Pretzel Logic
It could be a long, hot summer for state Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Fisher.
Thanks to U.S. District Court Judge A. Richard Caputo, Fisher — barring any last-minute motions — will have to defend himself this July against a lawsuit filed by state narcotics officers who claim their careers were ruined for going afterState Department-backed drug dealers.
On May 20, Caputo ruled against a motion for summary judgment filed on behalf of Fisher and his co-defendants, Gerald Pappert, Charles Warner, Bruce Sarteschi, David Kwait and James Caggiano — all A.G. supervisors who played a role in disciplining the narcotics officers, who would later be known as the Bastard Squad. So, instead of focusing on his job as the state’s top prosecutor and his job as a candidate, Fisher will have to spend a chunk of July in a Scranton courtroom explaining allegations that he retaliated against otherwise honest officers who claim their only mistake was not playing ball with the CIA.
The saga of state Bureau of Narcotics Investigation officers John McLaughlin, Charlie Micewski, Dennis McKeefery and Eddie Eggles began more than a year before their current boss, Mike Fisher, took office in January 1997.
McLaughlin and crew — part of the A.G.’s elite anti-drug task force — claim that their careers were ruined after they uncovered a plot by a State Department-backed Dominican Republic political party to raise campaign funds by selling drugs in Philadelphia, New York and Massachusetts.
In April 1996, just two weeks after nearly arresting Dominican presidential candidate (and dirty-money recipient) Jose Francisco Pena Gomez (who was on a fundraising trip to the U.S. at the time) and later refusing to divulge the name of their confidential informants to the CIA — the officers found their careers torpedoed. First, then-U.S. Attorney Mike Stiles and Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Arnie Gordon refused to prosecute cases from the officers. Eventually, prosecutors began asking judges to throw out cases brought by McLaughlin and his crew. Citing similar circumstances in warrants filled out by the Bastard Squad, Stiles and Gordon had intimated that the Bastard Squad was making up evidence — a charge never proven, despite an internal A.G. investigation and a federal grand jury investigation conducted by the FBI.
The Bastard Squad’s run-in with the Dominican political party and the CIA was over by the time Fisher took office, but the officers were buffeted by bad press and ordered not to respond. By October 1997, they had had enough, and they filed a lawsuit against the D.A., the U.S. Attorney’s office and the A.G.’s office alleging that the defendants “impeded their law-enforcement efforts and destroyed their careers by engaging in a conspiracy to protect a Dominican Republic drug organization with ties to a Dominican political party.” One month later, Fisher approved requests by the squad’s supervisors to take them off the streets and assign them to desk duty. The officers claim that the transfers were retaliatory, forming the basis for the lawsuit in which Fisher will have to testify in July. (The 1997 suit is still pending. Stiles and Gordon, who were removed from that suit, deny acting at the behest of the State Department or CIA).
Late last year, the attorney for Fisher and his co-defendants asked Caputo to consider the timing of the governor’s race in making his decision, according to Don Bailey, the Bastard Squad’s attorney.
“Opposing counsel Bob Hoffman expressed concern that there was an election coming up,” says Bailey. “I reacted sharply. Nobody is concerned about my clients, when they eat, when they work, when they see their families. I started laughing. Now Fisher wants to run for governor and not be questioned in public about his conduct? Hey, they are the guys who controlled the agenda and filed all the appeals. If they cooperated, we could have been done two years ago.”
When I reached Hoffman on Tuesday, he had no comment.
In fact, everyone I tried to reach for comment, except for the ever-effusive Bailey, dodged this thing like a live grenade.
Kelli Phiel, Fisher’s press secretary, said I had to contact Kevin Harley, who is on leave from the A.G.’s office to act as a Fisher spokesman. Harley told me I would have to speak to Sean Connolly, the A.G.’s spokesman. I called Connolly, left a message, then called Harley back.
“I don’t want to comment on ongoing litigation,” Harley told me after I pressed him to say something. “The A.G. is named in numerous suits. It happens all the time, and he deals with them in a judicious manner and takes whatever responsibility he has to as A.G.”
When Connolly called me back, I got more of the same.
And a similar response from Dan Fee, spokesman for Rendell, who stands to gain if Fisher is fiercely grilled on the stand.
“No comment on that one,” Fee said Tuesday.
Don Bailey was feeling no such constraint.
“This case hits at the core of a lawyer’s responsibility,” he opined, “and Fisher’s betrayal of his duties.”
Bailey said that “the heart of this is that my guys went out, they were doing just an exceptional job investigating and reporting drug abuse in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods, and they were falsely accused of violating the rights of Dominican drug dealers working for a political party that was supported by the U.S. State Department. My clients stumbled into this and found themselves the object of defamation. In July, they will finally have their day in court.”
For a moment I thought the end of the Rendell-Casey race was the end of the wackiness. Who said there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues?
