We'll Make You an Offer You Can't Refuse: A Primer on the Investigation of Public Corruption

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Preface

Over the years, a number of my friends have been encouraging me to write a book detailing my experiences as an undercover agent, law enforcement administrator and private investigator. As one gets older and a bit more reflective, one can look back on the many challenges with a more dispassionate eye, I believe. Around the 20th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Legislature’s decision to disband the Pennsylvania Crime Commission, I decided that the time was right to address the more significant investigations I was involved in, realizing that whatever I had to say probably only interests me, a few friends, and perhaps my children. Hence, I am not optimistic that this book will make The New York Times Best Sellers list, or any other for that matter, unless of course my adversaries choose to make it a cause célèbre.

In deciding how to tell my story, I decided to set forth certain principles and perspectives about the criminal justice system and the investigation of corruption and punctuate them with my personal experiences. Whether it be the investigation of street crime, the futility of our current drug laws, the dilemmas inherent in the investigation of organized crime, the often contradictory and burdensome regulations and laws addressing white collar crime or the career-ending effects of pursuing public corruption, the criminal justice professional is forced to make a series of trade-offs that often impede the administration of blind justice.

Unfortunately justice is a rare commodity and whether it is achieved or not is most likely a matter of where one sits in the process - or as a former colleague so simply put it, It all depends upon whose ox is being gored.

Whether a victim or defendant, a prosecutor or defense attorney, a judge or a juror, your perception of justice is colored by cultural prejudices, by economic and social status and personal experience.

Thus I have organized this book with the intent of addressing a number of relevant themes.

First and foremost, anyone interested in pursuing a career investigating public corruption must realize that it will be a short-lived and high-risk experience, or should I say, adventure. I have, through the various vignettes that populate this book, attempted to demonstrate how, when one begins to unravel or ‘peel back the onion’, the misdeeds of our public servants become increasingly apparent. Hopefully, you will get a sense of what to expect as you enter this rarified world of political corruption investigations.

Secondly, let me make it readily clear. Do not expect to be rewarded. If you survive, consider yourself fortunate. I certainly do.

Thirdly you will, I believe, become a more vigilant student of the system of criminal justice or, as some might adjudge, injustice. Who, why and when one is investigated and prosecuted may have little to do with what laws were violated, particularly when addressing public corruption. Political agendas and motivations often lie beneath the surface, only to be revisited when the decision is made to investigate and prosecute.

Fourthly, the causes of corruption defy any one explanation. Greed and unrestrained political or economic power, or both, are usually involved. Too many laws and regulations compound the problem and laws addressing and proscribing immoral and hedonistic behaviors do not help the situation. To fully grasp the nuances of corruption and its causes, one must understand the cultural mores and societal norms that define communities. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as New York certainly are fruitful laboratories to understand the causes of corruption, if at all possible.

Fifth, I have chosen as the centerpiece for this primer on corruption, the investigation of Ernie Preate, the former Attorney General of Pennsylvania. As a Vietnam War veteran, hard-charging prosecutor, reared in privilege and having attended one of the more prestigious law schools in the country, Preate was destined for national office. This investigation will serve as a template for what to expect and how to grapple with it, if and when you choose to investigate political corruption.

Lastly, if there is one lesson that I wish you to learn, it is that there are sufficient laws on the books to address public corruption. Equally, there are a multitude of government agencies that have the authority and resources to investigate public corruption. What is often lacking is the political will. It is a simple as that.

Understandably, you are probably wondering about now why I would pursue this as a career? The answer is quite simple. You never know the journeys life will take you on, nor are you truly the master of your fate. Serendipity plays a large role in our lives. While I made organized crime a career choice, I never contemplated where it would lead. Public corruption investigations proved a natural outgrowth. Perhaps a simple but poignant vignette to demonstrate my point is in order.

It was December 2001, immediately after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Never had I contemplated that I would be working at the site of the worst terrorist attack in the Nation’s history. Nor did I ever contemplate that I would be walking amongst the remains of my good friend and colleague, Fred Morrone, who was vanquished in this evil transgression.

Manning the entrance gate adjacent to the site, a Teamster Union foreman named Vito was working the gate. His job was to ensure that all the workers on the site were union members.

Into the trailer I was sitting in comes Vito and his words were plain and simple, All roads lead to Texas.

Vito, what are you talking about? I ask.

His response was, Just watch your TV over the next couple days…watch the news.

Three days passed and sure enough, an announcement on the nightly news indicates that the Bechtel Corporation from San Francisco was being retained to oversee the cleanup of the site.

For those unfamiliar, Bechtel is an international corporate giant and a non-union company that tends to be dominated by prominent members of the Republican Party.

The next day Vito reappears in the trailer and takes off on a diatribe. His words and passion still resonate in my head. We told Giuliani, no fucking way is Bechtel coming in here…no fucking trucks will come in or leave the site…Bush (President Bush) is pushing this down Giuliani’s throat… it won’t happen…

Needless to say, the rumor had it that Bechtel was given a handsome stipend and disappeared. All roads led to Texas.

This event and many others throughout my career could not have been scripted. They just happened. Some would argue that chance is the residue of design. Whatever the case, it just goes to show, you never know the roads you will travel.

As you learn to navigate the many opportunities and obstacles you will encounter as you travel down this lonely road, allow this old but relevant adage to grace your office: The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how we use them.

CHAPTER 1

New Jersey and Corruption: Perfect Together

Growing up in New Jersey, labeled by some experts as one of the most corrupt states in the Nation, proved to be both an asset and a liability. While it allowed me to witness on a very basic level, perversion of criminal laws, it also provided me with an unvarnished view of the underbelly of legitimate society. Indeed, New Jersey was and remains an ideal laboratory to study political and public corruption and its corrosive effects on the body politics of government.

But as the saying goes, A pig never smells the stench of the garbage it devours. In other words, the casual observer can become jaded, cynical, and desensitized to the moral depravity that surrounds him or her, never recognizing how this dishonesty and deceit has captured your moral sensitivities. To observe corruption up close can prove to be both a challenging and humbling experience.

Commentators and political observers have often said that what makes New Jersey unique and well suited for corruption to flourish is the fact that 521 municipalities populate the State, most with their own political structures and police departments. These fiefdoms of ‘home rule’ are in and of themselves quite powerful in ensuring that the ‘old-boys network’ remains in place decade after decade. And being the most densely populated State in the nation, Land in New Jersey is worth a fortune. Corrupt politicians sell their soul for power and money and the dense development of the land where the action is, according to a former Mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey Burt Ross, who exposed corruption in the 80s that all but ended his political career.

In 1965, Life Magazine detailed the machinations of the Mafia in New Jersey, going so far as to name a U.S. Congressman, Cornelius Gallagher, as being in the hip-pocket of the Mafia. The federal prosecution of Newark Mayor Hugh Addonizio in 1969, once again highlighted the involvement of the Mafia in parceling out city contracts.

Clearly, it is no coincidence that New Jersey was and is the home of two award-winning television series, The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire. And of late, the Oscar-nominated movie American Hustle - the movie that makes comedy of New Jersey politicians caught up in the ABSCAM probe. Yes, New Jersey is in many respects a swamp of corruption and when drained, is quickly replaced with another generation of corrupt public officials.

But is New Jersey any different from Illinois, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Alabama, or even California? My sense is that public corruption is endemic to any indigenous culture that allows for the absolute control over the mechanisms of criminal justice. Simply put, when any one political party exercises absolute control over the political infrastructure, including but not limited to the police, corruption is inevitable. This has proven to be the case in South Africa, Russia, Argentina, and many other countries that portend to champion democracy.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

It would certainly be disingenuous to ignore the most recent political corruption scandal that has rocked New Jersey’s political hierarchy - the ‘Bridgegate investigations’. In what has proven to be another tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, the current Governor and former U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie has been politically damaged in a scandal that has upended his national ambitions to the most powerful office in the world, President.

Christie, who convicted over 130 public officials during his tenure as U.S. Attorney, rode into office as a Governor who would, Turn Trenton (the State’s capitol) upside down. As Christie would often say, Corrupt politicians will steal your trust, your taxes, and your hope. Christie was the antithesis of the political bosses that populate the political machinery of New Jersey and ‘drum up campaign cash from people and firms seeking public contracts’. He was in fact, a straight-talking reformer, who would put New Jersey in the forefront of good governance.

Then in 2014, the start of his second term in office, after winning a landslide bipartisan victory that saw large segments of the Hispanic and Black communities vote for a ‘conservative’ Republican, an e-mail was uncovered that changed Christie’s trajectory forever. This e-mail - it’s time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee - written by Bridget Kelly, Christie’s Deputy Chief of Staff, was alleged to allude to the Democratic Mayor of Fort Lee having not endorsed the Governor for a second term. As a means of retribution, closing the lanes to the George Washington Bridge (GWB) was designed to create major traffic problems for the borough of Fort Lee, which sits at the New Jersey entrance to the GWB.

Initially, when it was first reported in 2013 that there was a ‘traffic study’ being conducted at the GWB that resulted in this massive traffic jam, no one ever contemplated that such an act of retribution would be visited upon a sitting Mayor merely because his endorsement was lacking. Christie was a hands-down favorite to win an overwhelming victory in his second term. He needed this Mayor’s endorsement like a hole in the head. It made no sense at the time but as various political pundits pointed out, neither did the Watergate break-in that implicated the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, who went on to win a landslide victory over his Democratic challenger, George McGovern.

Needless to say, when this story broke, others were to follow. Shortly thereafter, the Mayor of another Democratic stronghold Hoboken, New Jersey, also refused to endorse the Governor for a second term, alleging that she was strong-armed by the Lieutenant Governor and another Cabinet member to approve a controversial re-development project in order to obtain money from a Hurricane Sandy relief fund. This allegation, though never proven in a court of law, led investigators to the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, David Samson, a former Attorney General of New Jersey and an appointee of Christie, who has since resigned his position with the Port Authority. Undoubtedly, these investigations will lead to others, some of which will presumably result in witnesses cooperating with the government and testifying against their former colleagues and allies.

Whether or not the Christie administration or members of his campaign were responsible for these acts of political retribution, and whether such acts represent criminal conduct, remain questions that may only be answered through a thorough and comprehensive criminal investigation? The presumption of innocence must prevail, even though the political and journalistic rhetoric has unfairly and presumptively attributed guilt to Christie and those around him. Nonetheless, there are bigger issues that this scandal has unearthed - issues that are at the heart of, and difficulties in, conducting corruption investigations.

New Jersey, with its history of corruption dating back to the turn of the twentieth century and surely before that, represented the classic model for understanding the dynamics of political and public corruption. Reaching from the small hamlets, villages and towns that populate the New Jersey landscape, and into county, state, and yes, even Federal office holders, the landscape is scattered with political corpses that transcend any one political party.

In the twentieth century alone, we were witness to the late Governor Harold Hoffman’s firing of the first Superintendent of State Police, Norman Schwarzkopf (the father of General ‘Storming’ Norman Schwarzkopf of Gulf War fame) for failing to adhere to his orders following the infamous and internationally riveting Lindberg kidnapping. Hoffman believed that Bruno Hauptman, the kidnapper of the Lindberg baby, was innocent. Schwarzkopf did not. It cost Schwarzkopf his job.

Ironically, years later, Governor Robert Meyer enlisted Schwarzkopf to investigate missing monies from a government fund that Hoffman was overseeing. Schwarzkopf uncovered $300,000 missing from this fund. Before Hoffman could be charged, however, he died.

Then in the 1990’s, we were once again treated to another Superintendent of State Police, Carl Williams, being fired, allegedly for ‘condoning racial profiling’ - a charge that was the subject of a legislative inquiry. This resulted in further investigations into the State’s Office of Attorney General. The Attorney General, Peter Verniero, when questioned by a former U.S. Attorney, Michael Chertoff (who went on to become the Homeland Security Secretary), ‘failed to recall’ in excess of 150 times, key dates, key events, and key instances of being appraised of racial profiling by the State Police.

At the time, Verniero was a sitting member of the New Jersey State Supreme Court; a position he voluntarily gave up after his first seven-year term in office. Moreover, the Governor at the time, Christine Todd Whitman, was ‘outed’ in a photograph depicting her searching a young black male in Camden, New Jersey. Clearly an act beneath the stature and dignity of a sitting Governor.

And of course, the resignation of then Governor James Mc-Greevy for appointing his lover to the position of Homeland Security Director proved once again the ethical and moral debasement of politics in the Garden State.

Indeed, the political landscape was and is populated with the convictions of a Secretary of State, 2 State Treasurers, and over 250 State, county, and local officials despite the enactment of a number of anti-corruption control measures. The majority of these convictions were by Federal as opposed to State authorities, with the former US Attorney and now Governor Chris Christie racking up an enviable record that compared favorably to that of a former US Attorney and Federal Judge, Herbert Stern.

When Chris Christie assumed the Governorship, much like the Governors who preceded him, he commissioned transition reports describing the assets and liabilities of the various government departments. This effort was headed by a former Attorney General, David Samson, who himself was seen as an icon of the legal and political community in New Jersey.

In the report that addressed the deficiencies of the Office of Attorney General, the team of former law enforcement officials concluded that: ‘It has been reported that the Corruption Unit has been unable to undertake high profile and complex corruption prosecutions because, allegedly attorneys and investigators have feared political reprisals and breaches of confidentiality’. This finding essentially captured the essence of the problem(s) surrounding political corruption investigations: the lack of political will.

In a State that was in the late 60s and throughout the 70s, seen as a model for investigating and prosecuting public corruption and organized crime, the ‘Bridgegate scandal’ demonstrated the fragility of the various State agencies (i.e. The State Commission of Investigations, the State Ethics Commission, the Divisions of State Police and Criminal Justice) that have the power to initiate parallel and independent inquiries of violations of State law - civil, criminal and ethical.

Former U.S. Attorney Robert Del Tufo, who himself was a New Jersey Attorney General during the era that many of the anti-corruption reforms were enacted, captured this disconnect quite poignantly, arguing, the Attorney General’s Office ought to be involved [in these investigations involving Bridgegate and the abuse of power]…if you start looking as if the Office [of Attorney General] is politically intimidated, then you might not have people coming forth with information that should be pursued…

What Del