DOJ will use “every available resource and appropriate tool” to fight terrorism.
“And let me be very clear about this: we will continue to rely on our most powerful and most proven tool in bringing terrorists to justice – our federal court system,” Holder said.
The DOJ’s handling of case against members of the New Black Panther Party also has created tension between Holder and Republicans. The members of the anti-white fringe group allegedly intimidated voters by wearing military-style clothing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood during the November 2008 election. One of the men held a nightstick.
For most of the past two years, the conservative-led U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigated the DOJ’s handling of the case. The commission said in a report on its probe that the DOJ failed to adequately address “serious accusations” made by former DOJ Civil Rights Division staffer J. Christian Adams and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Civil Rights Division Voting Section, about opposition in the DOJ to taking up voting rights cases against minorities.
In March, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) prodded Holder about the case at a House hearing, claiming that the Attorney General allows reverse racism to flourish in the DOJ Civil Rights Division. A testy Holder vehemently denied the claim.
“[W]e will enforce our civil rights laws to guarantee that – in our workplaces and military bases; in our housing and lending markets; in voting booths, in border areas, and in boardrooms; in schools and in places of worship – all Americans are protected,” Holder said on Monday.
Relatives of the 29 coal miners killed on April 5, 2010, at the Massey Energy Co.’s Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, W. Va., have been told by the FBI that they be classified as victims of a federal crime.
“As you may be aware, the FBI has instituted an investigation into various activities at UBB in an effort to determine whether any Federal crimes have occurred,” said a letter to the families signed by FBI agent Joseph I. Ciccarelli of the Charleston field office. “In connection therewith, you may be a victim of a Federal crime.”
Among other things, victims of federal crimes are entitled to updates from the government about the status of their case, the right to be heard at certain court proceedings, and to protection from the accused, according to an article in The Charleston Gazette, which was cited by Allen Lengel on his Tickle the Wire blog.
“This investigation can be a lengthy process and we request your continued patience while we conduct a thorough investigation,” the letter said.
Stuart Fronk, assistant special agent in charge of FBI operations in West Virginia, said the correspondence was “a standard letter,” but refused to answer other questions, The Gazette reported. The Gazette said U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin of the Southern District of West Virginia would not comment. Nor would Massey officials, The Gazette said.
The letter from the FBI was not entirely surprising, since it has been known for a year that the mine disaster triggered an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing, as Main Justice reported last May.
