Special Prosecutor

Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune After many bad decisions as attorney general, John Ashcroft has made a good one: deciding to let someone else decide. He recused himself from the effort to find who leaked the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, on the assumption that any investigation he supervises would have no credibility. The question now is whether the investigation he doesn't supervise will have any. In the old days, that would not have been an issue.

They have no shame in Washington. It's urgent that a special prosecutor look into the campaign finance practices of the president's re-election campaign. Uses of so-called "soft" money by Republicans may merit a similar probe. Yes, the special prosecutor process is unwieldy, expensive and slow. It's likely to get tied up in complicated questions of immunity arising from parallel congressional investigations. And to judge by Ken Starr's performance as Whitewater prosecutor, the D.C. courts can't be counted on to pick a nonpartisan investigator.

With something less than exquisite timing last week, the Justice Department, backed by the White House, challenged the constitutionality of the law creating special prosecutors, like the one investigating the Iran-contra affair. The department, with Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d taking himself out of the action because he is a subject of a special prosecutor's probe, announced that it would advise President Reagan to veto any bills now being considered in Congress to extend the law after its scheduled expiration date in January.

An Abington commissioner urged his fellow commissioners and the public last week to demand that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the findings of the recent special state audit of township finances. "I'm convinced . . . that we need to have a full investigation. I'm sure the public will demand that," said first-term Commissioner Richard C. Gamble. State Auditor General Don Bailey already has called on the Montgomery County district attorney and the state attorney general to investigate his findings that township money was, in some cases, missing or spent without documentation or authorization.

HARRISBURG - A special prosecutor will examine whether secrecy rules were violated in proceedings by the grand jury that investigated Jerry Sandusky and three former Pennsylvania State University administrators facing criminal charges. Lawyer James M. Reeder was given six months to look into the matter and issue a report to state officials, according to a Feb. 8 order from Judge Barry Feudale first reported Wednesday. The order relates to a grand jury that issued reports in 2011 and 2012 that led to molestation charges against Sandusky and perjury charges against former Penn State president Graham B. Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley, and retired vice president Gary Schultz.

President Clinton will serve out his term - or he won't. His presidency and maybe the power of future presidents will be diminished by the developing scandal - or it won't. It's not a crisis for the Republic. Here's what could be: The vicious cycle of what goes around, comes around. Like the ongoing challenges to Clinton's nominees to be judges, special prosecutors could all but be institutionalized as everyday tools of partisan politics. Maybe they already are. The original intent, of course, was to have a way to investigate possible wrong-doing by powerful federal officials without having a presidential administration investigate itself.

If the Clintons did nothing wrong on the Whitewater real estate deal and a failed S&L, why did they and their staff do so much to make it look as if they have something to hide? They resisted naming a special prosecutor, their flacks spoke with forked tongues, and - in the blunder that put this mess back on the front pages - their aides appeared to have improper contact with the agency that's investigating the S&L. Either the Clintons did something unethical or illegal, as three out of every five Americans are now inclined to believe, or they ran one of the most ham-handed PR efforts in recent history.

One of the minor political puzzles of the age is the congressional affection for court-appointed special prosecutors. The act authorizing these anomalous creatures expired last December. But with a prod from the Clinton administration, they are about to be reauthorized. The Constitution is full of checks and balances, invariably effective when used as directed. The special-prosecutor law, however, is a fifth wheel. When allegations of misbehavior are made against major executive officials, and found to be even barely credible by an attorney general, the law allows a special panel of federal judges to appoint these powerful prosecutors and arm them with a hunting license and an all-but-unlimited budget.

Among the interesting things that happened in Washington last week, one interesting thing didn't. Sam Pierce didn't get indicted. Pierce, you might remember, was Ronald Reagan's secretary of housing and urban development when it was discovered that officials there were handing out government jobs to contractors as political favors and feathering their own nests using greenbacks for feathers. An independent prosecutor appointed to investigate the mess announced he would not bring charges against Pierce.

Former special prosecutor Walter M. Phillips Jr., ending two weeks of anticipation by Democratic Party leaders, announced yesterday that he was running for the Democratic nomination for district attorney. He did so in a speech in which he accused Republican District Attorney Ronald D. Castille of failing as the city's top law enforcement officer. "I am running for district attorney because the criminal justice system in this city is completely out of control," Phillips said.

HARRISBURG - A special prosecutor will examine whether secrecy rules were violated in proceedings by the grand jury that investigated Jerry Sandusky and three former Pennsylvania State University administrators facing criminal charges. Lawyer James M. Reeder was given six months to look into the matter and issue a report to state officials, according to a Feb. 8 order from Judge Barry Feudale first reported Wednesday. The order relates to a grand jury that issued reports in 2011 and 2012 that led to molestation charges against Sandusky and perjury charges against former Penn State president Graham B. Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley, and retired vice president Gary Schultz.

Pennsylvania state Sen. Mike Folmer (R., Lebanon), whose district sprawls like a run-over turtle from western Chester County to suburban Harrisburg, and a handful of colleagues from both parties are pushing a plan to hire a special prosecutor to investigate how the state's capital city went broke selling bonds that enriched Wall Street banks and investors, Philadelphia law firms and financial consultants, and hometown contractors at taxpayers' expense....

A Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice is on trial on charges of violating campaign-finance law, a city councilwoman has admitted using campaign funds to repay a personal loan, and nine past and present judges of Philadelphia Traffic Court have been indicted in a federal ticket-fixing probe. This might be a good thing. Far from signaling the imminent political demise of state and municipal government, former city and federal prosecutor Walter M. Phillips Jr. said the blizzard of corruption investigations is a sign of progress.

HARRISBURG - Kathleen Kane, a former prosecutor from Lackawanna County, made history twice Tuesday when she took the oath as Pennsylvania attorney general, becoming the first woman and first Democrat elected to that post. With hundreds of people cramming the Capitol Rotunda floor and dozens gazing down from staircases three stories high, master of ceremonies Dan McCaffery, Kane's onetime rival, said to soaring applause: "You're witnessing history. " Thus, too, began an unusual dynamic in the Capitol.

Pepper Hamilton L.L.P., a prominent Center City-based law firm, and the Wilmington-based law firm of former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh announced Tuesday that they will merge following a four-year collaboration. They said the merger would bolster Pepper's white-collar defense practice and its overseas presence. Freeh, a former federal judge who was FBI director under President Bill Clinton, formed his own firm in 2006 and has headed numerous internal corruption and compliance probes for private companies and institutions.

SANFORD, Fla. - A judge on Friday revoked the bond of George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and ordered him returned to jail within 48 hours. The judge said the former neighborhood watch volunteer and his wife misled the court about how much money they had available when his bond was set at $150,000. Prosecutors claim Zimmerman had $135,000 available that had been raised by a website he set up. Zimmerman's wife, Shellie, testified at the bond hearing in April that they had limited funds available since she was a nursing student and Zimmerman wasn't working.

ORLANDO, Fla. - The Florida judge presiding over the Trayvon Martin shooting case removed herself Wednesday after the attorney for defendant George Zimmerman argued she had a possible conflict of interest that related to her husband. Judge Kenneth M. Lester Jr. will preside over the case. The next judge who would be in the court rotation, John D. Galluzzo, also cited a conflict, so Lester was selected, according to a news release from the court. Florida Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler had said she would make a decision by Friday, when a bond hearing for Zimmerman had been set. Her husband works with Orlando attorney Mark NeJame, who was first approached by Zimmerman's family to represent the neighborhood watch volunteer.

MEXICO CITY - Authorities in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, say the skeletal remains of 12 people found in the area in recent months are those of girls and women, stirring fresh worry that someone is preying on young females in the border city. A special prosecutor said Monday that his office used DNA to identify six of the victims, who were between 15 and 19 years old. The teens were reported missing in 2009 and 2010, officials said. Forensics testing has so far been unable to identify the other remains.

SANFORD, Fla. - After weeks in hiding, George Zimmerman made his first courtroom appearance Thursday in the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and prosecutors outlined their murder case in court papers, saying the neighborhood watch volunteer followed and confronted the teenager after a police dispatcher told him to back off. The brief outline, contained in an affidavit filed in support of the second-degree murder charges, appeared to...